This week’s question is: How to balance our desire to continuously improve, fulfilling our ambitions, etc. with an understanding and embrace of what God’s ultimate plan is for our life?

You don’t do small questions do you, church? I’ve heard a similar question from two different places. One from a concerned father asking this same question as we picked strawberries. One from a middle-schooler as we made s’mores before the Sandlot movie. Three questions about God’s plan, what is it, how do we follow it, where is our choice in it? Great question! It keeps me up at night. I love questions like these!

What exactly is God’s plan? Is it everything that has happened or will happen to us? I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re fated, or all of our actions predetermined like we’re puppets on a string. God’s plan is NOT everything that happens to us. It is something else. In John 7:17, Jesus says, “Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” God’s plan is something we choose for ourselves. It is an active choice set before us.

The will of God is things like loving God, caring for creation, and loving your neighbor as yourself. God’s plan is for us to show Fruits of the Spirit of  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22-23). Maybe God’s plan isn’t this iron clad path we’re fated to, because I would hope the world would look a lot better if God were in total control in that way. Or Jesus is lying about the goodness of God and life is just as cruel as God is, and then that’s a god I want no part of. I think Jesus can be trusted and I believe in the loving God that Jesus taught, lived, and incarnated. God’s plan involves us working with the Spirit of the Lord to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, to let the oppressed go free (Luke 4:18). We can choose that route.

We can trust that plan and actively choose it every day. Or we can choose actions that are opposite. Traits like hatred, bitterness, impatience, evil, nihilism, cruelty, and selfishness are the opposite of the Fruit of the Spirit. War, hatred, injustice are anti-Christ like behavior.

Maybe improving in the Fruits of the Spirit will help you reach whatever goal you have set for yourself. Maybe your ambition driving you can also help you say yes to God’s plan. They might not be as separate as I’m reading in this question. Unless it involves trampling on the poor, keeping people in bondage and oppression, then I think you’re on the right track, and God has blessed it.