Is Your Life Planned?                                                                        1/23/49

 

Scripture:  Proverbs 3: 1-13

 

Text:  Proverbs 3: 6;  “In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.”

 

Some of us are easily overwhelmed by difficulties.  One of our recurring difficulties is that of growing up -- and of continuing the growing process throughout life.  This is noticeably true in the matter of our religious understanding.  I am repeatedly reminded of the tendency of some people to let the early ideas of childhood be their chief ideas in religion, whereas they have long since advanced beyond childhood in scientific and social knowledge and philosophy.

 

A childlike faith is beautiful, but childishness in religion, as in any other manifestation of life, is fraught with tragic consequence.  Perhaps you have seen these lines:

 

            I remember, I remember,

                        The fir trees dark and high;

            I used to think their slender tops

                        Were close against the sky;

            It was a childish ignorance,

                        But now ‘tis little joy

            To know I’m farther off from heaven

                        Than when I was a boy.

 

It isn’t a matter of spatial distance, but of maturity of understanding.  Of course the tall fir trees do reach to the sky!  The mature person simply understands, better than the child, that the sky extends farther up and down than he had earlier supposed.  Of course the man is no farther from heaven than when he was a boy!  In fact heaven can extend to the inmost recesses of his soul if he will but discover it.

 

It took Tolstoy many precious years to grow up spiritually.  Up to the time he was eighteen, he said his prayers daily.  Then he met in Paris an older brother of his whom he had not seen for some time.  They occupied the same room at night.  When bed time came, the older brother climbed into bed, while the younger knelt beside the bed to pray.  As he rose from his knees his older brother said in disdain, “You still do that?”  Those four little disdainful, one-syllable words were enough.  Tolstoy didn’t say his prayers again for twenty years.  He was no moral coward, but he let a little social pressure upset his spiritual growth for a long time.

 

A famous and influential minister and civic leader of the 19th century was Horace Bushnell.  His teaching and preaching put so powerful a stamp of influence on the religious and cultural life of new England that he is sometimes known as the founder of modern religious education.  A sermon of Bushnell’s which became particularly famous was one on “Every Man’s Life a Plan of God.”  In that sermon he declared, “God has a definite life-plan for every human person, girding him, visibly or invisibly, for some exact thing, which it will be the true significance and glory of his life to have accomplished.”

 

Would it change the outlook of our lives to be able to believe that?  I think it would.  Many people, however, do not think they can believe it.  And among them are some loving and sensitive souls.  They raise such questions as this question - very real and often disturbing: “How is it possible to square the thought of every man’s life being a plan of God with such things as the birth of deformed children, the inexpressible horror of a bombed city, the tragic injustice and blind suffering all around us?”  And they may remark that it seems that either God is not in control, or if he is, he is not what Jesus taught us to believe about him.  One of these sensitive souls has put his doubt thus: “Your ‘God’ is my devil!”

 

Such a remark is not to be lightly shrugged off or ignored.  Its doubt is very real.  The best way to deal with it is with all the maturity of judgment one can command.  Let us take time to look at Jesus’ teaching about God -- that God is a loving Father, able to accomplish all things, in obedience to whose will man can be healed and lifted to higher levels of living than he had ever dreamed.  But the same loving Father allowed the Son to go to the cross and be crucified to death.  It seems, however, that this final mortal experience of Jesus was not the evidence of failure of his life or faith, but only a greater evidence of the truth of his teaching.

 

Those who deny the truth of Jesus’ teaching seem to make of themselves spiritual orphans in the universe.  But that position is hardly tenable.  There is a good deal of evidence to support the belief that man is not an orphan.  It seems clear that man did not create himself.  It is also quite clear that his nature and existence are the result of a great many factors of heredity and environment which are essential aspects of total reality.  There is a marvelous interdependence and balance of everything including, of course, the existence of man and of those things which are essential to his life.

 

How then shall we think of God and of our relationship to him?  Jesus taught us to think of God as Father, the understanding, all-wise parent.  An earthly father does not and cannot control everything in the heredity and environment of his children.  If he did so, his children would not be free and responsible personalities.  In somewhat the same way, God does not control everything in man’s heredity and environment.  Yet he does have a plan, a divine purpose for your life and mine.  And it is the noblest endeavor of our lives to try to discover that purpose and fit our lives to it.  Of course we may ignore it and even disobey it, suffering the consequences therefore.  God has limited himself by giving us freedom of choice, just as a wise earthly parent entrusts the matter of choice more and more to his growing children in order to develop their mature abilities.  Our children need pay no attention to our wishes if we have no purpose for them.  But it is a wise son or daughter who takes into consideration, by his own choice, the mature judgment of parents.  And it is a blessed man or woman who seeks to discern and heed the will of God for his or her life.

 

God wants us to be responsible men and women, not marionettes or slaves.  Only in a world where there is responsible choice can there be moral character, faith, hope and love.  It is not true that God controls evil and suffering, visiting them in vengeance or punishment on those who displease him and withdrawing them from those whom he favors.  Evil is contrary to God’s will and results from denial of that will.  But God’s plan for your life works without interfering with suffering and without interfering in the consequence of evil or wrongdoing.

 

Some time ago, a popular magazine published an article which illuminates the nature of God’s providence.  The story is told by a mother whose son was crippled at the age of 5 years.  She and her husband wanted a full and valuable life for their son.  But how could this be?  For one thing, they realized and told each other that the boy must learn to give all he could to the world, rather than taking all that people rushed to hand him.  It was hard in purpose, and difficult to accomplish.  First there was the struggle to preserve his life.  There were two surgical operations that seemed fruitless.  Then the little fellow didn’t want to study and so there were occasions when he got spanked.  Later on his courageous parents encouraged him to play baseball and even to try football.  All along, there were painful treatments which had to be endured.

 

When the boy was in high school, a fellow student who came from a home of poverty fell ill and needed a blood transfusion.  These parents suggested to their crippled son that he might give some of his blood, and he did.  Later another daring operation seemed indicated, and he underwent it.  At the time his mother was writing the article, he was a college student preparing to be an orthopedic surgeon!

 

These wise and kind parents were not able by their wisdom to prevent the striking of polio when their son was 5 years old.  And their kindness did not make them shirk the duty to urge him ahead to his best.  They could not control certain harmful influences on him as he grew up through the years.  Nevertheless they had a great plan and purpose for him and a great love for him.  In some such fashion as this God moves about the accomplishment of his plans and purposes for us, disciplining us, appealing to conscience and ambition and the righteousness latent within us.

 

Look then, not for the counsels of despair but of hope!  I once married two people who established their home under extraordinarily difficult and discouraging circumstances.  The groom was in permanent poor health, though his illness was not transmissible.  One doctor said that he might live a matter of six days, or six months or even perhaps six years.  I made sure that the bride knew this.  She accepted it wholly, but with the hope that with care, it might be much longer.

 

They had the good fortune to receive encouraging advice from another physician who especially counseled the bride not to do too much caring for her husband, but to expect him to care also for her.  This he did, when she became a mother a year later.  Encouraged by her and by the physician, he went on to graduate work in university, became a valuable college teacher in his field and, in spite of very great physical difficulty, rendered valuable service to the government of the USA during the recent war.

 

Resigned to illness as an inescapable evil, he would have been a hopeless and probably short-lived invalid.  Encouraged to believe that there was a divine purpose for his life that would enable him to live fruitfully in spite of handicap, he achieved a degree of usefulness and satisfying accomplishment that outstrips most persons of sound physical health.

 

The truly Christian concept of divine preordinance is not one of supernatural manipulations and schemings.  Rather it is the profound and wonderful truth of the great love and purposeful fatherhood of God.  God wants us to do something for him and for our fellow men which only we can do.  If we fail, God’s purpose is thwarted to that degree.  If we find and do his will, that divine plan and purpose succeeds to that degree.  “In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths.”  [Proverbs 3: 6]. 

 

The biggest thing that we mortal parents may do for our children is to teach them in effect: “God has a purpose for your life, and there are ways you can discover and accomplish that purpose.”  The real secret of life for them, and for all of us, lies in this discovery.

 

Discovering and fulfilling God’s plan for our lives, there can be no thought of suicide or of escape drinking or other forms of cowardly surrender.  It was Paul’s faith in God’s purpose for him that nerved him for great living so that he could say simply, “I know whom I have believed.”  [II Timothy 1: 12].  “I am persuaded that neither life nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”  [Romans 8: 38-39].

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, January 23, 1949.