While growing up, the plans for my future revolved around falling in love, having children, and living happily-ever-after. I had such high hopes and dreams. I didn’t plan to be married to an abusive Christian husband for thirteen years, but it happened.
How Our Plans Are Flawed
My abusive marriage happened because I adopted my father’s devaluing words that said I was not worthy of good love after being date-raped at fifteen. My self-worth was almost nothing, but it didn’t stop my plan and desire to be loved. Being raped and devalued changed my strategies in life.
I became driven by my unhealthy illogical emotions and desires to be loved. The devil used my unawareness about domestic abuse and Christ’s healthy love design to deceive me with the attention and unhealthy love of an abusive young man. When he proposed to me at eighteen, I said yes because I believed that I would never have another chance at love.
During my thirteen-year abusive marriage, I tried every strategy I could think of to fix myself, to fix my husband, and to find a way to make my marriage work. I kept trying to make a plan to protect my children, to keep God loving me, and to figure out if it was truly God’s will that my children and I should be hurt.
Once I had exhausted all of my strategies and plans, I cried out to God for help. In his mercy and grace, he told me to run because this wasn’t his will or design of love. This time I listened and followed his strategy. I came to Fort Collins, Colorado, with my children. In time, I broke free from this abusive marriage, but I still felt love-starved and confused.
Not Knowing About My Responsibility Left Me Blind and Vulnerable
To be honest, I didn’t know I was responsible for seeking God with all of my heart and work with Jesus to discover his ways and plans. I was still in the mindset and beliefs that I wasn’t as important to God as other people. I believed this lie because I didn’t know God’s truth or my identity in Christ. I was living out what I knew.
I tried to believe that God’s plans for us are good, but I didn’t know how to find them. I also knew God created us with free will and the power to choose. However, I didn’t understand how I was deceived into abuse, even though I believed in God. My eyes, heart, and mind were not open to God’s truth until I started studying God’s word and seeking him with all my heart.
My journey of faith helped me learn that God promises to use everything. Our trials help us grow our faith while they equip us to help other people that took the same path when we dwell with him. God didn’t create us with a manual for our lives, but he gave us his word to help us know how to love and live for him with all our hearts. In our human condition, we cannot fathom or hold up to knowing all of the weight of the bad choices we make apart from God’s plans for our life. God often slowly reveals his plans in the middle of our bad choices because he is compassionate and loving.
When Jesus lived on earth, he showed us how we could love and serve God first and overcome whatever challenges we face in our life’s journey. As disciples of Christ, we can say that we follow Jesus. However, our words, attitudes, and actions reveal if Jesus is leading our hearts, thoughts, and emotions or if our lives are all about us. We can say Jesus is our Lord, but this means we must seek his will, discover his plans, and obey his ways instead of ours.
Living in God’s plan of faith requires us to participate willingly. Our faith is designed to require us to let Jesus lead us one step at a time, as we trust his strategies and plan. Every step in a plan has a purpose, an order, and a strategy for us to grow in a deep personal relationship with him every day.
When You Know God’s Heart, You Know His Plans are Good
God waits for us to seek him for his answers, his guidance, to grow our faith, and to complete our mission in his grand plan. Jesus told us that in our lives will have trials on this broken earth. But with him and through him, we can overcome. The most significant truth and belief you must know about your future is that you truly believe what God tells you about his plans for you. Do you believe what God’s decree tells you?
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:11-13 NIV
You were created by the hand of God to be in his plan at this time in history. There is no way for us to completely know or understand the; why’s, how’s, who’s, what’s, where’s, and when’s of God’s plans because he is all-knowing. However, because of Christ, we know when we surrender our plans and strategies to God, he will lead us to a new love, hope, joy, peace, and life.
As we deal with the uncertainties the COVID-19 virus has brought to the world, we must trust God to use this time to teach us, to bring us close to him and one another, and to empower us to be his hope, light, and peace in the world. Let us proclaim the following verse as we ask Jesus to help us in our unbelief. Let us trust the strategies and plans of God and seek Christ’s peace.
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life. Psalm 143:8 NIV
I know how difficult it can be to learn to trust anyone once you have been hurt. You don’t have to trust people, but I encourage you to learn who God your creator is and then decide if you can trust him and Jesus. Please download this FREE EBook How to Trust God now!
