my own answers

I have a faith problem: I often like my own solutions to problems better than the ones God has planned.

Oh, I don’t usually put it that way. I usually think nothing is happening, God doesn’t have a plan, it’s up to me. I get impatient. I want what I want badly enough that I find reasons to think it must be God’s will. The problem is, my answers usually don’t work out as well as if I’d just waited for God.

In Genesis 16 I read about Sarai, Abram’s barren wife who desperately wanted a son. Her solution: send in a surrogate. Her husband sleeps with her slave, who gets pregnant. The rest is predictable. Hagar scorns her mistress, who failed in this most basic role of family life. Sarai takes in out on Abram first, then treats Hagar badly enough that she runs away.

Their plan worked, sort of. Abram got his male child, Ishmael. But Ishmael grew up to be the father of twelve pagan kings. He was the forefather of the Ishmaelites, desert tribes whose “hand would be against every man, and every man’s hand against them.”

In the end, God fulfilled his original covenant with Abraham. Sarah bore him a son in their old age, Isaac, and through Isaac the nation of Israel would come to be. Sarai’s scheming wouldn’t prevent God’s plan from happening.

But it would make things harder for God’s people. More than once the Ishmaelite tribes caused trouble for the Israelites. They raided and fought with everyone, their cousins included.

I need to remember that the next time I think I know what’s right for our church building, or I want to fix someone else’s life, or I want to make my own life easier. I can’t claim to trust in God if I pray a few times and then do my own thing.

God’s timing is as perfect as his plan. My timing and my plans are as imperfect as my faith.

I guess that’s what sanctification is all about. Every day I try to get a little better, a little more holy, a little more faithful, a little more Christlike. One inch at a time I become more what God wants me to be. And this matter of trusting in His plans is a good place to start.