It is possible for even the Christian to listen to Satan as he encourages us to make plans in defiance of the Holy Spirit. The world pulls us in every direction with diverse priorities. By making our own plans (as Satan and our flesh nature urges us to do) we fill up our minutes, hours, days and weeks with our own agenda, with no time at all to learn to hear what God wants us to do. Some of us think of ourselves as organized, so determined to be in charge of our lives, we do not even consider that God desires to guide us and show us His way, His truth and the way to His abundant life, and has better ideas for our schedules.

We think it is wisdom to follow the program laid out for us in our “Day timers,” the day so tightly mapped, we can only feel frustration if the Holy Spirit presents an unexpected snag. We fail to see it as an opportunity to do God's will. Instead we view that need or calling as an intrusion. We become irritated with the service God sent in our path. Today Jesus might have illustrated the parable of the Good Samaritan with another character. Imagine a harried Christian, spying the bleeding man, flipping open his pocket organizer and grumbling, “I can't squeeze this into my schedule, God.”

We may find ourselves getting quite upset with people who seem to be deliberately blocking our way, tripping us up, not realizing that God is trying to change our agenda so that we might know Him better. Instead of asking the question, “Who does this person think he or she is, interfering with my plans by his or her actions?” we might begin healing in the Lord by asking, instead, “Who am I to think that I know better what I need to do while I reside in this world? What do you want me to learn from this, Lord?”

When push comes to shove, are we willing to listen to and follow the Holy Spirit or not? Do we believe that God can take an active role in our lives or do we insist on believing that God works okay in sermons on Sunday morning, but there's no time to give Him two cents worth of our attention on any other day. Perhaps He hasn't seemed too much involved in our daily lives, because we don't allow it. When we get upset due to incredible interferences and uncanny interruptions that keep getting in our way, we actually are in a state of rebellion. We really need to want to stop running our lives and learn to let God run our lives for us. We are His children, wanting to do His will.

Although Jesus showed us, by washing the disciple's feet, that one of God's characteristics is service, God should not be thought of as our servant, willing to wait on us hand and foot. It is we who serve Him by serving His children. He is a very benevolent God, however, and totally willing to give us all that we need to live. He, however, will not continue to give us the things that take our lives away as that is contrary to His purpose, therefore, contrary to ours as well. God knows our needs. It is we who need to learn what we can do for Him. It is a relief to know that we do not need to spend our lives striving to get this or get that, but can merely relax into His will for us and find complete fulfillment.

Whenever things get in our way as we plow through our lives, we must stop and have an honest self-evaluation of our spirit of rebellion. We must remember, God is not out to defeat us. He is out to humble us and help us become more useful to Him and His purposes. He cannot use a willful and disobedient child. Do we, then, have a problem becoming the humble and willing child He can use? If so, more dents need to be made on the floor; dents that occur when our knees bear our weight on them in a posture of prayer.

As an example, when someone runs their shopping cart into mine, causing me to cry over the broken eggs that happened when the large bottle of grapefruit juice fell over onto them, I have two ways I can approach this. I can turn to the flesh and listen to Satan stir up anger and condemnation and judgment against this thoughtless individual or I can take a deep breath and silently pray to the Lord for help in dealing with this situation as well as in relating in a Christ-like manner to His child who did this to me.

By my response, the Lord will either continue to send more tests as He continues to try and get my attention so that I can be useful to His purposes or He will see in me a submitted spirit, ready to love at a moment's notice, His children no matter what they do to me. For instance, observing my broken eggs and the bottle of grapefruit juice on top of them, I could laugh and shake my head, saying, “Oh, don't worry about it.”

In this fictional scenario, if I had been rushing through the store, in a tizzy because I needed to hurry scurry somewhere and then get somewhere else after that, I would think it terribly rude and inconsiderate of God to send the man flying into my shopping cart, breaking the eggs and breaking my plans in two because now, with this domino effect, I'll be late to the next two places I needed to go.

But, what if, by my kind and gentle response to the man who ran into me, his heart was softened just a little and his mind made just a little more ready to make a decision for Christ—all because I chose love as my response to his carelessness?

Is my agenda more important than God's agenda? If my day is so packed with my agenda, how is God supposed to work His plans into my life? If my day is completely full, God's agenda will only be able to come in as an emergency of some sort and my response will more than likely be curt or offended or inconvenienced. Is this the best I can do for God?

Our real purpose is to plant seeds for God that may take root or not but, by our response to what life brings us by surprise (and usually outside the plans we have made), seeds of the joy and happiness that lead to all having a desire for God's Kingdom can be our goal. This goal runs parallel with God's goal that we should strive to help bring people into the Kingdom. Also God simply desires fellowship and closeness with His children. He is a deeply personal and intimate Father who knows that time spent with Him is time well spent.

Unfortunately, all our goals generally tend to be task oriented or give us some sort of false sense of accomplishment based on the world's goals (the world itself, being Satan's domain). Sometimes we can think our personal goals are really getting us somewhere but, in fact, we are like a mouse running around in a wheel in an exercise in futility.

A recap of the situations that we often find ourselves in, then, is, because we have been open to Satan's influence, we have become fearful of God's plan for our life and, instead, substitute our own plans, then hope they are in God's will. I'm not saying we are never to have any of our own plans. I am, however, saying that our minds and hearts could be more aware that we WANT to do God's will over our own will and our prayers could be more open ended as we ask that in all things, God's will be done. We must remember that if we crowd our lives with our own plans, we are often doing this because we are trying to build a wall to keep God out of our lives. This is Satan's goal for us so when this happens it is obviously Satan's influence that is causing it. He wants us to listen closely to him, and pay no attention to our Creator and Sustainer. Satan is in total opposition to God's goals. He is deeply involved in his self-centered goals and rebellious ways, hoping to drag as many of God's creatures with him to his doom as he can. His influence, therefore, will always be away from the Creator's goals and never toward them.

How is following Satan's plans today any different from Eve following Satan's plan at the beginning of time? Satan tempted Eve, who then tempted Adam, to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God's plan was that they enjoy paradise and obey Him. Satan's plan was that they begin figuring out things for themselves, shoving out God's knowledge and replacing it with their own disjointed and prejudiced knowledge, all based on appearances. When we make our own plans, filling our space of time in a way that suits us, are we not doing the same thing that Adam and Eve did way back when? We are saying, “I've got it all figured out. This is what I need to do now. This is what I need to do next. And, if the creek don't rise, this is what I'd better do after that.” We have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of what we judge is happening based on our five senses, and have determined that we know the way, can figure out the truth and know our own lives better than anybody (God included).

The truth is we know absolutely nothing at all. And this is good! It is when we can come to life in which we fall into God's ever helpful and ever loving arms and learn to hear what He wants us to do that we can truly begin to say, “Now I understand what my life is for.” Previously we were afraid to know. Now we come, totally humbled and supremely happy, not having a clue as to what the day will bring but, lightly making our plans, we actually catch ourselves looking eagerly for divine interruptions and graceful diversions in which God gets to have His way with us.

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