God's Plan For Us

[Neil_Anthony]

People will say not to fear because God has a plan for you.

But if God had a plan for me, wouldn’t I have ruined the plan the first time I sinned? And once I’m off the plan, does God have a back-up plan for me? A back-up plan for the prodigal son who messed up the first plan? And more and more backup plans for each time I don’t do exactly what the plan called for?

I haven’t even seen the plan, I must be constantly not following it?

 

[Ted_in_Charlott]

As I stumble through my life, I find myself on plan / off plan / on plan / off plan. Sometimes I am more interested in my plan than God’s.

I wonder sometimes if God allows me to stumble off plan in order to appreciate on plan better. Look at the greatest of the great saints: David, Peter, Samson. They struggled, they fell, they came back. That gives me comfort, knowing these greats stumbled.

I see my puppy learning to walk on a leash the same way. He does better than he did yesterday. He knows what I want, but still needs to stop and smell the mailbox or listen to the dog bark. I could snap the leash, but instead I give it a gentle tug, for he is still little. The plan sometimes is less important (walking) than just doing it gently.

Maybe God’s infinite knowledge takes all this into account, plan and destiny, choice and fate. I think, from my own experience, that it is much more pleasurable when my puppy comes to me when I call him than when I have to go get him. So when we do God’s will, how happy could He be?

 

[bookgirl32]

As I stumble through my life, I find myself on plan / off plan / on plan / off plan. Sometimes I am more interested in my plan than God’s.

I wonder sometimes if God allows me to stumble off plan in order to appreciate on plan better. Look at the greatest of the great saints: David, Peter, Samson. They struggled, they fell, they came back. That gives me comfort, knowing these greats stumbled.

I see my puppy learning to walk on a leash the same way. He does better than he did yesterday. He knows what I want, but still needs to stop and smell the mailbox or listen to the dog bark. I could snap the leash, but instead I give it a gentle tug, for he is still little. The plan sometimes is less important (walking) than just doing it gently.

Maybe God’s infinite knowledge takes all this into account, plan and destiny, choice and fate. I think, from my own experience, that it is much more pleasurable when my puppy comes to me when I call him than when I have to go get him. So when we do God’s will, how happy could He be?

I like that! I think that God is in control of God’s plan. So can He take something we did wrong to His original plan and simply make it part of it, and make it work somehow for the good of the plan? sure!!

 

[Neil_Anthony]

I like that! I think that God is in control of God’s plan. So can He take something we did wrong to His original plan and simply make it part of it, and make it work somehow for the good of the plan? sure!!

I’m glad its a flexible plan. When people told me there was a plan I was worried that one wrong turn and I’d be lost forever!

 

[Neil_Anthony]

As I stumble through my life, I find myself on plan / off plan / on plan / off plan. Sometimes I am more interested in my plan than God’s.

So you can get off the plan and back on? But that wasn’t part of the plan…

Oh well, I’m glad its not like a highly defined plan where one mistake and its ruined.

 

[LumberGumRubber]

I’m not so sure of the plan but rather notice what God has done / accomplished / provided in the Person of His Son.

“The Son of Man is come to seek and to SAVE that which was lost” … Lk 19:10

"This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to SAVE sinners … " 1Timothy 1:15

“Who will have all men to be SAVED, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” 1Timothy 2:4

“Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time” 1Timothy 2:6

Yea, the Lord’s Christ came into the world to provide a means by which guilty sinners could be saved. The means by which a thrice holy God could do so has been accomplished at Calvary.

But … this does not automatically save anyone. To get in on the good of what the Redeemer has provided, one will have to forsake his / her sins / preconceived ideas as to how to escape damnation for their sins (repentance i.e. Acts 17:30 “But now God commandeth all men everywhere to repent” … and take their faith (Edited) and place it all in the Person & work of the Lord Jesus.

(Edited) It is God Who saves and saves only those who genuinely repent of sin(s) and rest their eternal soul’s salvation on the Christ of God, i.e. Jn 3:16-18.

This will be somewhat for to consider …

(For all who cannot see this posting, please do advise me immediately)

 

[promethius95945]

People will say not to fear because God has a plan for you.

But if God had a plan for me, wouldn’t I have ruined the plan the first time I sinned? And once I’m off the plan, does God have a back-up plan for me? A back-up plan for the prodigal son who messed up the first plan? And more and more backup plans for each time I don’t do exactly what the plan called for?

I haven’t even seen the plan, I must be constantly not following it?

I don’t agree, actually. A plan includes the temporal idea of a future… which imposes physical constraints on God, then. Instead, God is eternal (not everlasting), and therefore is not subject to the constraints of time. What I’m saying is that God does not recognize the difference between past, present, and future. ALL events, from the beginning of the universe to it’s final end, occur in an eternal “NOW” for God. (imagine if you could see your own life, from birth to death, occuring all at once with everything else that has ever occured in the universe).

Part of this is spiritual mystery, we temporally bound creatures can never understand the perspective of an eternal being who is not constrained by any time at all. Does God have a LITERAL plan, such that He sees a future and desires to move things towards it? No, not really, because then as you say His plan could fail with the subjects of fallible followers. God’s “plan” is different… it’s more like saying a plan as in a blueprint… it’s done, it’s all already on the page, and the architect gets to look at the whole design all at once without hoping for some pencilled in line just to fall in place on a whim.

 

[rwoehmke]

Oh well, I’m glad its not like a highly defined plan where one mistake and its ruined.

In my opinion that is where people get hung up. They imagine that God’s plan for them or anyone else is extremely detailed and any variation is “off plan.” I am in full agreement that God has a plan for each one of us and that is that we love him and serve him in this world and live in a way that we can be happy with him in heaven. Many of the details, however lie under our own initiative with God standing by to encourage and help us particularly over the rough spots. Sometimes we just have to, as people in AA say, “Let go and let God.” Free will is given to us, not just to chose between good and evil, but to be able to chose between the goods as well. Otherwise, wouldn’t we be like puppets on a string?

 

[Neil_Anthony]

In my opinion that is where people get hung up. They imagine that God’s plan for them or anyone else is extremely detailed and any variation is “off plan.” I am in full agreement that God has a plan for each one of us and that is that we love him and serve him in this world and live in a way that we can be happy with him in heaven. Many of the details, however lie under our own initiative with God standing by to encourage and help us particularly over the rough spots. Sometimes we just have to, as people in AA say, “Let go and let God.” Free will is given to us, not just to chose between good and evil, but to be able to chose between the goods as well. Otherwise, wouldn’t we be like puppets on a string?

Thank you.
A more specific example of this advice is that some people have told me that God has a plan for me and that there is a special woman out there who God has selected for me and I’m going to meet her one day and we’ll live happily ever after. Which I think must be total BS because then if I picked some other woman or decided to join a monastery, I would be breaking God’s plan.

 

[jjformica]

God’s plan for all humanity is to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him, in this world and in the next. How we attain that goal can be done in various ways. In other words, God’s plan for us isn’t one straight path from which we can never deviate. If we stray from the path (by sinning), God provides detours for us.

God is not restricted by our actions. He can work outside of the sacraments to give grace, so therefore, He can work outside of our actions to get us to salvation.

All things are possible with God.

 

[rwoehmke]

Thank you.
A more specific example of this advice is that some people have told me that God has a plan for me and that there is a special woman out there who God has selected for me and I’m going to meet her one day and we’ll live happily ever after. Which I think must be total BS because then if I picked some other woman or decided to join a monastery, I would be breaking God’s plan.

That notion of one woman made just for me is romantic nonsense. I was never a ladie’s man, but probably could have married any one of two or three women in my younger years and knowing them as well as I did, I amk confident we would have been able to make a go of it. We shared the same Faith, were educated in Catholic Colleges, when they were still Catholic, and shared many of the same goals for the future. I chose the Irish one which puzzled my German father. Probably chose is not quite the right word, but circumstances were just right at that moment in time, we really liked each other, and it happened. Had circumstances been just right earlier I might have married a different woman and still have lived happy. There have been rough spots but we are counting years together in the high forties and God willing will make fifty and maybe a few more. My mother in law used to tell her five daughters not to despair, men were like buses; another would come along. All five daughters married, have had families, and had some good and bad years. Only the youngest who married an older guy(ten years older0 has lost her husband to a heart attack while he was fishing early one morning.