BBD Corrections for Disrupted Plans
Posted by: theburningbushdevotional <theburningbushdevotional@...>
Since June 8th 1998, this is
the 1824th
The Burning Bush Devotional
08 July 2021
There are two small corrections changing the word "doing" to "going" and the word "it" to "if."
Disrupted Plans
There are
many plans in a man’s heart, nevertheless the Lord’s counsel—that will stand. –
Proverbs 19:21 NKJV.
For this
reason I also have been much hindered from coming to you (Paul’s plans for visiting Rome.). But now
no longer having a place in these parts, and having a great desire these many
years to come to you, whenever I journey to Spain, I shall come to you. –
Romans 15:22-24 NKJV.
Come now,
you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a
year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will
happen tomorrow. – James 4:13-14 NKJV.
Friday afternoon I had just finished preparing the evening
sermon for Sunday and was nearly finished with a bulletin insert when I
received a text message. The text was from my Director of Missions of our local
association of churches. It was a notification that the speaker at our pastor’s
conference that week had tested positive for covid that morning. It had been a
small group around some tables, and I had also visited individually with the
speaker that day.
My plans for Sunday had just been disrupted. My wife and
I and our son have all had the moderna vaccinations. However, from what we are
now hearing it is possible even for those who have been vaccinated to contract
the virus and to spread it to others even when asymptomatic. Out of an
abundance of caution which has been my mode of operation since the pandemic began,
I realized that my plans would have to be changed.
One of our deacons had been working on his first sermon
and I asked him to preach that message Sunday morning and a retired pastor that
is now a member of our church to preach Sunday evening. I know that God has
changed all of our plans and I am looking forward to seeing what God is going
to do through all of it!
We can look at disrupted plans as being a disaster, or we
can see them as having the potential to be opportunities for God to do
something even better. The apostle Paul says that his plans of visiting Rome were
hindered. I like what Warren Wiersbe says about this: “The vast area of opportunity in other parts of the empire
kept Paul from visiting Rome sooner. He was not hindered from going to Rome by
satanic opposition or physical obstacles, but by the challenge of completing
his work right where he was.”
March 12, 1812 was a horrific day for the work of missionary William
Carey as a fire destroyed years of his translation work and materials for that
work in India. Carey’s response was to review the blessings that God had given
the ministry there and to thank God for all God had done. Carey was able to
duplicate all of the work that had been burned and used it as an opportunity to
improve upon what he had done before. What a great example for us all to
follow!
Have your plans been disrupted? Thank God for all the
blessings God has poured into your life and then look to see what God has for
you now. It may be a terrible awful day, but God has the power to see you
through it and to even bring good out of it just as it says in Romans 8:28. If you are “the called according to His purpose” and “love God” that is what God will do. Let Him!
Copyright © 1998 - 2021. Ed
Wrather. The Burning Bush website has been online since January 31, 1998. On
June 8, 1998, the email version of the Burning Bush Devotional was first sent.
Ed Wrather began writing devotionals in the early 1990s. The distribution of
those first devotionals was primarily through the Burning Bush Newsletter sent
to prison facilities throughout the United States and Canada.
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