God's Plan A is always plan A (from December 6 2015)

God’s bump in the road is plan A, your plans were always plan B. I like to find great quotes from famous people, deep thinkers or theologians when I am planning a message. I like to google words or phrases or read old sermons from great preachers and dig up cool quotes. I do this for softball too, I like to have themes each week or each month and the theme is usually a quote from someone great. Well, this morning I am going to quote a deep thinker, a great theologian and all around wonderful person. Here it is, get your pens and pencils ready it’s Hall Mark card material. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Mike Tyson We sometimes learn more in the change of plans than we do from our planned out lives. I don’t know about you guys, but I am a huge planner not necessarily an organized planner but a planner all the same. I like to have my sermon series all mapped out and ready a few months in advance. I do it because you never know what may happen, what may come up, I want to never walk into a Sunday morning with a message that was thrown together the day before or even that morning. Let’s look at Mary’s life, let’s look at Joseph’s life. They were engaged, which I wish there was a class for guys to go and take as young adults or as teenagers. Something that teaches them what is about to happen the moment you ask a young lady to marry you. Guys have this vision of proposing, and trying to do it in a cool or romantic way for them to be able to brag to their friends. Which is a set up, in reality what ends up happening is they plan this amazing night and propose and make it beautiful only to be sitting at a restaurant some day and have someone tell their fiancée how much more amazing theirs was. It’s a trap guys, don’t do it. I didn’t I just told her I loved her and handed her a ring on her break at work one evening. After I had let Tara pick out the ring and pay for the majority of it. I like every other guy in the world will be outdone in some way, but the real challenge will be for someone to under do me. But back to my original thought, the class should be for young men to know what really goes on in life. While boys are playing football, shooting one another with nerf guns and having wars in treehouses girls are living something quite different. While boys are learning to throw better, shoot hoops, maybe even starting to lift weights to impress the ladies girls are doing something quite different. You see guys think the wedding planning starts a few months after they propose, that is what they walk into that proposal night thinking. But you want to know the truth, girls have been planning for years and years. Guys, girls have the wedding all planned out, it’s even worse now with technology. She probably has every detail right down the the type of appetizers served at the reception pinned to her board in Pinterest. While young boys are drawing pictures of animals, and cars and guns girls are doodling their name with the last names of different prospects inside their notebooks in class. So what really changes after we propose, guys is you are now made aware of all of those plans and included in SOME of them. It’s like this, (kneel as if proposing), stand and do an oh my God yes! Then before he can stand up whip out huge binder full of stuff. ( I acted this out by myself during themessage to get the full effect.) Wedding ceremonies are important and I take great pride in preparing what I think is a unique ceremony for brides and grooms. But I get calls, texts and facebook messages regularly asking me if I will perform a wedding and what I charge. I then set up a couple of meetings with them. The first meeting is to get to know them and see what their plans are for the future. Then, we start to plan out the ceremony. 95% of the time when I ask what do you want in a ceremony I get shoulder shrugs from both of them. But, venue, color of dresses for bridesmaids and color of ties and tuxedos that is all figured out. So you get all of the colors right, you get all of the decorations and the music and the table decorations, and the flowers and all of that all lined up. Now, have you ever gone to a bride on the day of their wedding and said to her, ____________ there has been a change of plans. I dare say it’s dangerous the month of the ceremony to tell them there is a change of plans. You talk about panic, you talk about fearing for your life. All her life she has pictured this and all her life she has dreamed of this day and now a few minutes or hours before she gets to live out her fairy tale you are telling her that there has been a change of plans. Luke 1:26-38 Today this would mean she had to go back to all of the stores and delete her wedding gift registry and turn it into a baby gift registry. All of the furniture for the house, all of the curtains and towels and appliances she had chosen were now turned into cribs, strollers, changing tables and diapers. What a change of plans, what a turn of events. What about the other guy? What about Joseph? He had plans too, he was engaged and planning on starting a family….. sometime later. He was to be married to Mary but they had time, they had to pick out the venue and the flowers and the dresses and the time of year. Oh and did I mention this about Tara? I just told her I wanted to get married in February or March because that was before the race season usually begins. Again, Jeff planning out for the future. It wasn’t about our wedding day, it was about the fact that every 7 years it would be on Saturday and every 7 years there would be a discussion as to how we were going to spend our anniversary, and well she was marrying a racer so it would be at the track. No sooner had that come out of my mouth than I found out that we were getting married the next March 6th. Again, she had a plan before I was made part of it. Back to Joseph….. he had plans, he was ready and no doubt he had a picture of what this would all look like. And, let’s be honest guys we are just in it for the food and the honeymoon, that’s it. The flowers yep those are nice, the dresses yes honey those are great, the color of the tuxes yes honey sound great. The venue, yes honey I will be there. Joseph was being robbed of his plans too. Tara and I planned to be married for a few years before we were going to think about children, she was pregnant on our first anniversary. We had plans, God’s were way better. God’s plan is always plan A and whether you realize it now or years from now your plans are always plan B. They say if you want to truly make God laugh tell Him your plans. Well, the reason they say that is that God has a plan for all of us, your days are mapped out before you were conceived so Your plans are always subject to change. God changed Mary and Joseph’s plans and they changed the fate for every human being for an eternity. Think about just how long that bump in the road had been planned out by God. If the genealogies in the Bible from creation until Jesus was born there would have been over 4,000 years accounted for. Unfortunately the genealogies are not complete meaning we lose a lot of years here and there, and well that means much longer than 4,000 years. John 1 tells us in the beginning was the Word(Jesus) and the word was with God and the word was God. So Jesus sat on go for well over 4,000 years. This bump in the road was planned that far in advance. Many of the things that surprise us were planned out decades before they surprise us. Think about how much was riding on that bump on the road. Now, not every bump in the road is going to be life altering, but this one was and your next one just may be as well. God unfolded all of eternity in the simple change of plans for one virgin and one fiancée. All of it, every detail was foretold hundreds and hundreds of years in advance. So next time your plans don’t work out, you hit a bump in the road or face a major change of plans know that it’s God’s plan A coming to life.