Walking God’s Path and Living His Plan

 By Pat Trainum writing as P. T. Bradley

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." Jeremiah 1:5

God has a plan for each of us, a pathway for us to walk, and it doesn’t always include what we think it should.

That thought kept running through my mind as I drove the 550 miles back from Dallas last week. I've always believed God gifted me to be a writer. I’ve worked hard to improve my writing skills and gone from getting scores in the 50s and 60s in the Genesis contest to this year being a finalist. (Thank you, Susie May Warren, Rachel Hauck, Deep Thinker's Retreats, The Ponderers and my Imagine-That-Writers crit partners)

Since I never go into a contest thinking I’ll win, I wasn’t really disappointed when I didn’t. I’d said all along that I’d won when I became a finalist. And I meant it. Winning the Genesis wasn’t in God’s plan for me. And that’s the point. God has a plan. He will give us exceedingly abundantly more that we can think or ask, but it will be in His time frame, not ours. In the meantime, we have to do our part. We have to be ready.

I have a cross stitched piece on my wall: Success is that place in the road where preparation and opportunity meet. But too few people recognize it, because too often it comes disguised as hard work.

Let’s face it, sitting behind a computer, opening our veins and bleeding words on the page is hard work. A lot of those words are never seen by anyone other than our crit partners. That’s why it’s so important to know Who you are writing for and why.

If you’re writing for fame and fortune, you’ll probably never get either. But if you are writing to glorify the One who gave you the gift of writing, you’ll be able to handle the disappointments that will litter your road to publication.

So, that contest you entered and didn’t win, the editor or agent you didn’t get—don’t fret about it. It wasn’t in God’s plan for you, at least not right now. But it was His plan for someone else. Be happy for them. Your time will come.

Remember Psalm 34:4: Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you your heart’s desires. But also remember just 3 verses later the psalmist says, “Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for Him to act.”

What has God whispered in your ear this week?

 

Pat Trainum writing as P. T. Bradley
www.ptbradley.com
http://mbtponderers.blogspot.com/
@PTBradley1
Winner 2012 Daphne du Maurier Unpub Inspirational Category

I asked God to teach me patience and He gave me a book to write