DETOURS FROM HIS PLAN

Does God really care when we take detours from the path He has set for us?

Many might argue with me on this point, but I’m convinced that God has a specific role set aside for each of us. He has given us unique gifts and talents and desires, and He has created an individual covenant for us that fits those gifts. “For I know the plans I have for you,” God told us through His prophet Jeremiah (see Jeremiah 29:11). Nothing is left to chance when it comes to God. Long before He created us He knew what He wanted us to accomplish. He knew the people that He wanted us to touch and that He wanted to put into our lives to touch us. You and I were created for a purpose, and God’s perfect plan is for us to embrace that purpose.

We all take detours from God’s plan, and we will do so until the day we die. God is patient and faithful just the same. But how much better would our lives be if we strove every day to stay the course that God set before us? How many people could we bless if we allowed God to work through us each day? How much more effective would we be in life and ministry if we only learned to let God set our agenda?

I’m still not sure why God chose to take me as a young Christian and mold me into an evangelist. But this is the plan that He made for me and so I carry it out the best I can.

And what about you? Have you embraced the plan that God has prepared for you? Have you sought out His purpose for your life and then set yourself toward fulfilling it? Or are you living your life by taking one detour after another?

It’s a question that each one of us needs to ask—and one that God is waiting to answer.

Nicky Cruz, internationally known evangelist and prolific author, turned to Jesus Christ from a life of violence and crime after meeting David Wilkerson in New York City in 1958. The story of his dramatic conversion was told first in The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson and then later in his own best-selling book Run, Baby, Run.