Winning a Losing Argument With God

Do you ever have a plan for how things should go? I do. Every day I wake up with this mental image of how I see the day going. When I go grocery shopping I know exactly the order I will scour the store. When I go to church, I know the general area where I’ll sit. When I go to a restaurant where I’m a regular, I get the same thing every time.

I like knowing the general list of what I’m going to be doing on a particular day, but it doesn’t always work that way. Recently, my plans have been disrupted by God a lot. And that’s a good thing.

Halfway through May, I had an idea for a new series that I want to do all about the book of Nehemiah. Because it’s one of my favorite books of the Bible, I want to dig into the truths contained within it for 30 days. I believe there’s such wisdom to be found in this book and I’m excited to dialogue with you about it. And, because it’s one of those projects that’s all about God, I figured that he’d be on board, right?

Wrong.

While I’m still planning on doing the series sometime, I’m not doing it this month. Instead, I’m going to be sharing things I wasn’t planning on sharing on here. I wanted to use every post you’ll see on here as guest posts on other people’s blogs to grow my following and readership. It’s a pretty good marketing strategy, but it wasn’t God’s strategy.

Every time I sat down to write about Nehemiah, I heard him say “Share what you’ve been learning.”

So, after about a week of arguing with the Lord, I finally decided to be obedient. But this little dance I’ve been doing with him has led me to an interesting thought: why do we argue with God?

Seriously! It’s so silly! And yet I do it all the time!

I’m consistently convinced that I know better. I tend to subconsciously believe that his way of doing things isn’t as good as my way of doing things. But in this season, he continues to bring me back to this one particular verse that I’m having to accept and believe by faith:

““For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV)

So, in the end, I’m choosing to be obedient with the content of my June blog posts even though I still prefer my plan over God’s. I’m trusting that these verses in Isaiah are true. I’m believing that his direction is so much better than my own direction and I’m choosing to submit to his plans.

Are there any areas that you need to submit to God?

Or are there parts of your life where you think you’re smarter than God?

I encourage you to surrender those areas to God today and take a little baby step of trust. After all, God is our Father and is infinitely wise and completely trustworthy! 

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Want to learn more about the trustworthy character of God? Check out His Story!