When God Interrupts Your Plans

Article by Christina Fox

We were recently on a vacation when God interrupted my plans. My family and I had traveled hundreds of miles to stay at a hotel on the beach. I had made arrangements to spend one day visiting with friends. But then, in the middle of the night, the night before my scheduled day out, one of my kids woke up sick. I spent the whole next day stuck inside, staring out the hotel window at the long stretch of beach that was just outside of my reach.

An Interrupted Life

My life is filled with interruptions, inconveniences, frustrations, and unexpected events. Things break. Accidents happen. The phone rings just as I climb into bed. Traffic makes me late. Just when we don’t need another added expense, an appliance breaks. Unexpected illnesses change my carefully crafted plans. I could go on and on. You probably could too.

The problem is, I usually handle these interruptions to my life poorly. I react with frustration and anger. Like a young child, I want to stomp my feet and say, “It’s not fair!” I blame others for inconveniencing me. I’ll even throw my own pity parties.

“Small frustrations and interruptions give us opportunities to rely on God.”

Though these interruptions are unexpected and catch me off guard, they do not catch God off guard. They are not random, meaningless events. In fact, these interruptions are divinely placed in my path for a reason. God uses these interruptions to change me to be more like Christ.

Slow traffic, a sick child, or a costly home repair may not seem like important tools in our sanctification, but they are. We often overlook these interruptions and inconveniences and instead expect God to work in our lives through huge life-changing circumstances. But the reality is, we often won’t have major events in our life that cause us to trust God and obey him in some deeply profound way. We won’t be called to build an ark or take an only child up Mount Moriah. Rather, it’s in these small frustrations and interruptions, the little things in our life, where we are given opportunities to rely on God, to obey him, and to bring him glory.

Paul Tripp puts it like this:

You and I don’t live in a series of big, dramatic moments. We don’t careen from big decision to big decision. We all live in an endless series of little moments. The character of a life isn’t set in ten big moments. The character of a life is set in ten thousand little moments of everyday life. It’s the themes of struggles that emerge from those little moments that reveal what’s really going on in our hearts. (Whiter Than Snow, 21)

Interruptions of Grace

These ten thousand little moments come in the form of our children asking us to play a game with them when we are tied up with something else. They are moments like when we get stuck behind a school bus when we’re already late to an appointment, or when we have a flat tire on the way to work. They are in all those moments all throughout the day when things don’t go our way, our plans fail, and our life is interrupted.

It’s these moments where the rubber meets the road — where our faith is stretched and we look down to see whether we are standing on rock or sand. Do we really believe that God is in control of all the details of our life? Do we really believe that his grace is sufficient to get us through the day? Do we really believe that the gospel of Christ is powerful enough not only to save us for eternity, but also to sustain and strengthen us in the midst of life’s interruptions? Do we really believe that Christ is enough to satisfy all the deepest needs of our heart?

These interruptions are acts of God’s grace. They force us to work through these questions. They make us face our sin. They are God’s way of taking off our blinders and making us see that we need the gospel in every moment of the day. They are a light that shines on the darkest recesses of our heart, revealing the truth of what’s really there — the sins and idols that we’ve pushed off into the corner, thinking that if we can’t see them, they must not exist.

The Reminder We Need

These interruptions remind us that we don’t have life figured out and that we can’t do it on our own. They are like the Shepherd’s rod, pulling us back from our wandering ways, back to our Great Shepherd. We need these interruptions. Like nothing else, they push us to the cross of Christ where we must remember the gospel and receive his grace and forgiveness.

“Christ cares more about our transformation than about our daily comfort.”

It’s hard to see all the little frustrating events and interruptions in our day as divinely placed opportunities to grow in grace, but they are. And seeing them as such helps us take our eyes off ourselves and put them on Christ, who cares more about our transformation than about our daily comfort. Rather than giving us a life of ease, he interrupts our lives with grace and shows us what we need most of all: himself.

How about you? Is your life filled with interruptions? Do you see God’s hand at work in them?

Christina Fox (@christinarfox) writes for a number of Christian ministries and publications including True Woman, ERLC, and The Gospel Coalition. She is the author of Closer Than a Sister: How Union with Christ helps Friendships to Flourish. You can find her at www.christinafox.com and on Facebook.

Article originally posted at:  https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/when-god-interrupts-your-plans

Do Not Consume One Another

Article by Howard Eyrich

Galatians 5:15 "Do not consume one another".

The same Scriptures that provide us with the positive protocols about which we have written also delineates five practices that we should avoid in order to glorify God in our marriages and enhance a joyful relationship.

In this essay we will consider the protocol found in Galatians 5:15. It says this: “Do not consume one another.”  Let me suggest six ways that couples typical say or do that contributes to consuming one another. The first one is angry outbursts. Angry outbursts have a deleterious impact in several ways. They provoke anger in your mate. The anger may be a defensive anger, an anger of disgust or a retaliatory anger.  For example, Jim and Sally sat in the counselor’s office attempting to provide their counselor an understanding of how their marriage demise had spiraled. As Jim was reporting an incident for the sake of illustration, Sally responded with defensive anger. Immediately Jim shut down and withdrew.  Angry outbursts diminish affection, cooperation and hope that things can ever change.

A second way we consume one another is by an attitude of demandingness. Demandingness is often the outgrowth of unmet expectations. It is not unusual to hear in the counseling office an accusation that sounds something like this. “You are supposed to be the provider for this family (which often means I expect you to enable us to live at the level of our peers) and I am not to put up with your feeble attempts.” Or, a husband may say, “I thought when I married you that you were supposed to be available for my sexual needs. I did not see where the Bible limits that to once a week and if we are going to make it you will have to get with the program.” Now these illustrations may be simplified and overstated, but they are examples (and will be heard at times in counseling).

A third way of consuming one another is by sheer selfishness. Yes, demandingness is a form of selfishness, but this is more pervasive. What is in view here is a self-centeredness that touches all of life. Sometimes this is a malady of which the individual is totally unaware. For example, a person who was raised with the proverbial “silver spoon” in the mouth may well develop a self-centeredness that not only impacts the mate directly, but also impacts every other relationship. This person’s mate finds him/herself energy drained in attempts to manage the collateral damage with the children, the Sunday School class and even with his/her friends. The mate is consumed in the process.

Yet another practice that is consuming is sulking. The mate of a sulker finds him/herself consumed with the task of figuring out what is generating the displeasure of the mate this time. Often these attempts elicit some the anger response discussed above further exasperating the consuming of the mate.

No one appreciates being manipulated. But when manipulation is characteristic of a mate, it becomes consuming. If this trait is a character trait, it will often go unnoticed in courtship, but once engaged in living intimately it will surface. I once had a young couple in counseling where this is exactly what happened. The wife said, “If I had caught on to this when we were dating I would have broken the relationship. It takes all my effort to be alert to your tricks.

Lastly, we can consume one another by distrusting. In a relationship in which trust is absent, mates find themselves consumed with being self-protective. If I am not trustworthy, my mate is consumed by me. Her/his conscious energy is poured into the action of discernment.

So, when Paul writes, “Do not consume one another”, we once again have instruction from the hand of God as to how to live within the church and especially within the marriage in a manner that contributes to our happiness as an outgrowth of glorifying God.

Mercy for Today

Devotional by John Piper, Solid Joy Devotionals

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.(Lamentations 3:22–23)

God’s mercies are new every morning because each day only has enough mercy in it for that day. God appoints every day’s troubles. And God appoints every day’s mercies. In the life of his children, they are perfectly appointed. Jesus said, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34). Every day has its own trouble. Every day has its own mercies. Each is new every morning.

But we often tend to despair when we think that we may have to bear tomorrow’s load on today’s resources. God wants us to know: We won’t. Today’s mercies are for today’s troubles. Tomorrow’s mercies are for tomorrow’s troubles.

Sometimes we wonder if we will have the mercy to stand in terrible testing. Yes, we will. Peter says, “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1 Peter 4:14). When the reviling comes, the Spirit of glory comes. It happened for Stephen as he was being stoned. It will happen for you. When the Spirit and the glory are needed, they will come.

The manna in the wilderness was given one day at a time. There was no storing up. That is the way we must depend on God’s mercy. You do not receive today the strength to bear tomorrow’s burdens. You are given mercies today for today’s troubles.

Tomorrow the mercies will be new. “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:9).

Models for Combating Discouragement

Devotional by John Piper, Part of Solid Joys Devotionals

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:26)

Literally the verb is simply fail, not “may fail.” This God-besotted psalmist, Asaph, says, “My flesh and my heart fail!” I am despondent! I am discouraged! But then immediately he fires a broadside against his despondency: “But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

The psalmist does not yield to discouragement. He battles unbelief with counterattack.

In essence, he says, “In myself I feel very weak and helpless and unable to cope. My body is shot, and my heart is almost dead. But whatever the reason for this despondency, I will not yield. I will trust God and not myself. He is my strength and my portion.”

The Bible is replete with instances of saints struggling with sunken spirits. Psalm 19:7 says, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.” This is a clear admission that the soul of the saint sometimes needs to be revived. And if it needs to be revived, in a sense it was “dead.” That’s the way it felt.

David says the same thing in Psalm 23:2–3, “He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.” The soul of the “man after [God’s] own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14) needs to be restored. It was dying of thirst and ready to fall exhausted, but God led the soul to water and gave it life again.

God has put these testimonies in the Bible so that we might use them to fight the unbelief of despondency. And we fight with the blast of faith in God’s promises: “God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” We preach that to ourselves. And we thrust it into Satan’s face. And we believe it.