God's Default Button
In my life as a Pastor, I am around 95% confident that God will do what He said He’d do. I’m not leaving 5% for doubt but for the gazumpings of God. It appears that even though we like to think that things happened because we believed for them to happen, much of the direction of our lives is caused by default rather than design.
Reinhard Bonnke never designed his rise to become a huge African evangelist. It came about through default as the advertised healing evangelist for a small crusade failed to attend, forcing Reinhard to step into his shoes. Through the powerful results of that crusade, Reinhard was catapulted to a new sphere of operation.
I once overheard my Assistant Director’s reply as she was asked how she got the job. Much to my horror at the time, she told them that it was by default. She claimed that I had asked three other people before asking her. And that was the truth! Proverbs 16:9 explains both the process of my selection and the process of her eventual selection – “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps”.
It appears that the realm our daily faith operates in is usually the penultimate realm of destiny. We believe as much as we can in the removal of mountains, the healing of bodies, the provision of finance and the removal of temptation. We believe that we will see our answers to our prayers and faith declarations. Our ultimate destiny appears to be a mix of our believing in His promise and the overriding providential hand of God.
Destiny is a complicated thing. Judas proved it! In sovereignty, he was the one who would deceive Jesus and fulfil prophecy. He was a marked man. In the daily grind of destiny, Jesus prayed for him and believed the best for his life, just like we do for everyone in our daily sphere of influence. Judas had the freedom of choice to not do what he did. Sovereignty looked back upon Judas’ life and saw what he would freely choose.
The recalculation of destiny
For the simple purpose of looking at the workings of destiny, I want to leave sovereignty to one side for a minute! It would seem that in a world where God respects people’s ability and power to make their own choice, it appears to me that God is having to recalculate the details of destiny almost very nano second! This would be no more necessary than when someone fails to be faithful with the ‘talent’ they’ve been given. In Matthew 25, the master is seen taking away the ‘talent’ from the unfaithful servant and giving it to the most fruitful servant. The talent count began as 5, 2, 1. It then moved to 10, 4, 1 and finally became 11, 4, 0. It could have become 26, 0, 0 if the second man failed to exercise any more than the tally of gifts he’d been given. This shows that you may be happily perusing a defined destiny in God with the talents you’ve been given only to find that you’ve been gazumped. You have now been given what actually belonged to someone else’s destiny (again putting sovereignty aside). You are now even busier than you have ever been.
It just so happened!
The most understated verse in the entire Bible is found in Ruth 2:3 which says, ‘... as it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz ...’. It just so happened! This was a collision of destiny that could only ever come about through the losing of one’s life to gain it.
Ruth lost her identity to Naomi when she made Naomi’s God her God and Naomi’s people her people. She also made Naomi’s condition of poverty, her condition. She did her best, however, to relieve it. It just so happened that she was gleaning from her potential kinsman redeemer’s field, and it just so happened that she eventually became the Great Grandmother of the great King David! Out of the ashes of sacrifice comes the phoenix of destiny. Not everyone chooses, however, to walk in the ways of Ruth. The prize could possibly have been open to her sister-in-law Orpah, but she failed to rise up and remained in Moab. Canaan could have been the inheritance of Terah but he stopped for good in Haran. It was Abraham, his son, that got it, but only through intense obedience and believing.
In the realm of destiny, we like to think that we’re pretty much in control. It is that ‘control’ freakery that God loves to disturb. Just as Jesus urged prideful people not to ‘boast about tomorrow’, God’s ability to cut in on us at anytime He likes is like a shot across the bow of our ship of vision making, goal projecting and wise planning. God gazumps. Always has done. Always will.
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