The term Plan B is one we often associate with various fictional scenarios. It makes us think of the mapping of a military campaign, with an officer pointing a baton at strategic targets on the field of engagement, or even the preparations for a bank heist, with a criminal mastermind revealing a diagram to the gang of how best to penetrate the vault from the basement of the shop next door! In our lives, if our best idea – Plan A – goes wrong it make senses to pull our Plan B from our back pockets. Its aims may not be as all-singing and all-dancing as our first choice, and may even be more about damage limitation, but we’re reassured to by the thought that we have something we can fall back on.
Christians are called to think differently about the direction of our lives. Even so, it’s easy for us to drift through life, responding to situations as they arise, but never quite grasping our divine destiny by the neck and walking it into reality. We end up settling for our Plan B (or even further down the alphabet) because Plan A, God’s plan that is, seems like a wonderful yet unrealistic ideal which we have neither the talent nor energy to achieve, so we settle for less. This is not God’s will for our lives. He operates without a Plan B, because Plan A is perfect… As GK Chesterton said, ‘The Christian faith has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.’
What God desires is for us to have confidence in his Plan A, for it is rock solid and founded on who Christ is and what he has done for us through his life, death and resurrection. Yes, living for Jesus will be difficult at times but we need no special talent and no extraordinary strength in order to do it. All the strength and gifting he will provide to us in the depths of our frailty as we rely on him by faith.
This month we will see in John Grayston’s series on Philippians that success in life is about living in a way that seeks to place Jesus at the centre of everything, both in our own lives and in the lives of others. The model given to us by the apostle Paul is one that is single-minded in this focus: ‘He wants Jesus to be acknowledged, worshipped and obeyed.’ Is that your Plan A?
When we accept God’s vision for our lives, we will stop living in a hand-to-mouth way; we’ll be on the front foot, expecting his breakthrough. As John Clevely observes in his theme series on heaven this month, it will take discipline but we need to choose to live by the values of eternal reality rather than be dragged down by temporal experiences. We are subjects of the Most High King, not slaves of circumstance. Our motivation for this way of living is Christ himself.
This year, today, I encourage you to live out of having taken a long, lingering look at Jesus: ‘his majesty; his incomparable power; his perseverance under pressure; his unquestionable, unstoppable love for you.’
Have a very blessed first month of this new year.
Phil Andrews
Editor