When life isn’t what you hoped it would be …

While scrolling through your Facebook timeline, if you miss a meme posted by someone you probably haven’t missed anything important.

But a Facebook friend of mine posted today a meme that has a very significant truth to it. The message was this:

“What messes us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it’s supposed to be.”

Every one of us have some kind of picture in our minds of what we think life will be like for us. And for the great majority of us, life will turn out to be different from that picture in some way. For some, reality will be only slightly different, for others it will be radically different. For any of us, when we come face-to-face with the differences between what we thought life would be like, and what life really is like, we can be tempted to experience deep disappointment.

Bruce Larson, prolific author and former president of Faith-at-Work, tells of how one man was disappointed that the dream he pursued for his life never came to pass …

Frank Laubach, founder of the Christian Literacy Crusade, is surely one of God’s most unusual and effective servants in our century. At forty-five, Frank Laubach was a theological seminary professor and a missionary in the Philippines. He was next in line for the presidency at the seminary, but when the incumbent president retired, the seminary board chose somebody else. Laubach took off for the hills to sulk just like some of the biblical characters before him. He was mad about the unfairness of life and the injustices of God. At midlife, he was a failure by his own standards.

But while he was there God spoke to him, “Frank you can change. I have great things for you to do.” Subsequently, God gave Laubach the creative key to teaching hundreds of millions of people throughout the world to read for the first time. He is the father of the modern literacy movement and one of the most pivotal people in our time. As a Christian missionary he agreed to help non-Christian governments set up literacy programs for which he could supply the materials — and of course he supplied operations of the Bible. This man opened up the pages of the Bible to literally hundred of millions of people. He refused to be the victim of his past failures. He had hope for what God could do through him in the second half of life.

For a while, Laubach was messed up because the picture he had in his head of what his life should be like crashed and burned. But that’s because what God had planned for Laubach was actually something much greater. Larson summarizes Laubach’s experience like this …

Laubach had one dream — to head a major theological seminary. God had a bigger dream — to open the pages of Scripture to hundreds of millions of people. But He had to change Frank’s heart AND his circumstances to help him catch the new vision.

Recognize that disappointments, discouragements, and defeats are often God’s redirecting of your path to something even more important to the cause of the Kingdom of God (even later in life!). God said “no” to Laubach’s dream of the presidency of the seminary. But God’s “no” was bigger than his limited dream. In the exchange, he gave Laubach the world.

When Laubach allowed God to change his thinking, something much better for him — and for the Kingdom of God! — came forth! Laubach experienced the truth of Romans 12:2, which states:

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect,” Romans 12:2.

When we allow God to transform our minds, and align our thinking with His, we’ll discover all that God has in store for us in a way that will not disappoint.

Are you still chasing a dream that’s different from what God has intended for you? Or have you allowed God to change your thinking so that you can see His greater plan for your life and His glory?

Scotty