Why I Believe that God has a Plan for You

Do you ever feel like you’ve lost the narrative thread of your life?

My family and I made a trip to Martyrs Shrine on the weekend. It was the first time back in a few years, and as my wife and I approach our 10th anniversary I felt like we were due.

Martyrs Shrine commemorates the lives of the first missionaries to North America, Jesuits Sts. Jean Brebeuf, Gabriel Lalemant, Isaac Jogues & companions. These valiant and holy men paid the ultimate price in order to bring Native Canadians the message of the Gospel.

It’s also the place where God entered back into my life in a most surprising and powerful way.

In my early twenties I was living a very secular life, with a lack of a deep sense of purpose or meaning and a lot of fleeting pleasures. I didn’t have the slightest sense that there might be a greater plan for my life. I didn’t see any narrative thread, so my default philosophy was just eat, drink and be merry.

My friends brought me to a youth rally at Martyr Shrine on the promise that there would be a lot of girls there. What I didn’t expect was that I’d become acutely aware of what was missing in my life and that God would provide himself as the answer to the longings of my heart. (More on that story here.)

My life pivoted that day and I entered into the Springtime of a new relationship with Jesus. I repented of and confessed my sins, started praying again, started volunteering among the poor, got involved in my university chaplaincy... so much of how I lived changed. 

It was a new life. 

However, some months after my conversion I came to doubt that I could really be a “new creation.” (2 Cor 5:17) I stopped one day and looked at myself and became afraid. I was used to being a great sinner, and now I was making friends with all these people who were truly good and honourable and admirable. What if they realized who I really was? Wouldn’t they… hate me?

Wouldn’t they see me as a fraud? Trying to live this new kind of life? Who was the real me? What was the real narrative of my life?

Who was the real me? What was the real narrative of my life?

In my apartment by myself I paced and fretted and at one point cried out to God, because I felt an internal turmoil and l was ready give up on myself. God was so good, but I was bad. What else could I do but flee from him?

I asked him, if he had anything to say to me, to please do so now.

I opened my Bible at random and my eyes fell on these words:

“The Lord will complete what he has done for me;
Your kindness O Lord is everlasting.
Do not forsake the work of your hands.”

I cannot describe the hope that flooded my soul when I read these words from Psalm 138. It is as though God spoke to the core of my identity and promised me that I would not have to even do my conversion on my own.

This is why I believe that God has a plan for every one of us. He has a vision that he wants to bring about, and whatever point we are at we can lift our eyes to him and say yes to that vision (even though we can’t see it like he can).

Today people often seem surprised that I was not always living as a Christian, that there was a time when faith was not even on my radar. They can’t picture me not being a Christian, when I couldn’t picture myself as one.

That’s one way I know that God is faithful to all his promises.

I hope you know that he wants to be faithful to you as well. Will you embrace his plan for your life, despite whatever weakness and woundedness you see in yourself? Do you realize that there is a narrative that he is the author of that includes your good and your bad?

If you haven’t yet, tell him so now. You aren’t in this alone.

The message that Sts. Jean Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant died to deliver broke through to me, hundreds of years after their deaths. They are still missionaries, now from heaven, and I am so grateful to them.

And 13 years after I came to Martyrs Shrine to meet girls, I returned with my wife (a girl I met that day, by the way) and our 6 children. With a heart full of joy we took a picture at the place of my conversion, and I reflected at how far he had brought me since that day.

 

Amazing to visit the site where God entered back into my life in a most surprising and powerful way. With the woman he chose to do it through. And all these kids he chose to give us. #awesomeabundantlove

A post shared by Josh Canning (@catholicjosh) on

Sep 9, 2017 at 11:24am PDT

With great sentimental appreciation I went to confession on Saturday, and as I knelt down to pray my penance afterwards the words of Psalm 138 came back to me again. 

“The Lord will complete what he has done for me;
Your kindness O Lord is everlasting.
Do not forsake the work of your hands.”