I will be honest and admit that I often struggle with reconciling the difference
between my plans and God’s plan. When I started my current job fourteen years ago,
I was on a ten year (max!) plan. That would allow me to put my three boys through college.
That plan extended as I went back to school to finish my degree,
and then my husband went back to school to finish his degree.
Our educations were miraculously paid for mostly by my job benefits.
The plan has been extended again as the Lord has used this position to provide housing
for us on campus for a season. It would be easy to become agitated and restless
in what often feels like a temporary situation or a holding pattern.
This afternoon as I sat in my office struggling with a short attention span and a long “to do” list,
the words to this old hymn kept flowing through my mind and heart.
“Let the Lord have His way
In your life every day
There’s no rest, there’s no peace
Until the Lord has His way
Place your life in His hands
Rest secure in His plans
Let the Lord
Let the Lord have His way”
Peace began to flow as this hymn played through my head and heart.
I love the old hymns and songs that I learned growing up in church. I remember as a child
getting to sit with my Grandma Hamar in church services and listen as she sang the hymns
with all her heart. As I grew older and was privileged to spend a lot of time with her
in my teen years, the words of those hymns would become the starting points for lessons
she had learned in life that she chose to share with me.
I have noticed my agitation and restlessness starts when I try to second guess God’s plans
or try to step ahead of His timing. The peace comes when I place my life back in His hands
and I rest secure in His plans, because I know that His ways are so much higher than mine.
He sees the future when all I can see is fog and uncertainty.
He knows what I really need when I just know what I think I need.
He knows where I am needed when sometimes all I can see is where I want to be needed.
It is only when I heed the Lord’s instruction to “cease striving and know that [He is] God”
that I can find peace and rest in His plans for my life. Only then am I able to be obedient
to His leading and faithfully share my heart as He has called me to do.
I find rest tonight in His plans as I let the Lord have His way and
share my heart for the Lord, for the home, and for the family!
Pam