J. Douglas Dortch, Jr., Ph.D.
First Baptist Church, Tallahassee, FL
“Where Am I Going?”

Scripture: Proverbs 19:21

August 5, 2007

As the story has it, one day a full-of-himself salesman walked into an office, demanding to see the owner.  When the secretary informed him that the owner wasn’t in and asked if she might be able to help him, the salesman huffed, “I never deal with underlings; I’ll just wait until he gets back.”  “Very well,” the secretary answered him, directing him over to where he could take a seat.  After an hour passed, the salesman became impatient.  Getting up from his chair and striding to the secretary’s desk, he asked the secretary, “How much longer am I going to have to wait?”  And in her sweetest and most innocent voice, the secretary answered him: “About two weeks; he went on vacation yesterday.”

Some of us are simply too demanding for our own good.  While it’s good for us to be focused and decided people, there are times when we just get too big for our britches and we have to learn the hard way that our wants and expectations aren’t the controlling factor in every situation.  Sometimes our wants and expectations get trumped by those of others who are more powerful or more experienced or more discerning – like with God.

Our text this morning comes from the book of Proverbs, which is a book full of wisdom sayings.  But the wisdom of Proverbs, like all the wisdom material in the Bible, is not an intellectual wisdom.  It’s a practical wisdom; it’s a wisdom that enables a person to negotiate the twists and turns of everyday existence.  It’s more than “common sense” wisdom.  It’s more like someone hunting Easter eggs, who’s being coached where all the eggs are hidden so that while the rest of the group is looking around frantically and impulsively, the one being coached goes straight to where the eggs are.

You say, “If that’s how God works, that’s not fair.  If that’s how God works, then why would God tip off some people while allowing the rest to wander around in a chronic state of confusion?”  And the answer to that very reasonable question would be: “Because God has given every person access to the wisdom we need to live full and productive lives; it’s just that some of us have chosen to go our own way instead of His.”

And that truth leads me to ask a question of you this morning: “Are you going your way in life, or are you going God’s?”  Before you answer, hear the challenge of the verse that is before us today: “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.”

What we have in this verse is a conflict of wills.  There is the will of man versus the will of God.

Now, who in his right mind would even wage such a contest?  That would be worse than sending a team from Gilchrist Elementary School up against the Seminoles.  No one would ever think of doing such a thing.

And yet, not a day goes by when there aren’t some who don’t have it somewhere in the back of their minds that when it comes to what’s best for their lives, they are in a better position to make that call than God.  When they reach a fork in life’s road and God is calling them to take one way and their hearts are taking them in the other direction, they go with their hearts and hope that God will understand.

I was reminded of this truth the other day while on vacation.  A friend and I were playing an unfamiliar golf course, but because both of us are experienced golfers who have played more than our share of golf courses, we figured we would be able to negotiate our way around that particular track without paying much attention to the directional signs.  We’d come to a fork in the cart path and instead of slowing down for the signs that were there to point us in the proper direction, we chose to follow our instincts.  We chose to follow the path that “looked right” to us.  After all, we were “grown-up” golfers; it wasn’t our first time to be out on the links.  Suffice it to say that while we played all 18 holes, we didn’t play them in the order that the course architect had originally laid out.

You can get by with that arrogance on the golf course.  You may miss out on something of the experience the architect had in mind when he laid the holes out, but you can still play the course and not be the worst for it. 

But you can’t get by with that arrogance in life, the writer of Proverbs is telling us.  God has laid out this life in such a fashion that the only way we can experience it in all its fullness is by following His plan and pursuing His purpose.  After all, as the Proverb reminds us, “It is the Lord’s purpose that (ultimately) prevails.”

That word “purpose” in the Hebrew is a vividly significant word.  “Purpose” is almost too mundane a translation.  “Purpose” is something that can sometimes be interpreted as being sterile and routine, as in “this kitchen gadget sure serves a nifty purpose.”  But the idea in this proverb has to do with more of an exquisite design.  It describes the work of an artist or a sculptor.

When we were in Guatemala, we spent the morning of the last day at the market in Antigua City, the old capital.  In the market you can buy all kinds of hand-made crafts and articles.  One of the things I bought was a manger scene that one of the vendors had made out of a piece of brittle clay.  It was a simple but fascinating piece of artwork, with Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus.

Later, I was purchasing one last item for family back home, and in shuffling my purchases, I dropped the manger scene and it chipped.  I took it back to the vendor and when she saw it, she said without hesitation, “I can fix it.  Do you want me to fix it?”  And while I negotiated with her for another manger scene, I left happy to know that the one I had broken was capable of being restored.  Her work would not have been in vain.

What this proverb is telling us is that in spite of what the poet Robert Burns called “our best laid plans,” there are falls and there are drops.  Things get chipped and some things get broken.  But what God promises us is that if we will but trust in Him, He will set things right.  Even when everything in life seems to be falling apart, God still has an exquisite design that nothing can keep from coming to pass.  Nothing can ultimately stand against it.

Do you see what this promise means?  It means that God isn’t committed simply to pulling together the broken pieces of our lives in desperation or panic.  God isn’t just seeking to minimize the damage in our lives.  It means that He takes our mess and He uses it to bring about some masterpiece design.  He receives our brokenness and He restores it to a thing of pristine beauty.

Jesus understood this truth, and he staked his life upon God’s faithfulness to it.  And that is why on the evening of the first day of Passover, he gathered with his disciples in an upper room around a table, took the bread, gave thanks for it, broke it, and said to them, “This is my body which is given up for you; do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).  Jesus trusted that though his body would be broken and his blood shed, God’s purpose would prevail and His salvation be revealed.  And it was.  For our sakes, it ultimately was.

What about you?  Do you have that same trust and devotion?  Do you have that same sense of eternal purpose to your life?

While most of us like to think that we’ve got this thing called life figured out reasonably enough, in our more honest moments, we understand that there’s still a lot about it that eludes us.  There’s still a lot about it that we haven’t mastered.  There’s still a lot about it that frustrates us.  There’s still a lot about it that makes us feel lost.

I love the story that pastor Howie Childs tells about how he learned to ice skate on a frozen pond in Michigan.  For those of us who’ve never been past the Mason-Dixon Line, think “roller skating” and you’ll be able to follow the story.

As he explains it, one day he and his son went out to a pond shortly before dusk so that no one in the neighborhood would see them learning to ice skate.  At least that was their plan.  They drove the car practically to the edge of the ice, and Howie put his skates on while sitting in the front seat of the car.  When he was all laced up, he hollered to his son, “Are you ready to go?”  To which his son answered, to Howie’s great fear, “You go first, Dad!”

Like many people, Howie had learned to skate in an ice-skating rink, where you start out by holding onto the sides of the rink and push yourself off.  So, employing that strategy, Howie stood up, holding the door of the car and gave himself a push, whereupon he landed flat on his back.

When he tried to get up, he couldn’t.  Every time his feet would keep slipping every which way, and he was too far away from the car to find any way to pull himself up, so he just sat there, cold and embarrassed, with a broken spirit and perhaps a broken something else.

Just then some neighborhood kids from his church came by, whom I know he was really happy to see.  They’d been standing to the side, watching their pastor make a fool of himself struggling in vain to get back up on his feet.  And finally they had come over to help.  He says he has never forgotten their wisdom.  “Pastor,” they told him, “if you want to stand up and skate, you’ve got to get on your knees first.”

You may be here this morning and your spirit is broken and your hope is lost.  You’re dazed and confused, and you don’t know what your next step should be.  At one time you had big plans, but now you’ve got nothing to go on.

Actually, you really do.  You have God, and the gift of His salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.  If you want to stand up and live, then you’ve got to get on your knees first.  For while “many are the plans (that are) in a man’s heart…it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.”

Remember that truth and go with it, one day at a time, and whatever life has broken, God in Christ can restore and renew.