Blog

Bill Lawrence

President of Leader Formation International

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Bill Bright

God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life?

You're kidding! You have to be kidding if you think I'm going to believe that God loves me.

Think of how my life began and then tell me God loves me. I don't think He even knew I existed. I don't think He ever cared I existed let alone that He loves me. And He has a plan for me? Think about how I began and then tell me that He has a wonderful plan for my life. Do you know the story of my life? Tell me how great a plan He had in all of that. You're nothing but a joke if you're even that! God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life! Huh! What a joke that is! That's not even funny. It's weird, wacky, off the wall! Do you think I'm that big a fool to believe that? Do you think I have money to give you or a way to honor you or a platform to exalt you? I'm not that big a fool that I'm going to fall for your little game!

Do you know where my life began? I'll tell you so you'll leave me alone.

It wasn't in a palace or a mansion or even a nice house. No sir! It was in north Philadelphia, in a row-house just off Girard Avenue not far from downtown, not too far from the colonial part of the city, but it definitely was not part of that or even a nice part of the city. Just part of rowhouse Philadelphia where the rowhouses are all small, ugly, alike, and unwanted. You only live there because you're on your way up (you hope) or because you're on your way down (too bad) or you're on your way to nowhere  (wherever that is).

That's where my life began. A winter night in mid-February 1938 when a man and a woman got to-gether for sex. Why? For fun? Or joy? Or money? As best I can tell it definitely wasn't for me! At least as it turned out it wasn't for me! But Me is what they got! Or at least Me is what she got.

She was Martha. Martha Heintzelman. She was beautiful from what my half-brother, Donald, told me. He knew her much better than I did since he was with her until he was about twelve years old and knew her, not only as the birth-woman I knew, but as a kind of mother. I never knew her that way, but I knew of her through him when I was twenty-one, so he told me about her long after I was adopted.

But let's go back to when I began, not when I was born, when most life stories start, but when I was conceived, because that's when my life really began. Yes, I was conceived in mid-February 1938 and born on November 19, 1938.

Now tell me God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life when all you have about me is an un-wanted newborn taken to a rowhouse near Girard Avenue close to downtown Philadelphia, probably cared for much of the time by Martha's mother in Allentown about fifty miles north of Philadelphia. It makes sense that Martha went up there at times, but it appears she was a nothing mother. She got baptized and had me baptized at St. Peter's and Paul's Roman Catholic Cathedral close to the Art Museum near downtown Philadelphia when I was two years old. Along my  to adoption I was lost in Atlantic City and rode the trolley car to Willow Grove with Martha and a girlfriend in suburban Philadelphia and then Martha made her final statement when I was four moving toward five. If this little boy isn't adopted by the time he's five I'm going to put him in a Roman Catholic orphanage!

A Roman Catholic orphanage!

Are you telling me that God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life when I'm headed to an orphanage? Are you telling me that I should believe that?

You know what?

You're right!

God does love me and does have a wonderful plan for my life--and for your life as well because God loves you as much as He loves me, no matter what is true about your life.

That's what I want to tell you about in this blog, From the Most Unwanted to the Most Wanted.

I want you to know what I discovered more years ago than I can count. Even though it looked as if God doesn't exist let alone that He loved me and wanted to be involved in my life or that He knew my name let alone cared about what is happening in my life, He truly wants to work in all that I do. I want you to know that God is alive and that He is engaged in all that is taking place in my life--and in yours. Nothing develops in us apart from His grace and His purpose even though we cannot see it until He makes it clear. And that can take more time than we can understand.

In my experience there were years before I could see what He was doing, years of time for me to grow, years of experience before I could teach God's purpose through others, decades to pass until I could put it all together and help others grasp God's grace in those they influence.

This is what I want to share with you as we work on this blog to grow from being the Most Unwanted to Becoming the Most Wanted. This will take time and thought and prayer and sharing with other's who know us as well as those who may not know us now but who may have insight into the grace of God and how He is working in our lives. Just remember that what we can read in a few verses took years for the writer to grasp. That is true in the lives of men like Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, and more. Step back, cry out for peace and patience, reach out for support from those around you, and endure with the strength that comes from the Holy Spirit.

Remember,

The only way to become the most wanted is to endure the

struggle over being the most unwanted through God's grace.