Tag: Romans

When God Wrecks Your Plans

Many are the plans in the mind of a man,
    but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

Proverbs 19:21

“How many of you know what it’s like to have God wreck your plans?”

I asked this question while preaching a couple of weeks ago. Several hands were raised, and even more smiled and nodded. This is one of those nearly universal Christian experiences. Our lives rarely go exactly the way we thought they would, and we find ourselves wrestling with God for answers–answers that He doesn’t always seem eager to give.

Let’s be honest: sometimes God wrecks our plans because we never included Him in the first place. Our plans were motivated by selfish ambition, foolish desires, or some other toxic source. Sometimes our faithful Father lovingly disrupts our lives in order to expose our idols and offer us an opportunity to repent. Hopefully we get the message and start over with godly priorities.

But this is not always the case. God reserves the right to do as He pleases, even with our best intentions. I can think of no better example than Paul’s itinerary, found in Romans 15.

I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while. At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints.

Romans 15:24-25

Paul had been preaching for around 25 years by the time he wrote Romans. He had planted churches in several of the urban centers on the eastern side of the Roman Empire. Paul now had his sights on Spain, the western edge of the Roman Empire.

His plan was to stop by Jerusalem to bring financial aid to the believers there (money he had collected from other churches). From there he would pass through Rome and spend some time with the church there before heading to Spain.

That was Paul’s plan. It was prayerfully created and energized by Paul’s ambition to preach Christ where His name had never been heard (Romans 15:20-21).

But God shipwrecked Paul’s plan–literally. He encountered hostile opposition in Jerusalem and was placed in Roman custody for his own protection. He appealed his case to Caesar before the Roman authorities. They granted his request and arranged for a sailboat to take him to Rome. The boat encountered a storm strong enough to crash it upon a reef. Paul and his fellow prisoners swam for their lives or rode planks to the shores of Malta.

Paul eventually made it to Rome, but his stay was not brief. He spent two years under house arrest, preaching and teaching those who came to visit him.

The events I’ve just described (recorded in Acts 21-28) were clearly not what Paul had in mind.

We don’t know, in fact, if Paul ever made it to Spain as he had planned. Here’s what we do know: Paul wrote the “prison letters” during this time of house arrest in Rome. These letters are recorded in our New Testament: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. These scriptures have blessed and instructed millions of believers–far beyond the geographical borders of Spain and long after the Roman Empire had fallen. God, as always, knew exactly what He was doing with His trusted servant.

This quote comes to mind:

God places His saints where they will bring the most glory to Him, and we are totally incapable of judging where that may be.

-Oswald Chambers

Lord, teach us to trust in Your greater purpose–even when this requires You to change, disrupt, or even destroy our plans.

The war against the sinful nature

Paul candidly described the battle he faced with his own sinful nature in Romans 7:14-25.* God had gloriously transformed him from an enemy of Christ to an Apostle of Christ. He had been preaching the gospel for about 25 years by the time he wrote the Book of Romans. But he realized that evil would always be a familiar adversary in this earthly life:

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Romans 7:21-23

Our relationship with Christ has permanently altered our relationship with sin–it no longer rules our lives. We are dead to sin (Romans 6:11). We have been set free from its power in order to serve a New Master with a glorious, new purpose (Romans 6:22).

But our old, sinful nature is like a deposed dictator who wishes to retake power and will seek every opportunity to do so.

This conflict I have described is part of a process known as sanctification--becoming more like Christ. It is a lifelong process. We should be growing and experiencing victories in our war against sin. But we never reach sinless perfection in this life. The closer we get to God, in fact, the more aware we become of the sin in our lives that has yet to be defeated.

Why bother, then, if the struggle never ends? This illustration came to mind:

We’ve all had the experience of turning the kitchen light on the kitchen light to find an unwanted, six-legged animal crawling along the floor or counter. I’m talking about cockroaches, of course.

The disgusting little critter usually evokes an immediate response–we either reach for the nearest can of insecticide or try to give it an old-fashioned stomp. We also know there’s bound to be more of them in hiding, so we take steps to get rid of them, too (cleaning up food crumbs, putting out poison baits or traps, etc.). We declare war on the invasive species.

What we don’t do is accept the pests’ presence as just “the way things are.” We don’t act as though they have the right to cohabitate with us and share our food. We know we’ll probably be at war with creepy crawlers our whole lives, yet the thought of allowing them to multiply and take over is never an option.

Believer, take heart in your battle with sin! Like Paul, you will experience both victories and failures as you seek to please God and die to yourself. But you must never live as though sin has some rightful place in your life.

*Scholars, theologians, and commentators have debated the meaning of Romans 7:14-25 for centuries. Some argue that this section describes the experience of an unbeliever–someone who doesn’t know the Lord. I believe Paul is describing the universal Christian experience of struggling with sin. I believe even those who disagree with my interpretation would acknowledge the believer’s responsibility to resist sin and the ongoing battle with the sinful nature (1st Corinthians 10:13, Galatians 5:16-18 and Ephesians 4:22-24 are a few other texts that come to mind).