986 How God Leads

Have you ever noticed how one thing leads to another in your life, and you end up in places you never imagined in the beginning? Something small and seemingly insignificant can be the segway to something so much greater in your future. But when you’re in the small stuff only longing for the bigger stuff, you can’t see the greater stuff it’s leading you to. I know you want to skip this small stuff. I know you want to avoid the hard parts. But sis, if you could only see how this is an integral part of God’s greater plans for you, you wouldn’t hate it so much. You would appreciate God’s miraculous design of your journey if you could only see the end game. Not to spoil this or anything, but girl it’s going to be so good! God knows the plans for you, and they are plans to prosper you, not to harm you. They are plans for a future you can hope in. (Jeremiah 29:11). But God doesn’t always reveal his plan to us in advance. He doesn’t give us a roadmap with a starred end destination. He sets our feet upon a path and invites us to follow him one step at a time, one day at a time, trusting as he guides us through uncharted territory on unknown routes. I often think God likes to take me on the backroads. We never seem to be on the interstate cruising along at 75. But maybe that’s because God doesn’t want me going so fast. Maybe he doesn’t want me to rush through this. Maybe these backroad routes to my destiny are God’s best plan for me. Psalm 32:8 The Lord says “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you.” God knows the best pathway for your life. You may think you do, but God sees what you do not see. He knows how this road leads to the next road and that intersection is necessary for your destiny. And god in all of his wisdom knows if he reveals it all to you right now, you would either grow so excited you would miss what’s here now, or you would get so overwhelmed you would stall out and stop right here. That’s why God’s job is to guide and your job is to follow. Last night I sat around a table with a few beautiful podcast listeners in the tiny town of Sonora, Texas. They said, “each day it’s as if you’re talking right to me.” As we hugged goodbye I said, “be sure and listen tomorrow because I won’t only be talking right to you, I’ll be talking about you!” I heard their stories and we laughed over God’s unique way of guiding us in our lives. How a few of us sitting around that table were fired from jobs (myself included). How at the time it was the worst feeling ever. Such disappointment. Such fear. So embarrassing. So painful. But so necessary. So necessary because God had been inviting us down a different path but we had avoided it. So, he lovingly stepped in, slammed the door and said ‘now you’re done here!’. Redirect. This is what intersections on our journey look like sometimes. We hit the dead-end and we realize we took this as far as it could go, but God’s not done with us yet. This is where we finally allow him to guide us along the best pathway instead of settling for the pathway we were already on. Thank God for dead-ends! I don’t know where that path would have taken me if I would have been allowed to keep going, but I know it wouldn’t have been nearly as good as the one God had planned for me. 12 years ago today I woke up to what I thought was a big ol’ mistake. The day before, in an effort to help an old high school friend who had lost her passion for living and found herself burned out and stressed out as a single mom of 4 little boys, I had started a page on Facebook. That page, per her request, was called the Smokin’ Hot Mama Club. Being new to Facebook 12 years ago,