The Plan for Your Future

Jan and I just finished a 20-year assignment. God revealed that assignment to me one morning in Athens, Greece, in 1998. He awakened me early and invited me into the kitchen of a condo we were renting.  I sat down with my cup of espresso and literally took dictation from God.  That plan was birthed in 1999 precisely nine months after its conception. In the last 20 years, the plan God revealed has worked out with uncanny accuracy, accurate to the very day in its detail.

We now are on the threshold of our next 20 years. Jan and I have been listening intently to the Lord. This time it feels different. A measured and marked vision for the last 20 years made sense, considering how God positioned our lives during that time.  The coming decades do not have the same feel. There is a profound simplicity with this new assignment. That simplicity will enable Jan and me, and I believe some of you reading these words, to remain mobile and immediate to the voice of God’s Spirit for purposes you might not have considered.

Futurist David Houle said we have entered the Shift Age. In the 20 years from 2017 to 2037, Houle predicts more change will take place in those 20 years than in any 50 year period in human history. This is a Habakkuk moment of unimagined newness where our vision must be so simple and immediately executable that it allows the carrier to run without any encumbering issues, including a mission statement or vision that is labor-intensive and hindering in its design and execution. 

This is how the Early Church rolled. They awoke each day, not having a plan. They only had the moment. They also had a commission – a Great Commission that required freedom of movement to reach the uttermost parts of Earth with the Gospel. That mobile and unstructured commission would not sit well with many life-planning seminars we attend today that invites us to create our own future. 

If you are feeling unsettled and a bit anxious as you consider your future, those emotions could actually be your initial response to something the Spirit is doing in your life. Once you realize it’s God at work and your emotions are responding to an unfamiliar call, the unsettled feeling and anxiety will be replaced with a peaceful trust and expectancy.  Those two components – trust and expectancy - will become your mission statement as you arise each morning and move forward in a rapidly changing and shifting world.