But My people did not listen to My voice,
and Israel did not obey Me. So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their
heart, to walk in their own devices.--Psalm 81:11, 12
Sometimes I start a discipleship session
with a question, “So what is your plan?” People generally are not sitting
around waiting for advice on what to do. Before they ever step through my
office door, they have decided exactly what course they are going to follow and
are merely seeking counsel that agrees with their decision. Many times I talk
to a husband or wife who has already decided that the way to fix their marital
problem is to split up. Others decide the best way to correct their situation
is to run, and some others believe that if the people around them would change,
the predicament would then resolve itself.
Our plan is not His plan, and experience
will confirm that assessment. Our plans are often devised out of frustration,
anger, disappointment, and hopelessness; and since they are
anti-Sermon-on-the-Mount/Life-on-the-Mount, they include no love, no Spirit, no
Christ, no brokenness, no laying down of our lives. The solution is not to
correct our plan to make it something we can more comfortably live with; that
would still only be our plan in different clothing. As Corrie Ten Boom said,
“Just because there is a mouse in the cookie jar, that does not make it a
cookie.” Often we are in a state of so much emotional disruption that we just
cannot think “spiritually.” We are too consumed with the morbid satisfaction
that comes from contemplating how we will get even with someone or make him pay
for something he did or said. So we must have a plan for destroying the plan
that will destroy us.
Here is just such a plan: When entertaining any scheme
that is anti-Christ, simply pray before falling off to sleep each night,
“Father, please do not give me over to the stubbornness of my heart; do not let
me walk in my own devices.” Pray even when you cannot yet really mean it.God
hears even idle words. He will hear, and He will answer!
How about this…”a plan for destroying the
plan that will destroy us.” Abandoning
our plans to God and asking Him to not allow us to be given over to the
stubbornness of our heart & not letting us walk in our own devices. Well, amen.
Why is this an issue in the first
place? Well, look at ALL the ways
Michael describes the lives of too many Christians making “anti-Christ”
decisions. WHEN will life as a Christian
have none of the sad testimony so mentioned???
And, then why do Christians make a plan
that “is not His plan”? Oh, wow! God tells us WHY in the 81st Psalm quoted at
first of Michael’s writing: “But My people did not listen to My voice, and
Israel did not obey Me. So I gave them
over to the stubbornness of their heart, to walk in their own devices.” This life that is in essence behind our
making anti-Christ plans is the result of our stubborn heart!
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