God’s One Big Plan for Your Life

In her book, An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor described how she was wondering what she was to do with the rest of her life. She asked God for clarity and direction.

His response? “Do anything that pleases you and belong to me.”

I can’t tell you how hard I’ve been crushing on this answer. I couldn’t love this any more than I do. Because God is our Father, the image this answer conjured for me was an indulgent, loving, parent enjoying his child discovering her God-given talents and interests.

Compare, if you will, how most of us parent and then we’ll contrast that with how some of us live.

What do we say to our children as they are growing up? “Do what makes you happy.” or “I want you to be happy.” And then we try to steer them toward activities that we see they have a bent or aptitude for. But we also allow them to experiment and try many things.

We let them play baseball and learn ballet and join cub scouts and play the cello. We indulge them when they grow out their hair or play the drums or act in Little Theater or paint in watercolors all over the house.

We watch and smile as they learn to care for gerbils, goats, fish, and dogs. We teach them to garden and sew and knit and fish and ski. We buy the books and the collectables and encourage camping trips, swim lessons, and after-school clubs. We introduce them to volunteering and sign them up for gymnastics and bowling and jewelry making.

We never begrudge them a minute of exploration as we watch them discover who they are, what they enjoy, find their intimate gifting and what makes them come alive.

We wave off the cost of such experimentation as money well spent and we smile with pride as they try their hand at new adventures and experience success and enjoyment.

We indulge their forays into photography, guitar lessons, and rock collecting. We withhold nothing from them as they play, experiment, and explore, knowing they’re seeking the unnamed question of Who am I?

Learning to live like God’s child

But it occurred to me, as an adult, that my own life was often incongruous with the way I encouraged my children to live.

I was walking stiltedly through life, haltingly and almost robotic through my days, my paths, my destiny cemented in stone because “this is the degree I worked so hard for” or “this is the skill I know” or “I’ve worked so hard to get where I am.”

Maybe you can relate. I’m a teacher, surveyor, truck driver, nurse, accountant, we say.

As adults, we forget to experiment and we box ourselves in.

We narrow our days, our eyes, and our hearts until only a thin trickle of lifeblood pumps through our arteries, barely keeping our souls going, but never fully alive with the heart-pumping excitement of life.

We define ourselves with narrow descriptors: mother, teacher, wife, Christian. It’s drummed into some of us and hammers away at our subconscious that God has A purpose for our life. Singular.

And we forget to experiment and change and move away from things that no longer feel life-giving.

In a podcast discussion with Susie Davis, of Dear Daughters, she talks about a comment her husband made about her. He said, “God’s been playful with you.”

He was referring to her evolving desires and the use of the gifts God embedded in her life. She mentioned the variety of ways she’s used those gifts over the years to glorify God, from homemaker to teacher, to author, to mentor.

The idea of a benevolent God being playful with me, allowing me to explore my gifts and creating a safe environment for me to do so, reminded me once again that He is a father with a father’s heart.

For me, I believed there was ONE thing I had to figure out and do and any departure from that one thing, even the smallest foray off the beaten path to explore a clump of wildflowers, or meander down a dirt road just to see what’s at the end, felt like a guilty pleasure, or worse, a sin.

And there’s nothing that elicits guilt in the life of a believer who is bogged down with right and wrong more than pleasure.

Some of us have lost the idea, piled beneath duty and guilt, religious talk and puffed up self-righteousness, that God is our heavenly Father who wants us to live, experiment, enjoy, and taste and see that He IS good and that He is in all of creation and creating.

To hear God say, “Do anything that pleases you and belong to me,” sounds a lot like a loving mother who says to her child, “Go play but stay where I can see you.”

Do anything you want, Mary.

Belong to me, Mary.

The plan that matters

So what’s God’s ONE big plan for my life? To enjoy it and to love Him, because that’s what brings Him glory.

Or as Ecclesiastes 3 calls it, The God-Given Task:

“What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil — this is God’s gift to man” (verses 9–13, ESV).

To rest so securely in His love that I can explore the playground and the woods, cross the streams and pick the wildflowers and know that He’s watching me with a contented smile and a parenting heart. This might just be His One Big Plan for my life and maybe I can stop worrying about the details as I seek to know Him and belong to Him.

What’s His plan for your life?

I’ve spent a large amount of my mental and emotional energy wondering and worrying about every step I took as an adult believer in Christ. This church or that one? This job or that one or no job? Go back to work now or stay home with kids? This house or that neighborhood? Which school district? Should I write now or wait? Pursue this or pursue that?

It’s been painful and almost completely paralyzing to live this way, always worried that I’ll displease God or miss the mark for His will for my life. I was so hyper-focused on right or wrong that I forgot how to love.

So concerned about missing the bull’s eye of God’s will that I tiptoed around it for years never being free to belong to Him.

Ask the right questions

It occurred to me that maybe I’ve been asking the wrong questions. Instead of “Is this right or wrong?” what if I asked, “Does this bring me closer to God or make me feel more disconnected?” Maybe the decision over this one thing or that one thing can be reframed in my mind. When I draw closer to this practice, do I feel God’s breath, do I sense His pleasure, a smile on His lips, and peace enveloping me?

A child asks permission, “Is this okay?” A disciple asks, “Who does this serve?”

And by finding what brings us joy and makes our heart skip lightly along the path of life, we fill with life. This is how we serve God, glorify Him, and serve the world.

What causes you to feel like you belong to God?

Is it when a song comes out of your mouth that quiets the rocks? Is your voice how you belong to God? When you take tools in hand and a broken object is transformed into beauty and usefulness, does this make your day worthwhile and your work light?

That’s you belonging to God! If bending low to tie the shoes of a first grader and leaning over a book willing the eager reader to sound out the next word makes you feel alive, connected to a purpose beyond your own life, isn’t that what belonging to God is all about?

Abiding, moving in and with Him as ambassadors of love, leaving the should’s and ought to's in the dark chambers of a life of bondage is Christ’s gift to you.

“Discovering what makes you come fully alive isn’t the goal of life, but it is evidence of life” (Emily P. Freeman, A Million Little Ways).

You need not fear this freedom, this life without borders and chains because He’s promised to keep His eye on you. Go play, but stay where I can see you, He says. His guidance feels like love, not rules and His hand rests gently in that place where your ribs meet your lower back, where He silently and almost imperceptibly steers you out into the world, promising you that when you move into your life “…your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left” (Isaiah 30:2, ESV).

That voice feels like delight as He hands out desires and fulfills them.

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4, ESV).

That’s the abiding presence of Jesus, void of striving and shame, this belonging is more like delighting.

Abiding and belonging

We were embarking on a big move across the country and I was in desperate need of peace. I wanted, really wanted, to live in the country. I craved quiet and I imagined that animals all around me would soothe my battered soul and restore the margin I needed to find my way again.

I knelt before the bed as I waited for the realtor to drive me around central Texas, knowing the decision of where next to call home would be overwhelming, and I prayed this prayer,

“Lord you know what I want, but I know that better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere. I will go where you tell me to go. I will trust your provision, but if at all possible, will you grant me a farmhouse in the country where I can hear your voice again?”

I suppose you’ve prayed prayers like that before too

And so have I. But what was different this time was that I meant it. It was surrender to the One who knew me best. I believe that God granted that desire and request not because I was a good girl and asked nicely or triggered a this-then-that response.

I believe He answered that prayer because what I wanted most was to be with Him.

And that’s what He wanted most of all, too. And that could have happened in an apartment in town, on a cul-de-sac, or even in an RV parked along the river. The what wasn’t all that important to Him as was the desire of my heart and the belonging He wanted to show me.

The contentment found in His presence is worth a thousand days of striving.

This is why He is less concerned about where and when and this or that than He is that we belong to Him. He didn’t need Abraham’s sacrifice, what He wanted was Abraham’s heart.

When our hearts make room for His heart, our transformation grows trust. Not just our trust in Him, but His trust in us. God loves all of His children, that is not in dispute, but there is favor with God that is relational, not transactional.

There is a reason God called David a man after His own heart. David concerned himself with abiding and belonging, no matter what his lot in life.

I am finding, and this amazes me to say, that as I more deeply and consistently abide, my prayers look less like a child asking for permission or direction and more like a companion and friend talking about life.

After receiving her answer from God, Barbara Brown Taylor goes on to say, “Whatever I decided to do for a living, it was not WHAT I did but HOW I did it that mattered” (emphasis mine).

What if God — and I don’t really think this is a what-if — is more concerned about how you go through life than He is about the particulars of what you do in life?

Can you be a “man or woman of God” choosing to forgo earthly pursuits to make full-time ministry your vocation but never belong to God? On the other hand, can you flit from job to job or live in a mountain cabin and paint landscapes all day and belong to God? I think we all know the answer but we act like we don’t.

“I’d rather be in the mountains thinking about God, than in church thinking about the mountains.” -John Muir

Our freedom matters to a broken world

It’s incredibly hard — near impossible — to convince a broken world that Christ is the answer when we live as though we’re prisoners trapped in the unfulfilled recesses of our hearts. It’s false to talk of freedom when we practice restriction. It’s incongruous to celebrate life and resurrection when we are the walking dead, void of joy and life.

Christ alive in you means belonging, not attending.

Christ’s indwelling means a joyful presence regardless of position or posture. The Creator of life fully giving us life in whatever expression we find joyful and pleasing.

God’s will for your life and mine? Do what pleases you and Belong to Him! In this, we bring Him glory and show His glory to a skeptical world.

I’m curious how this thought makes you feel?

Does it illicit panic, fear, untamed worry that you can’t trust your own heart and instincts? That left to your own devices you’ll choose poorly, disappoint God, mess it all up?

A misused scripture that has been carelessly tossed about in the New Testament church causing unnecessary bondage and painful discourse in many a heart, including mine, is from Jeremiah 17:9.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it” (KJV)?

But as Emily P. Freeman reminds us, “If we continue to live as though our hearts are desperately wicked, we have tragically misunderstood the work of Christ.” A Million Little Ways

Hearing this truth and finding permission to listen to my heart as I listen to God in it, I find freedom.

For some of us, myself I can certainly attest to, this freedom comes in bits and pieces. Because if all my chains had been loosed at once, I’d have been like the elephant who lives as though she’s tied to a stake even though she isn’t.

A trick that elephant tamers use to keep elephants from breaking free is to tie them to a strong stake in the ground with a thick chain. Over time the elephant stops trying to break free from the chain because she’s tried so many times, she is convinced she can’t.

Eventually, the trainers can remove the stake from the ground, confident that the elephant won’t attempt to walk freely. She’s been broken.

The truth is we are all completely free, from a heart of wickedness and from a constricted life of rules, we just don’t know it all at once.

We continue to live broken and fail to understand the freedom granted to us in Christ.

So God reveals it piece by piece, and with each revelation of God’s truth and freedom-casting Spirit, we understand a new way to walk, to live, to break free and run!

With abiding comes belonging and in belonging we find freedom.

This is our freedom, and our gift, and God’s One Big Plan for our lives: to belong to Him.

This story is published in Koinonia — stories by Christians to encourage, entertain, and empower you in your faith, food, fitness, family and fun.

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