Charles R. Swindoll - What If . . . God Has Other Plans?: Finding Hope When Life Throws You the Unexpected

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What If... God Has Other Plans?: Finding Hope When Life Throws You the Unexpected

Copyright 2019 by Charles Swindoll. All rights reserved.

Cover photograph of sunset on water provided by author and used with permission.

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ISBN 978-1-4964-3113-4

ISBN 978-1-4964-3116-5 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-4964-3115-8 (Kindle); ISBN 978-1-4964-3117-2 (Apple)

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It has been my pleasure to serve alongside two very gifted and deeply committed colleagues in the ministry during the past many years. They have become trusted partners as well as close friends as we have served on the leadership team of Stonebriar Community Church, both in season and out of season. As a result, I love these men deeply, and I find great joy in our friendship. Because of the way the Lord has knitted our hearts together, I dedicate this book to them and their wives:

Charlton and Ginger Hiott

Don and Mary McMinn

SIGNIFICANT QUESTIONS have always intrigued me. Many years ago, I learned that its better to ask the right questions than to act like I know all the right answers. Questions make us search longer, think harder, and probe deeper. They escort us through mental doors that have been closed for too long, urging us to deal with life issues that are often troublesome to us but are rarely addressed.

Several years ago, I decided to put all this to a test. I asked eleven specific questions about complicated issues all of us have had to face in one form or another. Each question began with the same two words: What if... ? I then turned to Scripture to find answers that were reliable, understandable, and doable. Not surprisingly, the Bible had helpful answers for each question.

My search led to a series of sermons I brought to our congregation at the church I serve as senior pastor, Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas. Many people in our church urged me to put the series into a book, so here it is for you to read and ponder and apply.

I express my thanks for my friends at Tyndale House Publishers. Im also grateful for Mark Tobey, who has once again served as my diligent editor, making sure everything flows smoothly. Im also thankful for you who have chosen to read what Ive written. May it remind you to ask significant questions and seek reliable, biblical answers.

Chuck Swindoll

FRISCO, TEXAS

AMY NEVER WOULD HAVE DREAMED God would choose her to do something great. The shy lassie, born the oldest in a family of seven, grew up in beautiful Northern Ireland, but not without pain. She and her siblings lost their daddy when they were young, leaving the family virtually destitute. Eventually she was adopted by another family who had the means to clothe and feed her.

She saw herself as a little, ugly, shy girl. In fact, she felt so unattractive while growing up that she shunned having her picture taken. As a teenager, she was diagnosed with a degenerative nerve disease that stayed with her the rest of her years. Ultimately that disease led to a serious struggle with arthritis, a battle she would fight the rest of her life.

Then something happened that changed her entire life. At the age of twenty, Amy was attending a Keswick Convention in England, listening to a man named Hudson Taylor share the story of his mission work in China. The year was 1888. The great missionary statesman told of what God had been doing in China and what he anticipated God would do in the future. He mentioned several times how good God was to choose him, of all people, from among the outcasts of England. By Gods grace, he had learned another language and blended into a culture far different from his own.

Amy sat there thinking, What if God could use me to do something such as this? And from that moment, God began to do something great through the shy, retiring Irish girl.

After a chain of events sovereignly orchestrated by her gracious God, Amy wound up at the southern tip of India, only a few miles from the ocean. She spent the next fifty-six years as a missionary in that faraway place. Her calling was to invest in the lives of young boys and girls caught in the grip of human trafficking. They were part of a horrifying slave trade that ravaged the lives of innocent, unsuspecting children.

In those days, the trafficking was done under the guise of religion. Young girls were required to service the Hindu priests and those who worshiped with them. Their bodies were used, and in the process, their spirits were broken. Boys and girls alike became helpless victims. Amys heart went out to these broken little lives, and she invested the remainder of her years reaching out to them with the love of Christ as she freed them from prostitution.

Before her death, Amy rescued and ministered to more than a thousand victims. The Irish woman was Amy Carmichael, who ended up publishing thirty-five books. At her request, not one originally bore her name. In fact, before she died, she made certain that her name would never be etched in granite. Instead, the children she had rescued, now adults, placed a birdbath over her grave, which remains unmarked to this day. It seems appropriate: an unmarked grave over a woman who was virtually unknown in her day. That is, until you read her words and discover that they are filled with profoundly impactful statements.

From prayer that asks that I may be

Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,