I listen to my boys discussing the football players on the field, arguing and strategizing over each and every play they make, agonizing over their team's defeats or celebrating their glorious victories. Being heavily armed with a spread of football grub, while anxiously yelling at the TV is pretty much the norm around here during football season.
I think about each of these teams and their players and all of the hard work they put in during a season. Each team member must fully rely on the others for complete safety,dedication and for advancement. The Coach must accurately and efficiently write hundreds of plays that make up the team's official playbook. Each athlete must memorize, learn, and skillfully execute the plays in this manual. If one person is off, messes up, or forgets the format, the play will not work out as planned and they will fail to gain any yardage or momentum needed to score. The play book is a blue print, a pathway to a victory, a brilliant plan, one that when followed correctly, could lead the team to the championship game and a monumental victory.
That playbook on it's own is entirely not so fabulous, it is basically worthless. If it just sat on a shelf, had no team, and no coach to use the wisdom in its pages what good would it be? Used for its intended purpose, however, the information in that book is priceless.
What about our playbook, the Word of the Lord, the Holy Bible? It is after all a brilliant manual designed to give us all the insight we need to be our best selves. Like the team playbook, what good does that book do on a shelf or in a drawer somewhere? There is knowledge, powerful understanding, and wisdom for us to soak up and abide by on every glorious page. It is our very own personal playbook, a perfect outline for our individual and uniquely designed paths.
(Jeremiah 29:11)
For I know the plans I have for you says the Lord; a plan for good and not for evil. A plan to prosper you and to give you a hope and a future.
God very similarly to an NFL coach, has written a playbook for each and every one of us, it is a map of sorts depicting His plans for us. A highly efficient plan that is for our good and not for evil. Each playbook is hand written by God Himself! When God designed our plans, He sat down and wrote them in their entirety. The whole book start to finish. We each have a story so unique and inspiring. When we are faithful to follow God's will, we can flow through our pages with ease, absorbing a bounty of knowledge while breezing through the chapters with gusto and an unparalleled zest for life.
The simple fact of the matter is, we may only get small glimpses and mere fragments of these wonderful pages in our playbooks because we are so busy focusing on other outside influences, we are often bogged down with stresses and life's random issues. We let our problems and our fleshly nature take us on a time stealing detour. We are led down the bumpy, misguided road and off of our beautiful, divinely drawn paths. It's like we took all the pages from our playbook and tossed them all in the air and then as each page gently reaches its final resting place on the ground, we try failingly to piece them all back together. Each page left on it's own or in the wrong order can make no sense, it cannot tell a story, there is no plot to follow. It's us a jumbled mess, and our minds cannot grasp it. To the contrary, our playbook , when left in tact and diligently followed in its wholeness is an absolute masterpiece. It is like a road map for the soul.
Psalm 32:8 “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.”
Only God, the author himself, knows what our play book says, He gave the pages order and lovingly numbered every one. We may be stuck on page 54 and we do not like what it says. We may be facing terrible trials and are ready to give up. If we do just that and fail to press on through, we may never see how close we were to victory! We may never have read that page 55 was the page we were waiting for. The page filled with words of freedom, joy, and victory! The very next page may have contained the game winning play!
We must stay the course. We must wholeheartedly believe and trust God. We don't want to leave anything out. Every plot, twist, and turn on the pages of our playbooks are there for a reason. They are all a very intricate piece of our story. Without each page our book would be incomplete and we would miss our victory. We must hold strong and follow our author even in the valleys and trust Him for each day, good or bad... They are all leading us to victories beyond which we cannot conceive.
We do have free will. Our lives will follow the paths we choose, we can follow this book of life page by page in sequential bliss or we can live in the wilderness of uncertainty and unturned pages for a lifetime.
Choose the bliss !!!!
Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; and lean not upon your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your path.”
Heavenly Father,
Help us to diligently seek to follow your plan for us even when we can't see the ending of our story. Help us to trust you in all things. We love you... In Jesus name we pray!!
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment