God has a definite life-plan for every human person, girding him, visibly or invisibly, for some exact thing, which it will be the true significance and glory of his life to have accomplished. What a thought is this for every human soul to cherish! What dignity does it add to life! What instigations does it add to send us onward in everything that constitutes our excellence! We live in the Divine thought. We fill a place in the great everlasting plan of God's intelligence. We never sink below His care, never drop out of His counsel. But the inquiry will be made, supposing this to be true, how can we ever get hold of this life-plan God has made for us, or find our way into it?
I. Observe, first, some negatives that are important, and must be avoided. They are these: (1) You will never come into God's plan if you study singularity; for if God has a design and plan for every man's life, then it is exactly appropriate to his nature; and as every man's nature is singular and peculiar to himself as peculiar as his face or look then it follows that God will lead every man into a singular, original, and peculiar life, without any study or singularity on his part. (2) As little must we seek to copy the life of another. No man is ever called to be another. God has as many plans for men as He has men; and therefore He never requires them to measure their life exactly by any other life. (3) We are never to complain of our birth, our training, our employments, our hardships; never to fancy that we could be something, if only we had a different lot and sphere assigned us. God understands His own plan, and He knows what we want a great deal better than we do. (4) Another mistake to be carefully avoided is, that while we surrender and renounce all thought of making up a plan, or choosing out a plan, for ourselves, we do not also give up the hope or expectation that God will set us in any scheme of life, where the whole course of it will be known or set down beforehand. No contract will be made with Him, save that He engages, if you trust Him, to lead you into the best things all the way through.
II. More positive directions for coming into the plan God lays for us may be found (1) in God's character; (2) in our conscience; (3) in God's law and His written word.
H. Bushnell, The New Life,p. 7.
References: Isaiah 45:5. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xi., p. 204.Isaiah 45:7. W. Page, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxx., p. 6; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iv., No. 183.Isaiah 45:7-13. C. Short, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xv., p. 4.