Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems: 49. God Plans every Life.

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Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems: 49. God Plans every Life.



TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 49. God Plans every Life.

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God Plans every Life.

Guidance is entirely a matter of finding God's plan, and then following it. God has a plan for every life. He will lead us into it, and then lead us in it, step by step. He made man's home before He made man. In the simple Genesis record He planned the man, of what sort he should be and what service he should do, before He made him. He planned the best, for He made him in His own image. He gave Himself, His breath, to insure that likeness, and later gave Himself again, His blood, to restore it. He planned a new trinity in making man, Himself and the man and the woman, for perfection of friendship requires three; and man was made for fullness of friendship with God. Every one needs two friends, one above to draw him up, and one alongside to draw him out—so God planned.

God has a plan thought out for the universe, and for our planet, and for each man upon it. The great emergency that sin has made in the world called for special planning. It controls much of His planning for our lives. He knows that emergency as no one else. He feels the keenness and stress of it beyond any other. He knows each man of us, our gifts and endowments, what we can do, and do best. He loves each of us devotedly. The ambition of love is in His planning. He has great wisdom. His plan is best for all the world, and for each man.

The life of the great Hebrew pioneer Abram clearly was thought out (Gen_12:1 and on), and as clearly that of his lineal descendant, the great law-giver (Exodus 2, 3), and that of his immediate successor, Joshua (Num_27:18 and on.). It was the consciousness that he was filling out God's plan for himself that held Jeremiah so steady to his difficult and thankless, dangerous task (Jer_1:4 and on.). Paul, the man to whom we Gentile foreigners owe so much, had no doubt of this in his own life (Act_13:2 and on.); and he plainly set it down as a law of God's dealing with men (1Co_12:11; 1Co_12:18). The greater includes the less. God has no favorites. Every man's life is planned. Every man should plan to live a planned life, the planned life, planned by Another. Every man may. He is touching the very tip-top of human achievement who comes nearest to fitting into the plan thought out for him. This glorifies every life, no matter how lowly, or in how hidden away a corner; for the touch of God's plan is upon it. It dignifies one's life; it has been thought out by a God!

"There is a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough hew them how we may."

And that divine One will shape everything towards the end He has planned, if He may have our consent.

This is the working basis of the whole problem of guidance. It simplifies it much. It is not coaxing a friendly God to keep us along a path we have marked out for ourselves. It is finding and fitting into the plan lovingly thought out for us, and doing the service assigned to us in the great world-plan.

Guidance is a matter of finding God's plan and following it faithfully step by step. A man should aim to have a keen understanding of what God's plan for him is (Eph_5:15-17). The likeness of God imprinted upon him puts him under obligation to find out the plan of God intended for him.

The first great question for every one is whether he is going to go God's way, and to plan to fit into God's plan. The real stiff work in the problem of guidance is here. This must be settled first of all, and then kept settled. It can easily be settled, and it can be kept settled. Yet almost every man of us is bothered with either one or the other of those two things. But if a man will do this part of the sum up, the figuring out of the rest is assured; and more, it isn't hard. Let it once be fixed that a man's one ambition is to fit into God's plan for him, and he has a North Star ever in sight to guide him steadily over any sea, however shoreless it seem. He has a compass that points true in the thickest fog and fiercest storm, and regardless of magnetic rocks.