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“I'm Glad God Frustrated My Plans”

The LORD nullifies the counsel of the nations; He frustrates the plans of His peoples.

[Psalm 33:10 NASB]

Hope writes:

I had gone to the same Christian elementary-middle school for five years. Since the academy only went up to 8th grade, I had to go somewhere else for high school. All of my close friends were going to public schools, but of course my conservative parents forced me to go to a Christian high school where I hardly knew anyone.

As my freshman year went on, I got more and more discouraged as my friends in public schools were sharing about being shining lights for Christ and being asked about their Bibles…and here I was in a school with no real friends where literally EVERYONE professed to be a Christian.

Of course matters only got worse when a group of older guys decided to torture me every day by saying mean things all day long. Every day I went to school with the attitude of, “I’m stuck here; I need to get out.” Very few people reached out to me and made me feel loved, and I went through almost the entire year without any true friends.

Eventually I got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. I begged and pleaded my parents to let me be homeschooled—I knew that was my only other option—and, after much grief and arguing, they finally obliged. The plan was to finish this year, then MAYBE come back in my senior year. (Hopefully people would miss me by then.)

Well, after that decision was made, I started seeing things around the school that I figured I would miss. I found a new group of friends who loved and cherished me, and I loved and cherished them. The main boy who was torturing me left the school, and the others apologized and became my friends. But I knew it was too late to turn back. And besides, homeschool would still be better, right?

That’s when God led me to the story of Jonah.

God told Jonah to be a witness in Ninevah, but Jonah decided he would run away to Tarshish. But of course you can’t fight God and win. That is what I realized. My ministry is at this school, but I was just escaping to where I would be more comfortable.

Psalm 33:10 says that God “frustrates the plans of His peoples,” and He sure did frustrate mine. However, as I was battling how I could ask my mom to let me go back to my Christian school instead of being homeschooled (even though it would cost A LOT more money to do this), I remembered that earlier on, when my mom was not having peace about the whole ordeal, she told me that if I decided to go back to my school, she would not say “I told you so,” nor would she get mad at me…she would actually be glad to put me back in. That’s what did it for me.

Needless to say, I am so glad that God frustrated my plans.

Now I’m getting better grades than I have since fifth grade, I have the greatest friends EVER, I love ALL of my teachers and they love me, I am editor of the school paper, and I was the homecoming representative for the sophomore class! If that’s not showing that God is good, I don’t know what would.