MAKE YOUR PLANS IN PENCIL; GOD HOLDS THE ERASER — Part 8A

The View From Above: Thoughts To Help With Everyday Life

October 7, 2026

Pastor Paul Stephens

MAKE YOUR PLANS IN PENCIL; GOD HOLDS THE ERASER — Part 8a

That’s a good question, isn’t it?

Are you willing to allow God to erase your plans and replace them with His?

Some are willing; many aren’t.

That is precisely what C.T. Studd was facing…

He was a famous cricket player in England in the late 19th century.

Then conversion, then calling to be a missionary.

God had to erase C.T.’s plans and replace them with His.

He spent the rest of his life, beginning at the age of 25, when he was at the peak of his professional career, as a missionary in China, India, and Africa.

God is an interrupter…even an eraser of our plans…

HE DOESN’T MIND DOING SO!

Like C.T. Studd, our lives should be surrounded by a lot of eraser dust.

Our plans erased and replaced with God’s will for our lives.

So the question becomes: will you allow God’s eraser to be applied to your life?

What if some of the decisions you have made and the course of life you have chosen isn’t really what God wants for you?

He had and has other plans…but we’re quite happy to proceed with our own and even call it God’s will.

We should all take a great big pause and give consideration to this.

Are we actually prioritizing God’s will for our lives?

Have we committed to doing what serves Him, His Church, and His cause and calling?

Life is way too short to spend it with plans written in pencil.

Our plans, without considering God’s will for our lives.

Consider what James wrote:

James 4:13–15

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit’; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow.

For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.

Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’”

Now that is something to think about.

We make decisions far too cavalierly, without giving proper consideration and serious thought about what it means in terms of what God wants.

We think in terms of what gives us the best temporary advantage, and so we make bad financial decisions, unwise relational decisions, or, in some other area, that pull us away.

Then, out comes the eraser, but the question is: can God apply it to our lives?

Can He change your course by dealing with you about the wrong course you have chosen?

To repeat a Scripture I used earlier in this series on the will of God:

Proverbs 14:12

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”

You make a decision or decisions that take you down a wrong path, only you don’t see it.

Then out comes the eraser.

God gives you an opportunity to see the error of your ways and change course.

However, all too many are so invested in the direction they have chosen that their plans can’t or won’t be erased.

My life is surrounded by a lot of eraser dust, and that’s a good thing.

We all need help, guidance, and God’s direction to keep us on course, and we need His eraser to appear from time to time.