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I bought my son Legos for Christmas this year. He really loves Legos, but I think I was actually more excited to give them to him than he was to receive them. While he absolutely loves to build Legos with me, he is a little boy, so in the past I have pretty much had to tell him where to put every piece. We started building the new set together the day after Christmas, and it was a funny interaction. Kaelen would look at the picture of the truck on the outside of the box and get ahead of himself. He would start putting the “big” pieces on, such as the wheels, before we built the rest of the set.
“Kaelen, look at the directions. Those go on last,” I said.
Later, he said, “Daddy, I can’t find this piece,” pointing to a particular piece referenced in the directions.
“Did you look in the pile?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think you looked very hard, buddy, because I can see it over there. Look at the directions. What color is that piece?”
“Blue.”
“Did you look at all the blue pieces?”
He’d look in the pile and, sure enough, he’d find it.
God often uses the experiences I have with my kids to paint a picture of how He feels about me and my relationship with Him. I had the privilege of preaching the week after Christmas, and as I was doing my sermon prep I couldn’t help but think about my time building Legos with my son. As I prepared my sermon, God and I had a sweet time together. I would ask Him questions and He would answer. Sometimes I would hear Him speak to my heart, other times he would direct me to a particular passage. I felt like, in the same way that I had built a Lego set with my son, my sermon was kind of like a Lego set I was building with my Father in Heaven, only I didn’t know what the final product would look like. God gently coached me through the instructions and helped me get to the end. When it was done, I felt total security in my sermon because, even if nobody liked it, it didn’t matter — it was something I built with my Father.
Our life is kind of like a Lego set, and the reality is that, no matter what we are doing, our God desires do it with us. We can try to build it ourselves, but that generally doesn’t go very well. God’s desire is for us to do this thing called life with Him. He wants to teach us about Himself and walk with us. We have to remember that, much like a Lego set is planned out with instructions to follow, God knows everything about us, down to the number of days and hours we are going to live. We don’t have to worry about anything; it’s already been written. But God really wants to build this “Lego set” that is our lives with Him.
Like my son wanting to put the wheels on the truck before the rest of the set was built, so many times we think we know the big picture and we get ahead of ourselves. But God is there, gently bringing us back to the plan. Our job is to be patient and walk step-by-step with our Father, even though we don’t know what the final product is going to look like. We can trust that we have a good, good Father who loves us deeply. He knows the plan, he knows the final result, and life is about being with Him, being loved by Him, as we work through His plans for us.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
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