Confidence In God’s Plan For You

Dear Reader,

How are you? I hope you are well.

So, I promised myself that I would write 52 non-work pieces this year (one per week), and just like that, it’s the 7th of January 2024. I was confused about what to write about, as my go-to topic is mental health. However, I remembered something that happened a few days ago, and I would like more people to read some of the things God helped me to share.

My best friend sent me a voice note two days back, practically crying. She needed clarification on some things. It seemed like her friends and colleagues were way ahead of her, and she was at the bottom of the ladder. I think this happens to us as humans a lot, and we kind of forget the good things God has done and can do. We forget these things even though we sang the song God is Able so much when we were younger. It is not a crime or sin to feel like this sometimes. 75% of us probably feel like this occasionally (especially if you are a youth or young adult). I feel like I have not achieved much, and I am slow. You probably feel like your friends are doing better and you didn’t make the most of opportunities. Your friends probably feel like they lack enough people to confide in. Their other friends probably feel like they keep getting it wrong with relationships. I hope you see what I’m saying. The cycle is endless. However, there are some things you should know to keep these thoughts in check.

Jeremiah 29:11 MSG version says, “I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out - plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.” Let’s start there. You are not the last on the ladder like you think. There are perks to where you are now, and there are equally downsides to where your friends are. No, I am not speaking of spiritual aspects now. You must be constantly aware of this. For instance, if you are working in a school and you don’t earn much, you close by 1 pm or 2 pm, maybe you even get to go to school just 4 times a week, and your friend looks way ahead. She works in a hybrid tech start-up (2-3 times per week), gets almost double your salary, and closes work at 5 pm (both online and on-site). At the moment, your friend seemingly is doing better than you are. First of all, it is not a competition. Secondly, do you remember when one of your friends told you something they were excited about, and you were also happy for them, but you told them to relax still since you guys did not know all the details of this particular thing? Maybe a few weeks later, the same friend came back to complain about this and that concerning that “opportunity,” you’re just there like “Sorry, that’s not good oo,” etc. In your mind, you perceived that what was glittering wasn’t gold, but telling your friend that at that time would not have made sense.

No, I am not saying you should be happy or feel comforted when your friend’s boss gives her an unnecessarily challenging time at work. Maybe you are like “Sheybi you’re even collecting up to a million naira per month”. No, I don’t encourage that. That is witchcraft (we will get there in another letter). I am saying that just as teaching at that school gives you peace of mind and more time for yourself, and your friend’s work gives her considerably more pay and less time at a physical office, there are downsides to both of them. Less pay for and on-site demand for you, more work time, and an extremely picky boss for your friend. Please keep in mind that this is just a scenario. It could take up other forms.

As long as you are a child of God and constantly communicate with your Father, you have nothing to worry about. That phase is just a short phase of your life that I know God wants you to learn something from. He wants you to pick something, he needs you to change a particular mindset/belief, or he has someone he wants you to meet. Whatever is going on is not a mistake; it is part of God’s plan, and you must be sensitive to it. Money and material things would sort themselves out. Often, it is not the leader of a 3-km marathon at the 500m mark who wins it finally. There is something about God - if he wants to entrust things into your hands, he needs you to know some things already, think in a particular manner and unlearn some things. Here’s the thing: if you are not sensitive and don’t learn from a specific experience that he wants you to learn from, you will have wasted that experience and seeming pain, and you will have to go through another experience with the same moral lesson. As a good Christian aware of who their Father is, you will keep praying that God should deliver you from problems. You may even say that God should help you so you won’t be distracted, and he can entrust his work to your hands. Then God is like, “I want to increase your capacity, but it’s these experiences that will delete that mindset, give you patience, teach you how leaders should act, and many other things that I want you to learn.”

My friend, if you are God’s child and you are so stubborn that it will take you three experiences to learn what God would have you learn in one experience, you are the cause of your stagnancy. You would wonder why it is there in 1 Samuel 15:23 that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. If you sense what God is trying to teach you and ignore the nudge, you might as well be committing a sin. If God planned to use 10 years to prepare you for what he has in stock for you, and because of your stubbornness, it takes you 30 years to be ready, God was not slow. You were stubborn. If he wanted to be so fast, he could’ve discarded you and entrusted his work through you and your destiny to someone who learns fast. But no, God is a good God who doesn’t give up on us just like that. Our stubbornness as children of God is one of the main reasons why manifestation time differs for different people.

If I am not struggling with greed and covetousness, and you are struggling with them, we cannot have the same experiences. Even if we have similar experiences, God would have us learn different things from the experiences. If I struggle with pride and am down bad, say 9/10, and your greed is 5/10, we cannot have the same lesson time. God may have to use 3 years to get rid of my pride and just 1 year to get rid of your greed. However, if I am not careful and don’t learn, it may take 6 years for me to get rid of that pride, while you learn your lesson 5 years before me. Hence, your manifestation (God entrusts you with wealth, authority, people, etc) starts first. I hope you get what I’m saying. How deep you’ve sunk into something God wants to eliminate, the “sin/vice” itself, and your sensitivity to the spirit determines how long you keep going in circles. Not everything weighs the same in the spirit! Matthew 23:23 says, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill, and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former.” Jesus was the one speaking there.

Imagine you have a 6-year-old daughter that you love so much. She brags every time in school about how her dad/mum is so sweet and how you can give her anything she wants. Because of all this, if she asks you for a car, would you give it to her? Why not? Your reasons may be that she cannot drive, she is too tiny physically (her hands can’t get to the steering wheel, neither can her legs get to the pedals), she cannot see further down the road, she is not logical enough, she cannot talk to fellow adults on the road when she needs to, she may even get distracted playing with toys during a traffic jam, etc. It is the same with God. No matter how much you brag about God, he won’t then kill you. He will not give you something that will cause an accident (for you and others). He needs you to be more logical and grow spiritually, physically, and emotionally. He needs you to speak well, to drop distractions on your trip, etc. He needs you to build capacity, and then once that is done, things start to flow towards you.

We are human, and from time to time, we tend to feel sad, but we need to remember Isaiah 55:8-9. God’s thoughts and ways are way higher than ours. We need to have confidence in his plans and be sensitive at different seasons (and drop stubbornness too). The path of the righteous shines brighter and brighter. You will remember this piece someday when everything works out better than you expected.

God loves you more than you love yourself.

I wish you a wonderful week ahead.

Sincerely,

Emmanuel.