Planned. Prayed. Blindsided

I like plans.

I like calendars, time blocks, color-coded priorities, and having a pretty good idea of what’s coming next. There is something comforting about structure. Something reassuring about believing I have prepared well enough, prayed hard enough, and thought deeply enough to avoid unnecessary surprises.

Then life happens.

A phone call you didn’t expect.

A betrayal you didn’t see coming.

A diagnosis.

A disappointment.

A season that arrives without an invitation.

And suddenly all of your planning runs headfirst into a reality you never accounted for.

One of the most humbling lessons God continues to teach me is that discernment is not omniscience.

Somewhere along the way, many of us begin to believe that spiritual maturity should make us impossible to surprise. We assume that if we are praying enough, studying enough, and walking closely enough with God, we should be able to anticipate every problem before it arrives.

Yet Scripture never makes that promise.

Discernment does not mean seeing everything.

It means seeing more than you used to.

Only God sees everything.

Deuteronomy 29:29 reminds us, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us.”

There is a category of knowledge that belongs exclusively to God.

Not me.

Not you.

Not the most mature believer you know.

God alone is omniscient.

God alone knows every motive, every future decision, every hidden conversation, and every outcome.

I do not.

And I never will.

That realization is both humbling and freeing.

Because some of the shame I’ve carried wasn’t actually from failure. It came from expecting myself to possess knowledge God never intended me to have.

I have replayed situations wondering how I missed something.

How I didn’t see it sooner.

How I didn’t recognize the warning signs.

How I didn’t discern what was really happening.

Yet the truth is that being blindsided is not always evidence of spiritual immaturity.

Sometimes it’s evidence that you’re human.

Sometimes the lesson is not that you should have known.

Sometimes the lesson is that only God knew.

Mark 6 has been sitting heavily with me lately.

Jesus returns to Nazareth, His hometown. He begins teaching in the synagogue, and initially the people are amazed.

Then something shifts.

The same crowd that was amazed becomes offended.

One verse they’re impressed.

The next verse they’re dismissive.

One moment they’re celebrating Him.

The next they’re questioning Him.

People can shift in a verse.

That alone will preach.

The people of Nazareth could not reconcile who Jesus was becoming with who they remembered Him to be. Their offense was rooted in familiarity. They had already decided who He was.

“Isn’t this the carpenter?”

“Isn’t this Mary’s son?”

They refused to update their understanding.

And people still do that today.

Sometimes people become offended when your growth forces them to reconsider their assumptions about you.

They liked the version of you they understood.

The healed version feels unfamiliar.

The growing version feels threatening.

The changing version requires them to acknowledge that God is doing something they didn’t expect.

Yet what has fascinated me most is the response of Jesus.

Mark says He was amazed at their unbelief.

That raises an interesting question.

If Jesus is God, how could He be amazed?

Philippians 2 gives us a beautiful glimpse into the answer.

Paul tells us that Christ emptied Himself and took the form of a servant. He did not stop being God, but He willingly surrendered the independent exercise of His divine privileges.

Jesus lived in complete dependence upon the Father.

He experienced humanity fully.

He felt hunger.

Fatigue.

Grief.

Sorrow.

Astonishment.

He entered our experience.

The God who knew everything chose to walk among us in a way that was genuinely human.

That comforts me more than I can explain.

Because even Jesus experienced moments where humanity met uncertainty.

If Jesus could walk faithfully without exercising omniscience, maybe I can stop demanding it from myself.

The reality is that sometimes you won’t know Judas from Peter until afterward.

I wish that weren’t true.

I wish every harmful person came with a warning label.

I wish every betrayal announced itself ahead of time.

I wish every relationship revealed its ending in the introduction.

But life doesn’t work that way.

Judas looked like a disciple before he revealed himself as a betrayer.

Peter looked like a failure before he became a pillar of the early church.

Sometimes the people who disappoint us are not who we expected.

Sometimes the people who surprise us are not who we expected either.

The point isn’t becoming suspicious of everyone.

The point is learning to trust God with what we cannot know.

Not every symptom points to the same sickness.

That’s true spiritually.

It’s true emotionally.

It’s true relationally.

Sometimes a delayed response means someone is overwhelmed.

Sometimes it means they’re disengaged.

Sometimes a conflict is a misunderstanding.

Sometimes it’s a deeper issue.

The same symptom can have different causes.

Discernment is not jumping to conclusions.

Discernment is bringing situations before God and allowing Him to separate soul from spirit, just as Hebrews 4:12 describes.

It is letting God’s Word reveal what belongs to Him and what belongs to me.

What is truth and what is fear.

What is wisdom and what is woundedness.

I’ve learned that when discernment becomes rooted in trauma, we stop discerning opportunities and start only discerning threats.

Everything feels dangerous.

Everything feels suspicious.

Everything feels like a setup.

What we call discernment can sometimes be self-protection wearing a spiritual name tag.

Then life doesn’t go according to plan and emotional reactivity takes over.

Saul understood that.

In 1 Samuel 13, Saul wasn’t removed from the kingdom because of immorality.

He lost the kingdom because of impulsiveness.

Things weren’t unfolding according to his timeline.

The pressure mounted.

The uncertainty grew.

Samuel hadn’t arrived.

The circumstances became uncomfortable.

And Saul reacted.

He took matters into his own hands.

One impulsive moment cost him dearly.

How many of us have done the same?

Not with kingdoms perhaps, but with relationships, decisions, conversations, and opportunities.

We panic.

We force.

We control.

We rush.

We react.

All because things didn’t unfold according to our plan.

Yet just because things don’t go according to my plan does not mean they aren’t going according to God’s.

That truth has become an anchor for me.

Looking back, the seasons I never would have chosen are often the seasons that shaped me most.

The heartbreaks.

The surgeries.

The losses.

The disappointments.

The wilderness seasons.

The chapters I spent begging God to remove.

It took those seasons to make me who I am now.

Not because they were easy.

Not because they were enjoyable.

But because God was present in them.

The version of me writing these words did not come from comfort.

She came from surrender.

She came from learning that God’s plans are not threatened by my inability to see them.

She came from discovering that grace fills the gaps between what I knew and what I wish I had known.

Grace covers what I missed.

Grace covers what I misunderstood.

Grace covers what I would do differently if given another chance.

Grace reminds me that I was never supposed to carry God’s weight.

My assignment is faithfulness.

His assignment is omniscience.

And thankfully, He has never asked me to do His job.

He has only asked me to trust Him while He does it.