New Evangelizers Post: Plans of Man, Plans of God

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com

Christmas is upon us.  And there is no better time to remember how wonderfully unexpected it all was.

To be sure, the Israelites were desperately waiting and expecting the coming of the Messiah.  But God has a funny way of playing with our expectations and giving us something we never thought we wanted.  He gives us something better than what we want.

This is important for all of us to remember.  God tells us, “My thoughts are not your thoughts.  My ways are not your ways.” (Is 55:8)  And thank goodness for that!

One of the major problems of man and his plans is that we tend to think of ourselves as wiser than we are.  We see this especially in children.  They think that eating their entire stock of Halloween candy in one sitting or putting Dora the Explorer trading cards into the Blu-Ray player are excellent ideas.  We wag our fingers and try to tell them how foolish they are.

I wonder if that’s how God feels about us.

I mean, we feel older and wiser as we progress through the years.  And certainly we hope that we have more wisdom than we did when we were young.  But our problem occurs when we think that we are wiser than God.

Of course most of us would not come right out and say this.  But how often do we give God advice? 

“God, why don’t you do…” and we fill in the blank with whatever our taste demands.  I am not here referring to petitionary prayer, which is a necessary part of the faith.  But rather I am talking about that sincere belief we have that if everything just happened the way we wanted it to, life would be great.

And when this thing doesn’t happen, often we are disappointed and ask God why?  Why didn’t He take my advice?  Why didn’t He listen to me?

But all of this comes down to a very simple question: Does God know what He is doing?

You can read the entire article here.