About Face! March!

When I was a youngster, though we attended churches of several different denominations for several years each, my family couldn’t seem to find a Bible-believing church in our small rural Midwestern community.

I wanted to know the Bible, so I wanted to go to a Bible college. When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to visit a Bible college in Minnesota for a weekend, where an older girl from our church was a student. I was very excited, as I knew this was what I wanted for my future.

The visit was a disaster. My older friend and her friends, both guys and girls, had no interest in the Lord. Their behavior in class was disrespectful; their behavior in the dorm and at work ranged from ungodly to criminal. I was heartbroken. I tried to make good decisions. I wanted to please God. So I made a good decision. I decided never to go to a Bible college. I would go to a Not Christian College, where I expected people to act like that. I couldn’t bear to be hurt like that again.

My plan worked well. There were all kinds of people at the Not Christian College and I found places to fit in and found a small church to attend. But by summer, I was feeling spiritually lost and lonely. My parents had finally found a Bible-believing church, and, as I had no transportation of my own, I had to go with them, though I was tired of moving from church to church. The pastor and young people there kept talking about their nearby Bible college, which was not the one I had visited earlier. But I was going to stick with my plan. I was firmly resolved to ignore them. I would never go to Bible college.

So I went to summer church camp. I truly wanted some Bible knowledge. I’m pretty sure all the teachers knew about my resolution, which I had never told anyone, and they were all plotting against me, even though none of them knew me. In every class, every teacher, at least once that week, said, “If you want to know the will of God, you have to know the Word of God.”

I cried out to God in desperation. “God! You KNOW I want to know your will! And I know I don’t know your Word.” I went home from camp on Saturday, talked to our pastor on Monday, and was living in the dorm at Bible college on Thursday. I think I was at least as surprised as the Apostle Philip who was told to go to the desert road toward Gaza, performed a baptism, and suddenly “found himself at Azotus.” I loved everything about Bible college, every second of it, the whole time I was there. And it has profoundly affected my life.

That was not the first time nor the last that God has upended my plans and moved me in a totally unexpected direction. Not always has the change been happy. One of the most recent startling turns in my life took me on a hard road. Because I absolutely knew the Lord was leading (or pushing or dragging) me, I kept on, but I still wonder about the significance of it. Surely it was more important than is evident so far. After all, God had to put so much direct effort into it.

You have had your own turnarounds. Wonderful surprises. Disappointments. Fizzled plans. New developments.

As we read the stories of real people in the Bible, we realize that most of those participants never did see the significance of the happy, terrible or ordinary events in their lives. But we also see that God was relentlessly directing.

Bible contributor James, a rather practical fellow who has quite a bit to say about living a Godly life, advises, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring….  Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” (James 4:13-15). Well, of course. Centuries earlier, God had said, “A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9). Job said, to his wife, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10). 

If we can accept the changes, bad or good, as from His hand, we can learn and grow. Otherwise, when things go “wrong,” we may choose to be hurt, angry, or rebellious. When we have “good luck,” we may choose pride and idolatry.

We can spend all the time we wish drawing blueprints, filling in the daily planner and arranging our people, schedule and stuff. But we are not in charge. God is our immediate supervisor, the plant manager, and the company owner. Let us not just say, “If the Lord wills…” Let us desire it, pray it, live it.

--Lynda Shenefield