"The humans live in time, but our Enemy (God) destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself and to that point of time they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Our business is to get them away from the eternal and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human to live in the Past. But this is of limited value. It is far better to make them live in the Future. It is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it, we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the least like eternity."
...words from C.S. Lewis' book, "The Scewtape Letters." It must be understood that in this book, the story takes the form of a collection of letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior tempter named Wormwood. Throughout these letters, Scewtape attempts to advise his nephew on methods of securing the damnation of an earthly man, known only as "the Patient."
Lewis is pointing out that it is not in our best interest to worry about the things of the future. He eloquently tells us how Satan tirelessly works to get us to distance ourselves from our faith in the Lord by snowballing the "maybes" of the future into a false reality.
You see, we often pray for God's will in our life out of reluctance, because we know the church tells us to pray for "God's will", but we don't always want it. It's one of those "church speak" phrases that we learned to say over time, when we'd really rather have it our way, when we'd really rather pray for the things we want in life. We'd rather have the hidden agenda in our hearts. For some reason, we think that our agenda, buried deep within our hearts, is what is best for our life. It worries us to think that our agenda may not become a reality.
Many times in life, we think we know what's best for ourselves because of the many experiences we have in a certain category of our life. We think we're the experts of our own life. We believe we know ourselves, and what's best for us better than anyone else. In our careers, we don't want to listen to our boss if we think we know more than this person. Professional athletes are often reluctant to listen to their coaches because the athletes believe, through their own experiences, that they know more than the coaches. Teenagers tend to refuse to listen to their parents because the parents "just don't understand" because the times have changed from when they were young. When we begin to believe we are the lone expert of our own life, it's a problem because alone, we can't make it. We can't make it without God.
I think the main trouble with following the plans of God rather than our own is that they are set in a different time frame than ours. Our plans usually start now. We want results now for a plan right here, right now. Most of the time, we'd rather have what we want now rather than what God' wants for us later, even if we do understand His will is better. Satan tells us that alone, we know best, and that waiting on God is pointless. We must understand that Satan specializes in the business of immediate pleasure. It's his selling point on our soul. It's how he gets us to trust only ourselves. It's how he leads us into becoming selfish people. He thrives off of impatience.
Here's the main point: The reason why we worry about the future is because essentially, we're not sure that God is going to give us what we want. But stop and think about that for a second. Do you think the Lord of the universe, who shed His blood for us, who love's us more than we know, would ever have His plan for our lives fall short of something we've conjured up for our own lives? If that's the case, then we should get our minds out of a worried, unrealistic future and back into the present-where time touches eternity.
It makes sense to want God's will for our lives...let's pray for it!
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