I had to edit a document someone had worked on today, I cannot count the number of times I stopped, took a deep breathe and said out loud, “God you have to help me”. I was actually slightly angry and my anger was on how I assumed my work would be easier just editing, but I realised it would even have been better to start it from scratch and do it to the end, it would’ve saved me more time honestly, because the time spent editing, replacing, removing, adding and checking if it still made sense took more time than I probably would’ve doing it from scratch.

God was teaching me more with the entire process but the biggest lesson is the one I want to share with you.

After I was finished,  I sat reminiscing on the entire situation and I imagined that this is how it is when we go to God half way and tell Him to finish something that we started.

I don’t know if it sounds familiar to you but if it does not, we can use Abraham to see the bigger picture. God promised Abraham a son that will live under God’s covenant to him, God appeared to be taking too long with the delivery of the promise so Sarah took matters into her own hands and asked Abraham to sleep with her servant Hagar, in her words, “perhaps I can build a family through Hagar”. This is someone that had heard the promise of Isaac directly from God’s servant.

Father Abraham did not object, He obliged and slept with Hagar and after things had escalated real quick and Hagar had a child for Him, Abraham came to God and said “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!”  and listen to what God says back; “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.“.

Do you see that God will never ignore His own plans to chase the ones we have started? He is able to change plans but He will never change His purpose.

Some of us start things of our own accord and when  we run into trouble we cry out to God, and God is often gracious enough to answer and asks us to go back from where we are coming but shame and pride has the best of us, so we insist that He works with what we have started with.

Abraham was indirectly asking God to reconsider making the covenant with Ishmael instead of Isaac as intended but God was not going to give into that.

The best way is to start with God and go through the entire process with Him, however, if   we fault and deviate from God’s intended purpose, we must be willing to go back to start afresh if God needs us to, it minimises delays, ensures security and guarantees the fulfilment of God’s will.