God’s Sovereign Plans Behind Your Most Unproductive Days
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | So how is God at work in our most unproductive days?
00:00:09.000 | When it feels as though we've accomplished nothing and we fall so far short of our own plans and our own expectations.
00:00:16.000 | Those days are so frustrating to us, but they are never outside of God's sovereign power.
00:00:22.000 | It leads to today's question on what efficiency looks like in the first place.
00:00:26.000 | A very good question from a listener named Melinda.
00:00:29.000 | "Hello Pastor John, thank you for this podcast. Back in episode 1115 about caring for those with dementia,
00:00:36.000 | you closed your remarks with this phrase, 'God's priorities for efficiency in this life are not ours.'
00:00:44.000 | Can you please elaborate on this for me? I struggle mightily with time management skills
00:00:49.000 | and I'm a homeschooling mom trying to balance kids' needs and activities, ministry, household duties, and sleep.
00:00:56.000 | I feel overwhelmed with the need to be efficient every minute when it does not come naturally to me.
00:01:02.000 | What should efficiency look like in the busy Christian life?"
00:01:07.000 | I will explain what I mean by saying God's priorities for efficiency in this life are not ours,
00:01:17.000 | but let me say first and right off the bat that the reason I want anybody to know that is not so that they can get more done,
00:01:30.000 | but so that they do what they do in the right spirit.
00:01:34.000 | Okay, so that's preface over everything I have to say.
00:01:38.000 | So now what do I mean by saying God's priorities for efficiency in this life are not ours?
00:01:47.000 | I mean that our priority may be that between 10 and 11 this morning,
00:01:55.000 | I plan to run to the bank and get some cash so that I can be back in time to pay the boy,
00:02:04.000 | the teenager who is cutting my grass, while a neighbor watches my two- and four-year-old for me.
00:02:12.000 | That's the plan. And you feel good. I feel good. I'm making this up.
00:02:19.000 | I feel good that I worked it out. I worked it out so that the neighbor was available and the teenager could come
00:02:25.000 | and I could get to the bank and get back before both of them had other engagements.
00:02:31.000 | Those are my priorities, and I have an efficient plan.
00:02:37.000 | Cut grass, kids watched, bank trip made, boy paid, everyone off to their next engagement.
00:02:44.000 | Victory! Efficiency! That's what I mean by our efficiency.
00:02:50.000 | However, God, in this case, has a totally different set of priorities.
00:02:56.000 | Your neighbor was scheduled to be at a real estate office at 1130,
00:03:01.000 | so she could join her husband to close on a new house, a house which, unbeknownst to them, has a flawed foundation.
00:03:11.000 | The teenager was planning to take his money from cutting the grass and pool it with some of the guys
00:03:17.000 | and buy some drugs that they shouldn't be using.
00:03:20.000 | You hit a traffic jam caused by a rollover of a semi, which has another Unleashed story behind it,
00:03:27.000 | and you're locked up on the freeway for an hour. You never even get to the bank.
00:03:32.000 | You rush home as fast as you can. You get there an hour late.
00:03:36.000 | No money to pay the boy, and your neighbor has missed her appointment.
00:03:41.000 | You are frustrated almost to tears.
00:03:44.000 | Your efficiency proved utterly useless to accomplish your priorities. You failed.
00:03:51.000 | But God's priorities totally succeeded. He wanted to hinder that boy from buying drugs.
00:03:58.000 | He wanted to spare the neighbor from purchasing a house that's a lemon.
00:04:03.000 | And he wanted to grow your faith in his sovereign wisdom.
00:04:08.000 | Now, that's what I mean by God's priorities for efficiency in this life are not ours.
00:04:16.000 | And in my view, this isn't happening just now and then. It's happening all the time.
00:04:25.000 | When you read the Bible, you see in virtually every book the story of God doing things
00:04:33.000 | that are not the way humans would do them or want them done.
00:04:39.000 | God almost never takes the shortest route between point A and point B.
00:04:47.000 | And the reason is that such efficiency, the efficiency of speed and directness, is not what he's about.
00:04:58.000 | His purpose is to sanctify the traveler, not speed him between A and B.
00:05:05.000 | Frustrating human efficiency is one of God's primary—I say primary, not secondary—means of sanctifying grace.
00:05:19.000 | The story of Joseph, Genesis 37 to 50, is one of the clearest examples, right?
00:05:25.000 | Joseph is hated by his brothers, thrown in a pit, sold into slavery, sold to Potiphar,
00:05:31.000 | accused of sexual harassment, thrown into prison, forgotten by Pharaoh's butler,
00:05:36.000 | and then finally—what's that?—17 years in, made vice president of Egypt
00:05:43.000 | so that he could save his family from starvation.
00:05:47.000 | Moral of the story, chapter 50, verse 20, he says to his brothers,
00:05:52.000 | "You meant it for evil. God meant it."
00:05:56.000 | God had an agenda. God had a plan. God meant it for good.
00:06:00.000 | So you guys, you rascals, were the traffic jam that kept me from getting to the bank for 17 years.
00:06:10.000 | But God was positioning me to be the savior of my people.
00:06:15.000 | And he was in no hurry. And I was being tested at every single point.
00:06:21.000 | Would I trust him with his seemingly meaningless inefficiency? Which it wasn't.
00:06:28.000 | And when Paul was trying to get to Spain instead, he had a plan. He had a really good plan.
00:06:34.000 | "I'm going to go to Jerusalem, going to deliver the money, going to get on a boat,
00:06:39.000 | going to go to Rome, going to gather some support, going to end my life in Spain."
00:06:43.000 | What a great plan. He found himself in prison in Rome.
00:06:47.000 | What did he say? What did he say in Philippians 1.12?
00:06:51.000 | "I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel,
00:06:58.000 | so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ."
00:07:05.000 | So his priorities for efficiently getting to Spain were shattered.
00:07:11.000 | But God's purposes to evangelize the imperial guard in Rome? Right on track.
00:07:17.000 | So here's the implication for Melinda.
00:07:20.000 | By all means, make your list of to-dos for the day. By all means.
00:07:27.000 | Get as good as that as you can get. Prioritize the list. Yep. First things first.
00:07:33.000 | Make your plan. Do that the very best you can. Go ahead, read a book about it.
00:07:38.000 | But then walk in peace and freedom that when it shatters on the rocks of reality, which it will most days,
00:07:49.000 | remember, you're not being measured by God by how much you get done.
00:07:56.000 | You're being measured by whether you trust the goodness and the wisdom and the sovereignty of God
00:08:02.000 | to work this new mess for his glory and the good of everyone involved, even when you can't see how.
00:08:12.000 | Wow. Now that would make an interesting productivity book.
00:08:16.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, for this God-centered perspective on efficiency and productivity in the Christian life.
00:08:22.000 | "Frustrating human efficiency is one of God's primary means of sanctifying grace."
00:08:29.000 | I wrote that down, and I'm going to return to that, no doubt, by the end of this day already.
00:08:35.000 | Melinda, excellent question today. Thank you.
00:08:37.000 | As always, we appreciate those very articulate questions, Melinda, like this one you sent in.
00:08:41.000 | And thank you for listening and supporting the podcast.
00:08:44.000 | You can stay current with the Ask Pastor John episodes on your phone or device
00:08:47.000 | by subscribing through your preferred podcast catcher.
00:08:50.000 | You can also search our past episodes in our archive and send us an email of your own,
00:08:54.000 | even questions about daily productivity and what it looks like from God's perspective.
00:08:59.000 | Those are great questions.
00:09:00.000 | We do all of that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:09:07.000 | Well, speaking of trying to discern God's will in the midst of our lives,
00:09:11.000 | "Does God feel distant to me because I messed up, because I angered him,
00:09:16.000 | because I made choices that made him mad and caused him to withdraw from me?"
00:09:21.000 | is a very common question we get from people when it feels like nothing in life is going their way.
00:09:27.000 | And it's a question we will tackle on Wednesday.
00:09:30.000 | Don't miss it.
00:09:31.000 | Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.
00:09:33.000 | (END)
00:09:35.000 | Desiring God's Will In The Midst of Our Lives
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