God's Promises: He Leads Us

Photo by Caleb Jones 


In a recent bout of reminiscing, I was astounded by observing the acceleration of long-detained dreams that has occurred for me this year. This year. The year where I have spent more time in my house than any other place. The year when ministry has literally only looked like food distribution and ongoing prayer and worship—not what outwardly looks the most productive. The year where my husband didn’t work for at least a month. The year of quarantines and COVID tests. The year of wiping down groceries with Clorox wipes. The year of widespread forest fires, one of which threatened our home. The year of suffering friends and family. The year of cancelled trips and closed borders. The year when my online job gave me a reason to get up in the morning until it didn’t any more. The year of homebound birthday and anniversary celebrations. The year when reinstated take out from restaurants was cause for extreme celebration. The year of insomnia and weird stress manifestations. The year of weekly family video calls and Zoom Bible study. The year of multiple hurricanes threatening flooding and watching devastating videos from El Salvador as it mostly dodged us. The year of immigration woes. The year of seemingly insurmountable tax payments. The year that started with a worship conference and hopes for a reset in ministry. The year of unexpected vet visits for Rocky. I could go on, but the truth of the matter is that when God gave me the word “promises” for this year, He not only was not kidding, He fully intended to show off the depth of His faithfulness and provision. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have been able to start grad school this year. It was a dream I had agonized over a lot, but I had shelved it since I didn’t see a way that I could make it happen. I’m so glad that I couldn’t make it happen because He did.


A concept that Raúl I tend to talk about a lot is what it means to trust in the Lord and to surrender our plans. It’s not that God is a dictator and doesn’t care about the desires of our hearts. On the contrary, it’s often that He just has a much wider vision than we do. Our ability to trust Him and believe that He is good is where our best adventures can start. Oftentimes, when we approach God with an attitude of “Lord, bless my plans” or seem to feel like we have to defensively keep our plans to ourselves, the heart of the matter is a lack of trust. Maybe we prayed for something we really wanted and didn’t get it. Maybe we have experienced a hard circumstance that is making it difficult to believe in God’s goodness. Maybe we’re having trouble reconciling the success of a characterless person or the suffering of someone selfless. Whatever the root wound is, it’s worth digging to the bottom of it to find a way to let God show us Himself again. We can tend to relate to God as a vending machine, sometimes thinking that as long as we ask, He has to give us what we want. But, that’s not relationship.


My husband has a tendency that drives me nuts. Instead of asking me for some favor directly, he’ll say, “Hey, do we have any wet cloths, so I can wipe this off?” What he actually means to say is, “I need a wet cloth. Would you mind getting me one?” However, he doesn’t say that. The reason why this drives me nuts is because it feels like I don’t get a yes or no in the assumption. There is no vulnerability or risk in actually asking. And there seems to be a sort of underlying expectation of reading his mind. We all have our idiosyncrasies, so the point in mentioning this is not really to rag on my husband. The point is that this can also be our way of relating to God at times if we aren’t careful. We can get so caught up in our desires and plans that we unconsciously remove God’s ability to be Himself instead of a caricature of Himself that we’ve built in our heads. He has to be allowed to say no and still be worth having a relationship with if it's a true relationship. If we reduce Him to a very one-dimensional puppet at the mercy of our whims, we will interpret His answers with a one-dimensional lens whether we get what we want or not.


Just as it should be in any human relationship, we’re allowed to have real feelings with God and tell Him when His “no” has disappointed us or we don’t understand. We don’t have to become a Christianese caricature of ourselves to remain in His good graces. Just as Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane asked for what He actually wanted—to avoid suffering—we are allowed to ask for what we want and to tell God how we really feel. Yet, the invitation is still to follow Jesus’ lead who ends His emotional tousle with Father God by saying, “but not my will but Yours be done.” Part of trusting God is embracing the mystery that He exists outside of time. He is the only being who can see the beginning and the end simultaneously. That makes Him much more adept at recognizing what makes for a good plan in the long run than we are. Do we have the humility to live in that truth?

There is a lot of wisdom to be found in Proverbs, but three verses that stick out in relation to our plans are these:

Trust in the Lord completely,

and do not rely on your own opinions.

With all your heart rely on him to guide you,

and he will lead you in every decision you make.

Become intimate with him in whatever you do,

and he will lead you wherever you go. – Proverbs 3:5-6 (TPT)

The point is not to submit my ways to the Lord out of fear of failure, condemnation, or consequences. It is because if He is my Person, my close Friend, I want to include Him. It’s a submission and surrender based on the wisdom that He knows better than I do, but it’s also based on friendship and genuinely wanting my best friend in on the ground floor of whatever new idea or dream is brewing.

Before you do anything,

put your trust totally in God and not in yourself.

Then every plan you make will succeed. – Proverbs 16:3 (TPT)

(Possibly because it’s not 100% my plan to begin with. If I trust God, I also trust that He will tell me if this is not the right plan to be making.)

A person may have many ideas concerning God’s plan for his life, but only the designs of his purpose will succeed in the end. – Proverbs 19:21 (TPT)

I want to live my life in light of eternity, and to do that I have to value God’s “no,” trusting that His saying no is an act of love and not of spite or deprivation.

All of this is a lesson that I re-learn over and over in life, but on the journey, I have come away with so many testimonies of when I have accepted God’s “no” (both with joy and begrudgingly), and have been blown away later to find just how much more impactful, graceful, and impossibly better His plan is. Each experience with God has build a testimony, another brick in the wall of staunch confidence that the Lord and I are building together.

He does care about our plans, but a lot of times, He loves us enough to exchange our plans for His better ones when we’re willing to humbly include Him and seek Him first.