Are you the Great I Will…or aren’t You?

Them’s fightin’ words…and I aimed them at God.

You see, for a few years now, I’ve been badgering the Lord about my personal Purpose-Driven Life. I read that best-selling book, and I agree. My life has a purpose. God has a plan for me. A plan to prosper and not harm. A plan to give me hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11).

Agreed. God has a plan. I’m here for a purpose.

SO WHAT THE HECK IS IT?

Therefore, like a kid asking repeatedly for ice cream, or a sleepover, or a new bike, I’ve been tugging at The Master’s cloak, asking, asking, asking….

Show me the plan for my life.

Let me know what the purpose is.

What work should I be doing?

And as I badger, I hear in my Spirit the answer….

“I Will.”

Always the same... “I Will.”

Now, I’m familiar with the Old Testament, where Moses asks God His name, and God replies, “I Am.” But “I Will”? This is a new one. Yet I always hear the same answer, “I Will.” And it surprises me. It surprises me because I imagined I was asking a rhetorical question. I didn’t expect an answer. And it shocks me because I don’t understand it.

I Will. I Will.

What does this mean? Am I making the whole thing up? I don’t think so.

Right away, I wonder if there's a Scriptural basis for calling the Lord “I Will.” As I reflect, the Scripture “I Will never leave you or forsake you” comes to mind. But is there more? How do I know it’s God’s voice? That it's Him shutting me up, telling me He’ll take care of all my questions, in due time? And not just my own inner voice?

So I look up “I Will” on my electronic concordance. It’s this cool computer thing where you can type in the words you’re looking for and see if these words appear in the Bible. It’s fun to play with. Like, type in “baseball” or “watermelon” and you’ll see that there are no matches. No Scriptures about baseball or watermelons.

But type in “I Will” and over 1,900 Scriptures fly onto the screen! Yikes, He Will. He’s not just whistlin’ Dixie. He is the Great I Will. His Book bears that out.

Back to my fightin’ words. I kept hearing “I Will”, but no more specific answers. It started to make me mad. I’m waiting….tapping my foot impatiently.

Show me the plan for my life.

Let me know what the purpose is.

What work should I be doing?

In my frustration, I wrote in my journal, “Are you the Great I Will, or aren’t you?”

By that I suppose I meant, “Where are You? When will I get a better answer?”

When I was little, I would ask my mother if my friend Beth Rooney could sleep over. Mom would say, “I’ll think about it. Go away.” For the rest of the day I would tiptoe around, a model child, speaking in hushed tones, picking up my toys, offering to bring my mother a can of Tab from the olive green fridge. My twin sister and Beth Rooney would do the same. We were all hoping to influence a faster (and affirmative) response.

Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. I suspect Mom knew the answer as soon as I asked the question….but wasn’t willing to tell me right away.

And likewise, God. He is the Great I Will.

He does have a plan. And part of His plan is to do it in His timing.

Therefore, I wait. And I sometimes badger. Like David did in the Psalms. David is great. He doesn’t hold anything back. He cries out to the Lord and He whines and He begs and He cajoles and He challenges. And God said He loved David. He describes Him as being a man after His own heart. This gives us permission to do the same. God wants to hear it all.

What challenge do you have for the Lord today? He wants to hear it. All the begging, whining, complaining, crying. He can take it.

So go ahead, in the quietness of your own heart…cry out to Him. Ask Him. See what answer you get.

I suspect it might be.....

I Will.

“You’re not the boss of me!” my nephew shouted. His mom was in the house nursing her newborn daughter, and I was trying to take Little Lord Feisty out for a ride. My plan was to drive him around for a bit and give my sister a break. Yet he wouldn’t quite cooperate. Arguing about the best seat for a
4-year old, he lost his cool in a big-time tantrum.

“You’re not the boss of me!” He planned to sit up front and wouldn’t be dissuaded. My purpose was to get headed down the road for some fun.

Our world’s collided.

We never even left the driveway.

Are we that way? Are we yelling, “You’re not the boss of me!” to God?

Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but God’s purpose prevails.
Proverbs 19:21

I can still remember the day I first saw that Scripture. I felt a blow to my stomach, a grouchy exclamation of “You gotta be kiddin’ me,” and a streak of rebellion a mile wide. You’re not the Boss of me, buddy, You’re not the Boss of me.

After all, what does Proverbs 19:21 mean? Does it mean that our plans don’t really matter? Is that what it says?

Or does it say that no matter what we plan, God will have His way in the end? Grrrr, sounds bossy to me.

At first, this made me feel an ant in an Ant Farm. It fun to watch ants busy at work, especially since they are very unaware of being observed. Some builder ants pile sand in one area, a high rise. Some ants dig perfect tunnels. Some ants even bring their dead to the ant cemetery. Yet a child, for fun, can stick a pencil in their plastic world, and undo all of their work in an instant. It’s not fair.

Is what I’m doing just ant-like busy work?

And, gulp, is God the overseer with the pencil, blocking one trail so another one must be built? Does He override our plans, just because He can? The thought burned me up.

Why did it burn me up? Maybe I’d long believed, as the jingle told me, that I could “Have it My Way.” Not just at Burger King, but in this whole, big, wide world. “Have it Your Way.” To find out that there’s a way higher than my way, that’s big.

Could it be that we think our planning is the main thing, when it’s really not? Does God’s purpose prevail whether we acknowledge Him or not?

There was a time when I planned to go to college. Thus, I did well in high school, with the impressive extra-curriculars, in order to get into a good college. I did it.

Then, once in college, I planned to secure a high-paying and satisfying career. My plans worked out, I was hired by a prestigious advertising agency, and off I went to work, within weeks of college graduation. I did it. (Or so I thought.)

I didn’t plan to fall flat on my face there, but in many ways, I did. I did not plan to meet my future husband when I was crying and hung-over on a plane, but I did. I did not plan to meet the Lord of the Universe at one of the lowest points in my life. Yet when I did, I knew He was what I was looking for all along.

Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but God’s purpose prevails.

He is so gracious to allow us the freedom to make plans…good plans and bad plans. It’s called freewill.

Freewill allows us to choose lots of other things. Sex, drugs, rock-n-roll….whatever. It’s our choice.

God could have made us Faithful Robots, all implanted with the I-Believe chips. But then we would have been just that…robots.

He didn’t want robots, He wanted friends. Friends who would freely choose to love him, and surrender their plans to His overall purpose.

The same microchip that allows us to eat a case of Girl Scout cookies, or light that cigarette, or accept that job…..it also allows us to choose Him to be our Rescuer, our Hero, our Friend. He built us that way.

These days, I have overcome some (but not all) of my earlier rebellion and my shouts of “You’re not the Boss of me!” to the Lord. I’ve come to appreciate that He is the Boss of me. Bit by bit, I trade in my freewill in exchange for God’s will. I hand him my ways, my time, and my work. I haven’t given Him everything….but I’m getting there.

I’m glad to have Him overseeing everything, with a purpose that trumps my often silly and short-sighted plans. Because there is rest in that relinquishment.

God’s-purpose-prevails is a blessing, a love song, murmured like the last quiet “I love you” to a child you are putting to bed. He sings over us,

“Make your plans, my sweet, and dream your dreams…I’ve got you covered.”

....you live in a toilet seat. Or so the childhood rhyme went. It made it sound really yucky and nasty to cheat.

Yet cheating is not discouraged in our culture today. In fact, it seems to be encouraged. Take, for instance, the TV program, "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?" In my challenge to find good-pure-lovely programming, I was willing to give it a try. I watched it once.

Check it out for yourself. It's a cheat fest. For instance, in order to play the game, the adult contestant can "look at a student's paper" or flat out ask him or her for the right answer. On that show there is no way to do your own work. The only way to succeed is if your classmates give you the answers. Cheating is ingrained in the very premise of the show. Sure, it may represent cooperation, and it's only an inane (insane?) TV show. Yet I wonder, how are some of the other ways that cheating is encouraged in our world?

I was at Wal-Mart the other day, (like most days, I guess.) The teenaged checkout girl was having a very, very bad day. One thing that was frustrating her was that some of my items didn't appear to have barcodes for easy scanning. After searching for a brief moment, she manually entered a series of numbers...that she made up. She muttered, "When in doubt, cheat." Is that the best we can do?

Another example. In order to successfully play videogames, the savvy gamers download shortcuts from the internet. Guess what those shortcuts are called? "Cheats." So by the time you are 8, you learn that you will never conquer a videogame with your own smarts and persistance. To keep up with your friends, you will need the "Cheats."

How about when no one is looking? Is it okay to take a short-cut, look at a friend's paper or enter a made-up bar code? Is it okay, as long as you don't get caught? The fact that we even consider the merit of that question shows how comfortable we are with cheating.

Today Alex and I were driving down the highway and Alex was driving! I was lecturing him on watching for the unexpected stops and weird situations on the road when we came across a very strange one. Several cars were stopped on
I-581 as men ran down the highway trying to desperately catch MONEY THAT WAS FLYING AROUND. On a breezy day, someone had dropped a sack of cash from a car. These men were risking their lives for that money.

Alex thought we should stop and try to collect some of the dough. We saw others stopping on both sides of the road to do just that. I said that it was unsafe (DUH!), and just money (DOUBLE-DUH.) "Besides, whatever we collect we would have to return to the owner," I intoned. Alex thought that was ridiculous. We repeated the story later to some of his teen friends and they also thought that was the stupidest thing they ever heard.

But why?

Why do they think if someone drops a sack of money on the highway, and they happen to catch some, it belongs to them?

What have we taught...or not taught them?

There's an ultimate truth and a Judge who is watching. The farther we get from that, the more we think we can take any steps we feel like in order to make our lives easier or to succeed. We lie, cheat, steal and encourage others to do the same. "Everyone is doing it," is our mantra.

"Cheat, cheat, never beat, you live in a toilet seat." Turns out those are words of prophecy.