Your Will Be Done

We know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

“My alarm didn’t go off this morning! I am so, so sorry—can we reschedule our coffee date?”

My phone buzzed with her text just as I was reaching for my car keys. Living three hours apart, we’d planned this get-together months ago, intending to meet at a coffee shop roughly equidistant to our respective homes. My friend typically doesn’t run late, and she’s usually up long before her morning alarm has a chance to sound, so this was both unexpected and highly unusual.

Instead of feeling frustration or anger at the change in plans, I assured her that we could reschedule, including her in a text prayer thanking God for his divine ordering of my day (and hers).

As we later sat down together at our rescheduled meeting, we talked about how we each pray for God’s will over our days and in our lives. When we ask for his will to be done, we shouldn’t be upset when he upends our agenda. He may have been diverting us from an accident. He may have been aligning a divine appointment with someone whose path would cross ours. Or not—maybe our sudden change of plans was simply a result of living life on an imperfect earth. We don’t know—and won’t know until we are face-to-face with Jesus—all the times we’ve encountered divine interference as we’ve gone about our daily routines.

Because of this, I’ve embraced viewing changed plans through a lens of gratitude—even when the really fun stuff goes awry—thanking God for answering my prayer to order my steps, my day, and my interactions. After all, he sees the big picture with perfect clarity when we only see glimpses of the larger plan. His ways are always better than our own, even when it doesn’t feel like that at the moment.

Julie

Today’s Act of Gratitude

When plans change, take a deep breath and thank God—out loud when possible—for his faithfulness in ordering your steps, asking him to reveal his plan for the day so that you might obediently accomplish his will through the changed circumstances.