The Four Spiritual Laws have been a popular evangelistic tool for many years. The first law is that "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." There are two potential problems with this statement. First, God's "wonderful plan" for Christians may include times of suffering and persecution whereby we become more conformed to the image of Christ.
A second problem is that this first law starts out by proclaiming what God has in store for us personally. The better, more biblical place to begin is to affirm that "God has a wonderful plan, period." Salvation is not primarily about God's plan for my life, but about God's renewal of everything. It is only within the vision of the glorious new world that God has promised that we find the strength to cope with the fact that God may have a very difficult plan for our lives.
If you have ever looked at the back side of a quilt or tapestry, you can see that there seems to be no overall pattern or design. The tapestry looks strange, without purpose or direction. But, once you turn it over, you see how the individual patterns make up something that is beautiful.
Our lives do not always seem wonderful. But rather than trying to see what wonderful plan God has for giving us our best life now, Christians trust that the picture God is painting will be beautiful, so we look to experiencing our best life later. God has as wonderful plan, and because of his grace, we are part of that plan.
Trevin Wax, Holy Subversion
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Well said!
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