Proverbs 19:20-21 The Message

²⁰ Take good counsel and accept correction—
    that’s the way to live wisely and well.

²¹ We humans keep brainstorming options and plans,
    but God’s purpose prevails.

The Word of God for the Children of God.

Adeste Fideles! Laeti Triumphantes! Venite Adoremus! Dominum.

Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Amen.

Life Is No Different than Building a Mansion of Cards

Proverbs 19:20-21 Amplified Bible

²⁰ 
Listen to counsel, receive instruction, and accept correction,
That you may be wise in the time to come.
²¹ 
Many plans are in a man’s mind,
But it is the Lord’s purpose for him that will stand (be carried out).

We all have dreams and high aspirations for our lives.

Now that Graduation season is upon us in full force, dreams and aspirations are practically all that is being talked about, dreamt about, extensively planned out.

Some may dream of being a ballerina, a singer, an actress, a teacher, a doctor or a lawyer, successful business person, an accountant, a nurse or a social worker.

As many jobs and opportunities as there are, possibilities are literally endless.

As many careers and career paths there are we are only too limited by ourselves.

If you can think of it, they say, you can quite literally do anything when you put your heart, body, soul, mind and strength and resources to do that something.

High School and College students are often encouraged to have a 5-year or 10-year plan for their life, a backup plan if their first career goal doesn’t happen.

No matter what our age group, we all have dreams and aspirations we have high hopes of accomplishing – being successful, going into business for ourselves.

We do not want to be stagnant nor stagnated in our career paths – we deeply desire to prosper at what we set out to do in life and we will work very hard.

Sometimes we get the itch to try dream higher, aspire higher, to something completely different, something more exciting and challenging and fun too.

We will then plan our resources to go back into school for new career paths.

New vocational opportunities are always presenting themselves at various points in our life – we consider them – then decide on if it is the right time.

Ultimately, we are encouraged to go for our dreams and not to be distracted. 

But what happens when we struggle, when our dreams are slow or slower to develop to bear our desired fruits, or slowed or in the end, do not come true?

Is all hope lost?

Should we just give up on our dreams and aspirations and throw in the towel?

Should we necessarily settle for a life dream far less than what we imagined?

I believe that depends on your perspective – worldly view or heavenly view.

There is a transition going on here which we may not be fully appreciating.

Aside from high school or university guidance and career counselors, are we “faithfully” making our own plans without consulting our faithful God first?

Are we faithfully praying to the Lord, asking Him to align our will with His?

As parents or step parents or grandparents of these new graduates, are any of us faithfully counselling the graduate to pray or are we praying with, for them?

The Bible says, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33 NIV).

Are we teaching our children from the Word of God about making wise choices?

Are we teaching our children from the Word of God about making hard choices?

Are we teaching our children from the Word of God the meaning, the wisdom of and behind the admonition of Jesus: “let your YES be YES and your NO be NO?”

Are we teaching children from the Word of God about God’s wisdom over ours?

Over-all, are parents teaching their children about life from the Word of God?

I believe those things include teaching children about the dreams of our hearts.

Then again, are we teaching and admonishing each other from the Word of God as adults to adults from and within whatever age groups these biblical truths?

How to raise children (of whatever their ages are) in the “way they should go?”

Teenagers are still somebody’s children and have to navigate an extraordinary level of life’s complexities – as do the young adults in their college age years.

Even more mature adults well into their careers and family’s require parental guidance from time to time as they make their own major life path decisions.

However, as much as our own life lessons taught us about pursuing our dreams, for graduates, it can be a great adventure that will only work if we put God first. 

A few days ago, I remembered I heard a sermon from Pastor Steven Furtick.

In it, he said something that still resonates with me today.

When I heard it a few years ago, I recall in so many words, he explained,

“The Bible doesn’t tell us to follow our dreams. It tells us to follow God!” 

After many fruitless efforts of trying it on my own, I found that to be true.

Raised in the USA, I have always heard phrases like, “Follow your heart” and “No pain – No Gain” “Take your passion and by all means, make it happen!” 

But the older I got, the more I remembered my life’s “best efforts” then recalled how the Bible says that “the heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9).

So, why are we so focused on what our heart desires?

The circumstances of life can change in less time than it takes for one heartbeat.

In the time it takes for us to take one short or long breath, our world, our own dreams, our own aspirations are undone, thoroughly being turned upside down.

Just ask the Patriarch Abram when He was commanded to leave his home and his family behind for some far off place which he had not one single clue where.

Just ask the Patriarch Job whose entire life was upended.

Just ask the Patriarch Noah when all of a sudden God told him to build an ark of immense proportions and do it alone- Did Noah possess those carpentry skills?

Just ask the Prophet Jonah when God commanded him to travel to Nineveh and to become everyone’s evangelist – demanding repentance and transformation?

And with Jonah, what if those desires of God were not even minimally believed to be any part of our own destinies – do we flat out reject God and all His ideas?

Whether we are teaching our children the way they should go (Proverbs 22:6) or as we are growing older and more mature we are planning for our retirements, we can easily be led astray by self if we let our hearts lead us instead of Jesus.

However, the Bible also advises all of His beloved Children to delight ourselves in the Lord (not self), and He will give us the desires of our hearts. (Psalm 37:4)

So there is hope – in the Lord much more so than hope in ourselves, right?

God cares about everything that affects us, including our 5-to-10-year plan.

He wants you and me to dream, not by following your heart but by following His heart first and foremost.

The Bible does not say we need to have everything single thing figured out.

But it does say we need to trust God in everything, more than we do ourselves and He’ll make our paths straight, it will be health to thy navel refreshment for our bones (Proverbs 3:5-8 KJV). 

It gives me comfort and hopes to know God cares about my children’s dreams and my own and my wife’s and that He’s willing to give all of us the desires of our hearts according to His will – not one centimeter according to our own.

If my dreams and plans are outside God’s will for my life, they will not happen.

I am more than okay with that because the Bible says in Proverbs 14:12, “What you think is the right road may lead to death.” (GNT)

What a powerful point!

It helps me remember God knows best.

That the will of God is more faithful, more genuine, more authentic than mine!

The Genuine Article, The Authenticity of God’s Will

Sometimes the dream we desperately want to come true could end our lives.

We cannot see that from our limited human perspective.

However, we serve a God who can see the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), so counselling each other toward asking Him for His plans for our lives is vital.

You and I can rest assured God knows you better than you know yourself.

He knows what path will bring you the most joy and peace.

He knows the gifts and talents He’s given us and the best way those blessings can be discovered and explored, developed and encouraged, and be shared too. 

Remember, God’s dreams for you and me are not just to help you and me to be an individual success story but also help the world by edifying God’s Kingdom.

If we encourage each other, ask Him to align our will with His, we will want to align, then realign our Kingdom dreams the same Kingdom dreams He wants.

Often, you and I may actually discover the dream God has for you and me is far greater than you or I could ever possibly imagine and will make us the happiest.

Our Authentic, Genuine, Faithful Alignment With God

1 Peter 1:6-7 The Message

^6-7 I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.

Some things can only be tested by time.

If you have ever attempted to buy a new car, a house, or a dresser or cabinet at a reasonable price, perhaps you’ve considered whether to buy a used vehicle first, a secondhand piece for nearly the same price, a new piece from a discount store.

The problems associated with a new vehicle are obvious – you do not know how it was driven, how well it was maintained, traded in because of a nuisance issue.

The drawback is that such pieces of furniture may prove, when they’re opened and closed, have doors and drawers that are warped, won’t go back into place.

The vehicle may be clean and wonderful on the outside – but when driven off the lot for a couple of hundred miles – may quickly become a mechanical WOW!

We may find ourselves paying our favorite mechanic more than we first paid.

The item of furniture quickly becomes a real mess.

It may look good on the outside on first inspection, but the real issue is with its day-by-day use and what the test of time will show, which will prove whether you and I have the genuine article or an authentic unsellable, unusable, mess.

On the same note, how do we know whether or not our faith is the real thing?

The answer, at least in part, is that authentic, genuine faith is to be discovered in our day-by-day “opening and closing” “success and failure responses—in facing up to the subtle, not so subtle challenges and trials that come our way.

Some suggest, even teach and worse preach that victorious Christian living means the absence of trials—that if we are really men and women of authentic, genuine faith, then trials will be an uncommon experience because of “grace.”

Peter says the exact opposite is true: the experience of trials and difficulties is not uncommon, unusual, or unproductive in a Christian’s life, but is purposeful and an authentic and essential, absolutely genuine component, of God’s plan.

We must rigorously, vigorously teach this as preparation for Kingdom living.

We prove to ourselves and those who may be watching that our faith is genuine when we face challenges and refuse to run away, instead holding on to our trust in Christ’s goodness no matter how difficult the path He is leading us all along.

By such preparation, when (not if,) trials come and everything goes askew, we find out whether our testimonies and the professions we’ve made about God’s grace, peace, and securing providence are authentic, genuine, faithful to God.

Reverend Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote in Morning and Evening,

“The one who would glorify his God must be prepared to meet with many trials. No one can be illustrious before the Lord unless his conflicts are many. If, then, yours is a much-tried path”—that is, a path of many trials—“rejoice in it, because you will be better able to display the all-sufficient grace of God. As for His failing you, never dream of it—hate the thought. The God who has been sufficient until now should be trusted to the end.“

Will your faith, will my own faith, will your graduates faith in God over self prove authentic, genuine through life’s current, coming greatest challenges?

By learning from success and learning from our failures, it is not only possible to hold on by God’s grace, but it is also profitable on account of God’s grace.

As we learn from success and failure, as we fall, but then learn how to raise again, as we trust in His grace, we will discover we can rejoice, because our happiness ultimately is not tied to circumstances but found in persevering in your faith—in knowing the sufficiency of Christ in circumstances would never would have chosen, in looking forward to the day when your Savior is revealed.

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross with my Children

What dreams and aspirations has God placed on your heart?

What dreams and aspirations has God placed on your graduates heart?

How does it bring you hope to know following God’s plan for your life is best?

How does it bring the promise of hope to your graduate to know God’s will?

What hopes and aspirations and dreams does it raise up inside my own heart?

What about all the opportunities, possibilities, the Holy Spirit just revealed?

“Come Holy Ghost My Heart is Now Inspired – Come, Let us Build a Mansion.”

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

Father God, We pray for graduates in their walks with You. Give them a hunger to know You more deeply, more intimately, and more personally than they ever have before. We know that You are the Living Water that can quench their spirits, and Lord we pray that You would pour out Your Spirit upon them.  We pray that they would see their lives in the present and in retrospect with the full comprehension that You are working and weaving things together for their good. We pray for them to have a strong relationship with You that will withstand any storms life throws at them.

Adeste Fideles! Laeti Triumphantes! Venite Adoremus! Dominum.

Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Amen.

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