God's Plans for Me Are Better Than My Own.

I made mashed potatoes the other night. I did them properly: plenty of butter, a little cream, salt and pepper, whipped until they were smooth. They were, if I do say so myself, perfect.

But, Theodore, my four-year-old, wouldn't touch them.

He had decided, somewhere along the way, that he does not like mashed potato. Not because he had tried it and disliked it. He just knew, the way small children know things, that this was not for him.

So I tried a different approach. "Do you like fries?" Yes.

"Crisps (potato chips for my American friends)?"

Yes. "Roast potatoes?" Yes.

"Do you like mashed potatoes?" No.

It is all potato. He loves it in nearly every form it comes in. But he had made up his mind about this one, and no amount of butter or cream was going to change it.

He was missing out on something good, something made for him with care, and he didn't even know it.

I laughed about it at the time. But later I realized how often I do exactly the same thing with God.

Sometimes God's plan isn't a bowl set in front of me to enjoy. Sometimes it's a door He asks me to walk through. And just like my son, I can decide I don't want it before I have taken a single step.

Jonah did too. God asked him to go to Nineveh, and Jonah had already made up his mind. He didn't want that city, didn't want that assignment, so he ran the opposite way and ended up in a storm, and then in the belly of a fish.

His own plan looked safer to him than God's. But God's plan was a whole city turning back to Him.

What Jonah was so sure he didn't want turned out to be one of the great rescues in Scripture.

I do the same in smaller ways. I sense God nudging me toward something, and my first response is not "yes" but "are You sure?"

Maybe it's something small, like joining the welcome team at church.

Maybe it's something big, like moving across the country.

And often it isn't a flat no like my son's. It's hesitation. It's "not yet." It's a long list of reasons it might not work, all built before I have actually tried.

Psalm 34:8 says, "Oh taste and see that the Lord is good."

Not look and decide. Not assume and hesitate. Taste. Step out. Trust that what He's asking of you was prepared by Someone who knows exactly what you need, and exactly what you are capable of.

My son couldn't see past his idea of mashed potato to the good thing actually in the bowl. Jonah couldn't see past his fear of Nineveh to what God was about to do there. And I can't always see past my own hesitation to the better plan God is holding out.

So maybe the thing you keep putting off, the step you keep talking yourself out of because you can't see how it ends, is the very thing He made for you. Before you decide you can't, taste and see.

God's plans for me are better than my own. Even the ones I haven't taken yet.