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Plans aborted - begin again

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing. (Oscar Wilde)

Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord! Give a joyous shout in honor of the Rock of our salvation! Come before him with thankful hearts. Let us sing him psalms of praise. For the Lord is a great God, the great King of all gods. He controls the formation of the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains; all are his. He made the sea and formed the land; they too are his. Come, kneel before the Lord our Maker, for he is our God. We are his sheep, and he is our Shepherd. Oh, that you would hear him calling you today and come to him! (Psalm 95:1-7)

To truly 'experience' God, we have to come to him. We have to abandon our own pursuits in pursuit of him. There is much to be said about abandonment, but suffice it to say, we have to lay down if we are ever to pick up, give away if we are to get back, let go if we are to ever be held again. Life requires experience - it is riddled from birth to death with a plethora of experiences - some good, others pretty awesome. We find that how we view the experience determines how we will view the outcome.

God is in control of our lives - since he controls the formation of the depths of the earth and the mightiest of mountains, how can we argue his plan for our lives? We must experience his plan fully - meaning we might just have to lay down our own plans in order to fully be engulfed in his. Hard task, I know, but when undertaken fully, we are overtaken fully in his love, grace, power, and most importantly - his peace. 

If you have ever been pursuing a plan that didn't give you much peace, you label the things you are experiencing as 'hard', 'heartbreaking', 'tragic', or even 'life threatening'. Pursue the plan God has for your life and you might just find what has been breaking your heart wasn't all that worthy of your pursuit in the first place. Experience teaches us things - at least, that is what is supposed to happen. We are to take the good and the bad, learn from those things, and hopefully allow a change of plans as warranted.

To fully be 'within' God's plans for our lives, we have to first bring those plans to him. There will be times when he tells us our plans are bit flawed, requiring a certain adjustment. Embrace that warning and you find the course easy. Reject those adjustments and you will be in the midst of a 'hard lesson'. Experience isn't everything, but when we learn from it, we are doing well. When we reject God's instructions, we can count on a lesson or two to get us back into his presence to seek his plans once again! Just sayin!
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