Escape from Gilligan’s Island: God Works

The good news: God has a won­der­ful plan for our lives.
The bad news: God prob­a­bly has a dif­fer­ent plan than what we would.
The results: We need to be patient and allow God to work and not go off in our own direction.

Pastor Bart at Flatland Church yes­ter­day started us out that way in his series on Exodus named “Escape from Gilligan’s Island.” Exodus presents us with a pic­ture of God work­ing in the lives of the chil­dren of Israel and the nations they touch. God doesn’t always do what we expect or even want Him to do but in the end, it is always for the best. As such, we need to be patient.  The ques­tion is of course, HOW?!!! I want it now!

Pastor gave us three (of course) steps which help us be patient. 1. Understand God’s pri­mary aim. Its all about glo­ri­fy­ing God. 2. Appreciate God’s Process. We need to go along for the ride and enjoy. 3. Recognize God’s Fingerprints. When we look back on our lives we can always see God work­ing in one way or another pro­vided we haven’t hard­ened our hearts against God like Pharaoh did. We need to view our lives as a novel and not the lat­est head­line news.

It’s Monday and I am gonna focus on those fin­ger­prints God has all over my life. By look­ing at those fin­ger­prints, I will be able to bet­ter see God’s pri­mary aim and appre­ci­ate God’s process. And quite frankly, I am so glad God has had his fin­gers all over my life.

The first fin­ger­print I see is my mother. God gave me a won­der­ful mother! Or to say it dif­fer­ently, God’s fin­ger­prints are also all over my mother as He directs her paths and she fol­lows Him. As she fol­lowed God, she also led my sis­ter and I as chil­dren down those same godly paths. God had his hand upon our fam­ily, and still does.

The sec­ond fin­ger­print I see is my wife Joy. God gave me a won­der­ful wife! Or to say it dif­fer­ently, God’s fin­ger­prints are also all over Joy. We have been mar­ried now 30+ years. God blessed me greatly with Joy. God has His hand upon our family.

I see a lot of other fin­ger­prints in my life — being 50 will do that — but I want to fin­ish with the most recent fin­ger­print I see and that is my new church, Flatland Church. God has led us to a church that has got me involved again. I have always been in good churches, don’t get me wrong, but at this point in my life, I needed this church. I had become very pas­sive and com­ing to Flatland has got me to become active again.

Flatland isn’t a per­fect church. No church is. A recent con­ver­sa­tion with my cousin Bruce got me to think­ing about this. If we con­tin­u­ally look for the “per­fect” church, we may very well miss out on the right church. Flatland is the right church, the right pas­tors, the right peo­ple for me right now. And for that, I thank God.

God’s hand is upon me. I may feel stranded in many ways, just like Gilligan, but I know that God is work­ing. I will try to be patient; under­stand­ing God’s pri­mary aim is to bring glory and honor to His name, appre­ci­ate God’s process and go along for the ride, and keep rec­og­niz­ing God’s fin­ger­prints all over my life and thank Him for being there.