Big Plans and Our Beautiful Ordinary Lives.
Looking for truth about God's will and Jeremiah 29:11
Obscurity and More
My thoughts about obscurity, our modern obsession with celebrity, and my real life didn’t begin when I read Katelyn Beaty’s new book “Celebrities for Jesus,” but she definitely validated and confirmed them. She gave me a space to keep pondering and courage to make choices that I already wanted to make. If you haven’t grabbed a copy yet, it’s definitely a book worth reading. (Amazon is apparently being slow right now, but you can order right from Baker Books.)
I wrote a little poem thing last week that pretty much sums up where I’m at:
Friends, I think we’ve been lied to.
How many of you grew up hearing that “God had big plans for us?” That, “We were gonna change the world?” How many of you got pumped up as a teen or in college only to discover that your actual life ended up rather ordinary and unexciting? Or how many of you went on a mission trip or Bible adventure of some sort and ended up coming home disillusioned with Christianity in general? How many of you felt like the problem was you? That you somehow failed to find God’s will?
What if God doesn’t actually have “big plans” for most of us? What if we’ve spent years misinterpreting and misapplying Jeremiah 29:11? What if in the backwards, inside out, upside down Kingdom of Jesus Christ we really are called to be servants and not influencers? What if our ordinary lives are actually precious and beautiful? What if faithfulness is more important than fame?
Speaking of Jeremiah 29:11…
We’ve been using this verse out of context for years in the Christanese culture. We claim it means God has big plans, good plans, and definitely nice plans for our lives. We ignore the fact that the prophet Jeremiah was talking to captives in a foreign country, telling them to settle down because they were going to be here for a while, and reminding them that even in tragedy God had not forgotten them. We forget that it’s a promise made to ancient Israelites and not to Americans in the 21st century.
What if the path of our life includes captivity? Sickness, death, loss of jobs, broken relationships, pain, suffering, unanswered questions, and more? The prosperity gospel tells us those things are our fault. That we have a lack of faith because God always wants to bless us. Just so you know, the prosperity gospel is a bunch of lies. But that formulaic way of thinking has crept into our church culture everywhere.
Guys, the Real God is not transactional. He doesn’t bless us based on our religious behavior. He doesn’t curse us because we step out of line (or out from under the umbrella of authority—sorry, cult reference, haha!). God is good, and fully capable of anything He wants to do. And He also allows the brokenness of this world to continue, and sometimes He stops it. But not always. He is paradox, a mystery, and full of tension.
Finding God’s Will
While we are crushing Christianese ideas regarding our lives, let’s add this to the mix: finding God’s will for our life. I did a podcast episode on this last season (among other Christian phrases). In it I asked these questions: Is it really possible to find God’s will for our lives? Is His will always going to run counter to what we want to do? Can we manipulate the things we want and make them seem like God’s will? Is the idea of God having a will for our life even truly Biblical?
You can listen here below, at the link above, or at the link at the end of this email.
If God doesn’t have big plans for our lives, and we can’t change the world, and our reality might be full of tragedy, pain, and suffering, and God’s will might not be what we thought, what are we left with?
Our Beautiful Ordinary Lives
We are left with our beautiful, ordinary lives. Life in this broken world will hurt, but it will also delight. We will experience deep pain and wild joy. We might not ever be famous, but we can be truly known by real people sitting next to us. We can love, laugh, cry, and grow with them. We might not be influencers, but we can influence those in our personal sphere.
I’ve mentioned on my social media accounts (especially Instagram) that I’m rediscovering a part of myself that I haven’t seen in 20 or so years. It’s a beautiful thing. I’m not writing books or doing public speaking like I once thought I’d be. Instead I’m back in the classroom teaching and loving challenging children.
I’d forgotten how much I used to love the hard ones, but I’m remembering. The broken ones, naughty and hurting ones, the ones that it doesn’t make sense to love…these are my kids.
It’s not a glamorous life. Definitely not Instagram worthy. I’m not going to post quotes of the math problems we solved this week. But I love it. I love my beautiful, ordinary life. I want you to be free to love yours too.
It’s okay that you didn’t do big things. It’s okay that you are back to a mundane existence. Jesus lived an ordinary life too, but He touched lives in a way that really did change the world. Just in an inside out, upside down, backwards kind of way! Let’s be like Jesus. :-)
I so resonate with this! I'm learning to not just stay in my lane but to enjoy it. Without an audience.