God has a plan you can trust
October 9-13, 2023 | Always Peachy Devotionals | Be Encouraged! Week 2
What’s your favorite pumpkin dessert?
October is a season where I just want to bake all the things. They don’t all have to have pumpkin in them. Just most of them.
There’s something about the cooler weather that just makes me want to live in the kitchen and make tasty cinnamon flavored treats and wear big chunky sweaters and drink chai tea all day long. I love fall so much!
I’ve been trying out some new recipes this year too, although I still stick with my old standbys. Once you find a recipe you can trust, it’s usually not a good idea to stray too far away from it.
Some recipes aren’t super trustworthy. I’ve got a pumpkin pie recipe I found ages ago, and since I found it, it has become my go-to pumpkin pie. But the baking instructions are wrong. I learned through trial and error how to fix it, and I’ve made my own special adjustments over the years. So now it’s perfect and reliable, but if I hadn’t known what I was doing when I first tried it, that pie would have been a disaster.
Sometimes you have to test recipes before you know you can trust them. Otherwise you’ll spend a lot of time and a lot of expensive food items only to end up with something you have to throw away.
Maybe that’s a silly example, but when it comes to following God’s plans instead of my own, I always know I can trust God more than I can trust myself. I mean, that’s sort of an obvious statement perhaps. He knows everything. He knows me better than I know myself. He knows what’s coming in front of me, so of course I can rely on where He leads me—because He’s good!
But trusting God’s plan is a lot easier to say than it is to do. Taking action on something you say you believe is more difficult than people think. Talk is cheap, after all.
And that’s not to say you ought to test God’s plan. It’s also not to say you should make adjustments to God’s plan either. LOL, that’s where my pie analogy really breaks down.
The point is that God’s plan is trustworthy already. Because He’s God, we can trust the direction that He is leading us, no matter if it makes sense to us right now or not.
So for this second week of encouragement, we are going to talk about how God’s plan is trustworthy and why it’s so important to remember that God’s plans are superior to ours.
Oct 9 - God has a purpose for me (Psalm 138:8)
Oct 10 - God’s plan is better (Hebrews 11:40)
Oct 11 - No one can stop God’s plan (Isaiah 14:27)
Oct 12 - God’s plan leads to life (2 Peter 3:9)
Oct 13 - God has work for me to do (Ephesians 2:10)
It’s encouraging to me to be reminded that God is in control. One of the best things I was told years ago is that I’m not powerful enough to mess up God’s plans, and I’ve clung to that many times. And so far it’s proven to be true, that no matter how badly off course I get, God can still use me in His plan.
But the truth is, we all have a choice of whether we’re going to follow God’s plan or our own plans. And there have been plenty of times I’ve opted to go my own way instead of His, and I’ve always regretted it.
When you decide to walk your own path, one of the things you’ll realize very quickly is that you don’t have the same peace you do when you’re following God. If you’re relying on yourself to be a source of peace for your life, you’ll never find it. Peace isn’t something we find for ourselves; peace is something God gives us when our lives are in line with His Word.
So our verse for this week is Isaiah 26:3.
Decide to follow Jesus. Choose to walk the path that He has given you. God’s plan is better than what you have in mind, and if you give Him a chance, He will show you.
Praying for all of you this week.
Hugs,
Amy
Remember! These Sunday intro emails are free, but if you want the actual daily devotions, you need to subscribe: