A Slice of Life
Bill Lites
Have you ever wondered what God’s plan for your life really is? I’ve been told 
many times throughout my life that God’s plan is perfect and that all I have to do is trust Him and He will direct the events of my life according to His perfect plan. Well, over the years, I’ve had enough experiences with this concept that I believe it.
As an example, several years ago, while attending another church, the congregation had started a building program to accommodate the added growth of our church. DiVoran and I had been asking the Lord what we should give as our part, and we were having a hard time hearing from Him about that. Then finally He got through to us and impressed upon us to give some bank stock we owned to the church as our part. This was really strange, because of how we had come to own this bank stock in the first place.
About 12 years before this particular building program was set up, a good friend in the banking business had suggested we buy some stock in a new bank. This investment looked good to us because we were getting in on the ground floor, and our friend and his business partners had made money starting banks before.
After DiVoran and I bought the new bank stock. that’s where the value of the stock stayed–on the ground floor. Every year we looked forward to receiving the bank’s annual report to see how much we had made, but there always seemed to be some good reason no dividend was paid. Now, we weren’t losing money, we just weren’t making any. There were times during those 12 years when we really could have used the money, and several times we tried to sell the stock, but nobody wanted to buy it.
Well, as it happened, it was about this time that we started hearing rumors of a bank merger. These rumors culminated a month later with our bank merging with a larger bank, and suddenly our stock was worth 4 times what we had paid for it! Why didn’t it increase in value or sell in all those years? We felt God was saying, “It was for such a time as this.” So, we signed the bank stock over to the church, and when they asked us what value to put on the stock, we said, “We have no idea, that’s up to God, and you will know its value when you sell it.”
We originally had made the investment thinking we would make some money for ourselves, but God had other plans for that money. How did He do that? We don’t have a clue. All we know is that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways
are not our ways and His timing usually doesn’t match up with ours. He is able to plan everything way ahead of us. Then, if we can be still long enough, and listen to His voice, and obey Him, He is able to work out good things for us.
Old Things R New 