Best Laid Plans - Week 1

Amen, and Amen, give the little one more hand clap

starting a brand new series today, a brand new series

today called Best Laid Plans. How many of you you

just feel like you've done a good job planning your

life and it didn't work out that way. Raise your

hand if that's you some of y'all, nothing's ever gone

wrong in your life. I'm coming to y'all's house. I

just want to roll around on your couch and get

that annoying on my life.

Amen.

But you know, we go through life and we have

the best laid plans and sometimes life just throws you

a curveball. Things don't work out the way you thought,

or it takes longer for it to work out. Over

the next few weeks, we're going to talk about that.

And today we want to talk about you know, for

those of us that don't even actually have a plan

in our life, a lot of people we just kind

of wake up and it's just like a we just

roll the dice every day just.

Hoping things work out.

I want to talk to you about instructing a plan

for your life so that it's easy for you to

navigate back to the place God.

Wants for you.

So many times when hardship comes and we deviate and

God pushes us away from that thing, we know He's

called us to that purpose that lives in us. Because

we don't have a plan, we don't know how to

get back there so that we can relaunch to achieve

those great things that God has for us. So, if

you got a Bible, go to Habaccac chapter two. Let'ten

just go ahead and use the index in the front

of the baby. If you got a paper, but I

just go ahead and use the index Habacco chapter two.

You're not gonna find it if you just flip like that.

Just the Lord wanted them to put it in there

so you could find it. Amen, don't beasts, and don't

look to see if anybody's actually there. You know, when

I was a brand new Christian, we didn't have like

screens and stuff for the worst to go. So you

had to look in the Bible if you wanted to

know what the pastor was saying.

And a lot of times he would say.

Turn to so and so and so and so, and

I would try to find it and I couldn't, so

I would just open my Bible and pretend like I

was there because I didn't want anybody to know I

couldn't find it right, don't be embarrassed. Just use the index.

That's what it's there.

Just get your phone out and click in it in

the app and read along. He backup chapter two, verse two.

It says, then the Lord answered me and said, write

the vision and make it plain on tablets that he

may run who reads it.

For the vision is.

Yet for an appointed time. But at the end it

will speak, and it.

Will not lie. Though it terries, wait for it, because

it will surely come. It will not tarry.

Behold the proud his soul is not upright in him,

but the just shall live by his faith. Let's pray, Father,

we thank you for your word. It's the only change

agent on the face of the planet, and right now

I pray that it plants deep at the fabric of

our beig brings a harvest of transformation. Lord, we love you,

and we thank you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You know Habaccu's whole life was falling apart.

He had an understanding of what he thought God wanted

to do, and when it says, God answered him. Most

of the prophets his contemporaries were prophesying.

To the nations.

They were Habaccuck's book is a little different because he's

a prophet, but he's actually just kind of.

Quietly and privately arguing with God.

He's just trying to figure these things out internally with God.

And God says, Okay, here's the deal. I want you

to I want you to write it down. See, his

whole world was turning upside down. And God didn't say,

have more faith. God didn't say try harder. God said,

grab a pin, grab a pen, and write the vision.

Because writing it down is the most spiritual thing we

can ever do. Writing what down everything. Listen, gentlemen, look

at me. Father's days coming up. I want you guys

to be good fathers. I want you to be good husband.

I'll teach something when your wife tells you now, honey,

I'm learning this too. When your wife tells you something,

write it down. If you want your marriage to be better,

just write down what she says.

Amen.

When you go to the grocery store for milk and

that's all, write it down so you don't come back

with one hundred dollars worth of groceries and no milk,

write it down.

It will improve your life. Write it down.

There is a spiritual principle about writing it down. There

is a reason we have the Bible in written, canonized

form rather than just oral traditions, because it is spiritual

to write it down and to communicate through the visible

written word. And God says, listen, I know things are

going on. I want you to write this down because

it'll be beneficial to you and it's gonna be beneficial

to others.

And what's actually happening here.

We have to just kind of look at all the

contemporaries that are just kind of alive around this time.

Now that doesn't mean they were all writing at the

exact same time, but just kind of.

Around this time.

There's Uh, Jeremiah is prophesying during this time, the Weeping Prophet,

and Jeremiah has already heard from God and he's already

spoken that Israel's gonna go into captivity. They're gonna they're

gonna be captive to Babylon for seventy years. Jeremiah's prophesying this,

and there's a there's a lot of fear in the

air because of this prophecy where Jeremiah says, listen, for

seventy years, Uh, Babylon is gonna.

Rule over you. And at the same time, in the

general same time.

Nahoum is prophesying and he's talking about Nineveh and he's

calling for the downfall of Enevah, of Nineveh, saying that

God is going to destroy Ninevah. And we do see

that God brings Nineveh down, a terribly pagan place. But

yet at the same time God is saying that he's

going to raise up Babylon, another pagan nation.

To discipline his people.

And it's a confusing time as these prophets are talking

and now you've got we got Habacco, and he's trying

to figure these things out because he's trying to reconcile

the goodness of God and the circumstances around understanding that

God has put things in motion that don't feel good

on the outside.

Do you know that sometimes.

Pressure situations come into our life that don't feel good

on the inside, that God will use them to bring glory,

That God will get involved in those hearts times and

refocus us, reposition us, show us those principles that He's

been trying to teach us. And when we live through

those things, if we understand how to navigate them, we

don't get swept up, and we don't get lost in

the process. Because when he wrote this down, these truths

about God, this vision about God, it was for a

navigational beacon for those that are now over in captivity,

far from home, trying to reconcile and trying to bring

themselves back into God's will. In God's plan, see the

best laid plans sustain and point you back. The best

laid plans sustain you and bring you back to the

place where you were when you got sidetracked, because God's

plan for you, God's purpose for you doesn't disappear just because.

Things go a little sideways. You know, I know that.

God spoke to me a long time ago, and I

know that God spoke. It's one of those things where

sometimes you wonder, have you ever had those ones where

you think, I don't know if that was God or not.

And then there's times where I know God said that

God spoke to my heart one time and he told

me this, and I was a youth pastor at the time,

so I perceived it through the lens of my current situation.

He spoke to me and he said, You're going to

see a revival amongst the American teenager, the likes of

which the world has never seen.

And I was excited.

Man. Listen, I rolled into Wednesday night at service. That

night I was like, yeah, I am David. Come on

to life, baby, I mean I was.

I was.

And then listen, we saw a great move of God

during a span of two or three years where where

teenagers got saved in lives for change. But it's not

the greatest revival amongst the American teenager that the world has

ever seen. That is still to come. And because I

thought it was, then I got discouraged when it didn't happen.

And then God called me to from youth ministry and

to lead pastor, and I thought, well, this is it,

this is this is gonna happen. So the guy that

I hired to take my place he did. He was

even better. Come on, now, he was even better than me.

He had more students, he had more kids coming.

It was just it was amazing. And I was like, yeah,

this is it.

And then that wasn't it either, And I'm thinking, God,

what is what is happening?

God?

I know what you said and I know it's true.

And God spoke to me one afternoon and he said

I said it was coming. You're the one that put

the date on it, said I said it was coming.

You're the one that arbitrarily assigned dates to it and

tried to put a time frame on it. Because the

conditions are not yet right. Now, here's the thing. I'm

glad God brought me out of youth ministry into senior

pastorhood because being a youth pastor right now would be

the hardest thing in the world. I do not understand

the culture. I do not understand the ebbs and the

flows and the tides.

That are now running underneath.

But what I do know is that God is setting

the stage to do what he spoke to me so

many years ago, and it will come to pass because

God said it. Amen, And I can live in discouragement,

or I can live in anticipation and faith knowing that

because God said it, it has to come to pass.

So when those things and we under oh, well we

frame those things, and we understand who we are and

who God is and our part in the plan, then

we can navigate those situations much better. See here's the

thing about a plan. When I do pre marriage counseling

with people, I walk through a step by step process

to get this life mission statement and how to put

those things in. Basically, what it is is it's a

filter for our lives.

And every single person needs that.

If you're a family, you need it because it's going

to help you say no to the things that so

easily drain you and pull you off course, and helps

you say yes to the things that are difficult but

come into alignment with who God wants you to be.

Amen.

But everybody needs this. Every single person needs this in

your life. It doesn't matter if you're ten or one

hundred and ten. You need a plan for your life

that brings you and moves you towards God's purpose. All

the elements right here in this in this passage in

a back too. The first thing he says is you

need to make it plain. You just need to make

the plan just plain.

Don't don't doctor it up.

Don't make it doesn't have to sound pru. Have you

ever noticed, especially like in churches, that we don't ever

just say anything like it is. Have you ever noticed that,

like a first time person comes into our church and

they see the word engage and they probably think we

try to get people married. That's probably because that's what

most people think. What we're talking about is is engaging

with purpose, right, that's how we we We engage with ministry.

We engage with groups, That's what we're talking about. But

we doctor everything, we make all these experience God, what

does that mean? We want people to get.

Saved, get free in Jesus, walk in freedom. We will

people to belong to a group because it's better to

do life together than alan find your place. Get a

spiritual gift test and a personality survey so that.

You know you are while the way you are.

And better yet, while the person you're married to knows

you are the way you are. Listen, I am not

an easy person to figure out, and I know this

about myself. I know this about myself, and I have

discovered immense personality deficits. Come on, I have discovered my

issues that I have and often often I feel those

issues and I correct them instead of having to let

my wife correct them. I understand my spiritual giftedness who

God has created me to be and what He's created

me to do in the Kingdom, and it helps us

navigate our personal life, not just me as a pastor,

but because I understand those things then I know where

to give and where to take. And my wife has

learned those things, so she knows the things to overlook

and just look past.

Because I'm not really being difficult.

Sunday is tomorrow, amen, I'm not really not paying attention.

My sermons running through.

My head starting about lunchtime on Saturday, and I'm preaching

it over and over and over to myself, and I'm saying, yeah,

that might work, but that's not gonna work. Yeah that's

not gonna work. But yeah, yeah that'll probably work. No,

that's not gonna work either. Hey and listen, and she's

just smiling. We were at the pool yesterday, just hanging

out and I was on my laptop. I was on

my phone. I was looking this up and I was

looking that up. Now, I was also looking at TikTok.

I mean, I'm going to a mate. I'm looking at

TikTok to you, I mean all spiritual. It wasn't all,

but I I was scrolling TikTok too, but you know

I was, because that's just see, if you develop a

plan for your life that's simple so that people can

understand it and that it's not complicated and full of jargon,

that only you understand.

Then you can live your life by it.

He says, make it simple, make it plain, and then

make it simple.

Make it plain and make it simple.

Don't over complicate things, and give it enough detail so

that you know what it means. You know, I think

a lot of people, you know, they get out of

college and they think I'm going to be a millionaire.

Goal plan become rich. You know, ninety percent of the

people to get out of college, that's what they write rich.

I want to be rich.

And there's a long ways between no job and rich.

Come on, somebody that there's a big gap. There's more

than one step. You don't just unless that step is

lottery ticket, right. There's more than one step to get there.

So when you're creating a simple plan, create the first

step that's going to move you towards the end goal.

What is the first step. I'm going to get a job.

What is step two?

Probably going to pull some money back and find a

way for my money to work for itself. Step three,

get a better job, learn some more skills, make some

more money, work for itself, buy some things that are

going to increase in value. Next step, maybe start my

own business.

On my own things, so that I can.

Create jobs for other people and help them achieve their goals,

so that now I get kingdom momentum behind it, so

that I'm helping people. And when I help people, God

helps me. And I start building a plan that's simple

because I can understand it and I can.

Climb that ladder. But then you also have to.

Understand that the plan has to be flexible because life happens.

Life happens at a rate that none of us can

ever imagine. You know, a couple of years ago, I

got this.

Plan, and I was gonna lose weight.

I was gonna get in shape, I was gonna be healthy.

Come on now, now listen, Laurel is laughing way too

hard because she obviously knows it didn't happen.

Right.

But it was a tragic circumstance. I was doing so

good that I'd lost like forty six pounds. I was

down like forty six pounds. Everything was going.

My dad passed away, and it just listen.

I just started eating everything I could find.

And here's the thing.

My dad told me I was fat all the time,

so I should have lost more weight to honor him.

Amen. A curveball came derailed the plan. Now I'm back

on it.

I'm trying to do right again, losing some weight, trying

to get healthy, trying to do the things. And it's

a struggle. And hey, you know what, I may blow

at this time too. But I have the plan, so

I know where to come back to restart. I know

where to launch from. But if there is no plan,

I don't have a place to come back to. And

I can't rebuild alignment in my life because I don't

have a plan. And then the last thing is in

your plan. You just have to learn to be patient.

When you write a date in your plan, write it

in pencil, because we know, ever know, the undiscovered, amazing,

wondrous things that God will expose us to before we

get there, Those things that we see now as challenges,

but when we get on the other side of them,

when we see them as opportunities.

To grow in our faith and another layer of our.

Testimony, Those things that feel like it's a shortcut, and

then we get down and realize that we're in a

cul de sac and we have to.

Turn around and back up, and it erases the.

Date, and it doesn't cancel the plan.

It just moves the date out a little bit. We

have to stop.

Thinking that the destination is the reward and understand that

the journey is God's gifts to us, and the process

of getting there is where we impact and encounter the

most people in our lives, and we find the most

purpose and fulfillment in getting there, because once we get there,

it's over.

Once you get there, it's done.

Well.

I wish I was done and rich, and you would

be bored out of your mind and you would find

out that because you didn't go through all the steps

of development, that money's a magnifier.

If all the rough.

Places didn't get shaved out of your life and the process,

that it's going to magnify those bad things in your life.

But if you allow God to work and move, and

you go through the steps of the plan, and you

be patient and you allow him to open the doors,

you get on the other side and all those good

things that God developed in you, that money magnifies the

good in you. God has a purpose and a plan

for every person in this room. And some of you

feel discouraged. You feel like you have been left behind

and forgotten. But I want to assure you that people

have gone before you, and they have written the truth

about living through your situation and your circumstance. When we

continue to follow these contemporaries of Habaccuc, we get to

this guy, Daniel. Daniel's actually living in Babylonian captivity. Now

he's living in that seventy years. He's not his world's

not being turned upside down because it's going to happen.

He's living in the happening.

And he is just absolutely destroyed because he's living in

a pagan nation with a heart completely sold out to God.

And it was because of his conviction to God and

the principles of God that he had written in his

life that he finds himself praying. One day, he's looking

out the window and spies had set themselves because they

knew he was devout, and he was going to pray,

and he knelt down to pray, and they come in

because the king had given an order that no one

could pray to any other.

God than the image of the King.

And they come and they take him captive, and they

bring him to the king.

And he had found favor with the king, but now

he had broken the rules and big.

Detour in life. The king says, well, I don't have

a choice. Put him in the lions den.

And the theory.

Was that they would put David and a din of

hungry lions, that they would slowly and painfully rip him apart,

peace by peace, inflicting agony and pain into his life

to discourage anybody else from praying, to discourage anybody else

from taking a stand for the Lord.

And David goes into the lion's den.

But because he has a navigational process in his life,

he didn't go in filled with fear. He didn't go

in filled with insecurity and all of those things that

we go into life with. He walked into the lions

den understanding that if God showed up, it was going

to be a huge testimony. And if God didn't show up,

it was still going to be a huge testimony.

You know, I often wonder.

What if God didn't shut.

The mouths of the lions.

What if what if they got back to the lions

den and and Daniel was dead. I think I've been

calling him David. I meant Daniel, Daniel was dead. Daniel

was dead, but all the lions choked to death and

they were dead too. Would he have been Daniel, the

lions slayer. So it worked out the way it worked out.

So that's the story we tell, but still just as

great of an ending that God kept him long enough

that he killed all the lions. He finds himself there

they come and they opened the doors, and they're expecting

him to be dead, and he walks out and the

lions are purring like little kittens. And it became a

testimony of God's glory and God's power, in God's grace

to that entire nation because a man that was arguing

with God about what could happen, set down and he

wrote the vision, and he made it plain. So you

don't write the plan so that everything goes smoothly. You

write it for the times that it doesn't. You write

the plan so when things get off kilter. That the

just can live by faith that if you're facing the

lions den, you got faith that if you're facing eviction,

you've got faith that if it looks like there's no

way out, you've got faith that it looks like everything

is turned in and you feel the pressure of the

world resting on you, you can live by faith because

you know there's a plan, and you've written the plan,

And because the plan is on a piece of paper,

nobody could ever talk you out of it because you

can see it and you can read it, and it

carries you back to that moment that God breathed it.

If it's in your head, it's wishful thinking. But if

you write it down, it is a memo to the

future and the purpose that dwells on the inside of you. Man,

you can come and get ready. You know, maybe you're

here today and you're like, yeah, that sounds good. But

I don't even know if. I don't even know if

Jesus loves me. I don't even I don't even know

that that I know how to find the Lord. I

this all sounds like a fairy tale. And I'm so tired.

I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted just trying.

To make ends me.

You're talking about getting a plan. I can't even afford

a piece of paper. You talk about write it down.

I haven't owned a pencil since school. How do I

turn this fairy tale into reality?

The first thing you need.

To do is meet the same savior.

That I met.

In a dorm.

Room on the campus of Emmanual College who moved into

my life in a time where I felt everything was

falling apart, and he saved me, and he set me

free from so much junk. I did not realize that

my entire life up to that moment.

Had exhausted me until he walked into that room and

breathe life into me.

In Matthew, chapter eleven, verse twenty eight, this is good

news to every person.

Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy labor, and.

I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you.

And learn from me, for I'm gentle and lowly in heart,

and you will find rest for your souls. Listen, for

my yoke is easy.

And my burden is light.

You don't have to carry that million pounds that you

can carry. The Lord's able to meet you right here today,

at your point and end, if you would just for

a moment every head bowed and every eye closed. If

you're here today and you say, Pastor, I just feel

beating up.

I'm tired.

I just need Jesus just to show up long enough

for me to write the plan. I just need a

little bit of relief in my life today. I want

to turn my life over to Jesus.

If that's you to slip your hand. I don't say

pray for me, pastor, and that's me, pray for me.

I'm overwhelmed. Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen. Amen.

You know, if you're here and you've never asked Jesus

to forgive you of your sins to be the lord of.

Your life, now is the moment to do that.

He may not listen.

I'm not gonna lie to you and say that he's

gonna make everything better. He may not change one of

your circumstances and situations. But what he will do is

empower you to live through it in a way you've

never been able to before, with peace, comfort direction. So

if you're here, you want to ask Jesus into your life,

ask him to save you, make you a brand new creation.

I fact, you just slip around and say that's me, pastor.

I want to give my life to Jesus to name.

I want to trust you. Put your hand and put

it right back down. Amen.

Every I open, every head, looking around. Everybody's standing with

me all over the building. Our alter team would come.

If you raised your hand for either one of those

two things. I want to ask you to forgive me

my sins, be the lord of my life or I

just need I just need a little rest. I just

need I just need a breath. It's a little peace,

a little extra strength. If that's you, and you raise

your hand, I'm gonna count to three. In just a moment,

I'm gonna ask you to step out from where your

seated and make your way to the front, and Jesus

is gonna meet you right here in this altar, and

he's gonna lift that weight off of you. H So,

on the count of three, I want you to step

out and move. Plans you, guys can go as soon

as I say three.

One. Don't try to ask yourself if you're worthy or not.

Jesus is worthy. That's why he'll meet you right here.

Two.

Last thing I'm gonna say before I get to three.

This is not a popularity contest. Don't wait to see

who else comes before you make a decision that you

need to meet Jesus today. When I say, when I

say three, step out and move. Because this is about

faith and the just will lift.

By faith.

You'll never make it through the lions.

Then if you can't make it down the aisle, three,

step out and move right now, Come on, come on

the way of the world. Come on, move, move, don't

look around, step out and move. Come on, this is

your moment, this is your time for your thing from

your God.

Come on, come on, come on.

There were more hands. Come on, we're waiting on the

offers are open while we worship together.

He