I Don't Care About God's Plan (I just want life to be good)

Photo by Muhammed Kazmi on Unsplash

Do you believe God has a plan for your life? If you do, are you willing to trust that he is going to do the best thing for you?
Being able to trust God with your life isn't easy. It's our nature to be in control and make decisions based on what we know and what we've been through. While you're trying to make your own way, God sometimes has other plans for you.

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On a Monday morning in September 1998, I was sitting in my office preparing for my day and planning the week ahead. I received a phone call from my supervisor who said he was driving over to see me and wanted to know if I was available. I was immediately taken by surprise. His office was over two hours away and we usually discussed business by phone. He assured me that he was making a routine visit and that our meeting would not take much time.

It wasn’t a routine visit—at least, not for me.

About two minutes after arriving, my supervisor informed me that I had become the most recent casualty of corporate cutbacks. I walked out of the office and made my way through the lobby, trying to not to make eye contact with my (now former) co-workers. I was caught completely off guard and felt like a fool.

That was almost twenty years ago. Today, I can tell you that losing my job at the bank was a blessing in disguise, but I didn’t see it that way when it happened. Back then, I was angry. When they hired me, I was told I had at least a year, maybe two, to build a new territory. But after nine months, the bank restructured and eliminated my position. I was blindsided and thought my career had been hijacked. 
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Who cares if God had a plan.

​For a while, I was angry at the bank executives. I don’t remember all the references, but I know that idiots, morons, and liars were among the terms I used to describe them.

But as I struggled to find a new job, I got mad at God. After all, he could have helped me keep my job or led me into a new one right away. He didn’t do either of those things. Instead, I had to take the first job I could find. I couldn’t have cared less about what God was doing or what he wanted me to do. I was just trying to survive.

Sometimes we choose to do things that are difficult. Other times, we’re forced to deal with circumstances that are out of our control. We hear it’s all part of God’s plan for us—that it was meant to be. There was a time when I didn’t care much about God’s plan for the big picture. I just wanted him to fix my problems. Better yet, I would have preferred he prevent them altogether.

I just wanted life to be good.

But we aren't going to cruise through life without getting blindsided by the unexpected—sometimes something even worse than losing a job.

Is this a setup?

Have you ever felt that no matter how difficult things are or how long you endure, you’ll be forced to keep going until you reach your breaking point? It doesn’t seem fair, does it?

To add insult to injury, we become conflicted for not trusting God that he will come through for us. We often end up feeling responsible for what has happened even when we believe God orchestrated everything.

Is this a setup?

It can feel that way. And it’s one reason many people give up on God or even abandon their faith. 

God cares about other things, too.

Our conflict with God often centers on one core issue: 

What is important to you isn't always the most important thing to God.
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Tweet: What is important to you isn't always the most important thing to God.

​As an example, you may value your job because it advances your career. But God may want you there for the people you work with. What do you think matters more to God—your position at work, or that someone you work with is lonely and depressed? And if God wanted you to help that person, would you?

When we're receptive to God's plan for us, we learn that there is much more to life than what we want for ourselves—or the things we think we want.

Many times, when we look back on a season of life, we see that things worked out for the best. After significant time passes, it’s much easier to see that what we wanted may not have been in our best interest.

Letting go of what matters to us is one of the most difficult things about having a relationship with God. But the good news is, God still cares about the things you care about. He just wants us to let him lead the way. This scripture from Proverbs gives us hope:

Proverbs 3:5-6 (NLT)
(5) Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. (6) Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.

The key takeaway from verse 5 is, “do not depend on your own understanding”. God doesn’t always adhere to logic, but we do. Sometimes it’s impossible for us to make sense of why something happened the way it did, or that it happened at all. That is when we have an opportunity to trust that God knows what he’s doing.

Another important point is in verse 6. If you sincerely ask God to lead you, he’ll not only show you what to do, but the best way to do it. You're always better off when you take the path God has for you versus taking your own route. You can ignore God and go in any direction you want, but you risk wasting precious time to learn the hard way.

Developing trust in God isn’t easy. But the more we pray, the more God speaks to us. The more we walk it out, trusting the direction he instills in us, the more confident we will become. As we develop our relationship with him, we will become more comfortable with allowing God to lead.

Remember that our relationship with God is much like the one we have (ideally) with a parent or best friend. We trust them with our lives. If you can learn to trust someone that much—who is flesh and blood—think about how awesome it will be when you can give God that same level of trust.

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A couple of months after losing my job at the bank, an investment firm called and made me an offer. I accepted it and ended up working there for seven years. It was a valuable experience and much better than my job at the bank. The connections I made there helped me later in my career as well.

Even when things don’t make sense, take a leap of faith and give God a chance to show you what he can do.


Do you believe God is going to take care of you, even when things appear to be going wrong?

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