Can One Bad Decision Ruin God’s Plan for Your Life?

Even you can't mess up your own life. >> Someone said, "Hey, you want a piece of gum?" And you pulled the piece of gum and it was a mouse trap. Remember that prank we used to have? I don't know, I'm Gen X. We used to have these pranks. It was look like a fake uh gum pack and you pull it and it would be like a little spring trap. Pop on your finger. >> Mhm. >> Remember those? No. >> Something like that. >> Okay. Anyways, so you're thinking if I did if I didn't take the the prank gum, then God would have found another way to pop my finger. And what I'm telling you is no, that's not the way to look at it. No, it's that there was no way you were ever going to not take the gum. >> Mhm. >> You know what? >> if you find yourself >> Do you Do you Do you know three-card monte? I'm going to take some Advil right now. I'm getting a little bit of achy uh aches and pains. Do Do you know what three three-card monte is? >> No. >> Do you know the shell game? >> No. >> I don't know if they really have it anymore. I think maybe the bunco squad cleaned it up, but used to have when you go to Manhattan, have the con men out on the on the street corners. They'd have little folding tables and they would play either three-card monte or uh the shell game. The shell game is three half shell uh walnut shells and a pea, a little dry pea. They roll the pea around and uh they hide it under one of the three shells and they scramble it up and then you have to track which shell the pea is under. And three-card monte is uh they have three cards, playing cards, you know, from like a deck of of cards and you have to follow I think the queen you're supposed to follow. I don't remember. But uh the same principle that there are three um choices and they move it around and you have to track it and then you have to choose and that's the game. It's a pretty simple game. Okay. So are you now that I'm describing it do you you vaguely remember ever seeing such a thing? Yes. Yes. Okay. So let me explain something to you. Um that's an absolute scam. It is not a fair bet. It's not random. These guys are street magicians who are scamming you. And they they are using prestidigitation slight of hand to mislead you. They know exactly how to misdirect your eyes and make you think you know exactly where the P is or where the queen is but they are using their knowledge of the human mind to exactly mislead you to the option that they want you to choose. Now what why do I talk about this? Because imagine so how they do the scam is they hustle you. At first they play it normal. They don't do any of the slight of hand and it's pretty easy to track it if you're actually watching and they let you win. You know, it's it's it's the odds are you're going to win. If you're if if they're playing fair and you're watching you're going to win. So they let you win and then they say, "Okay, let's let's double down." And then they start with the prestidigitation and then that's how they get you. Now you shouldn't gamble at all especially not on the street but if I were to say to you um did you lose that bet fair and square? Well you might say might protest and say, "No, it wasn't fair. They misled me." And I would say back to you, but where where in the rules, so to speak, does it state that they have to make it easy for you? You thought it was easy. Apparently, it wasn't as easy as you thought. But you made a bet and you lost the bet. You just didn't realize how hard it is. Like when you go to the carnival and you spend all your tickets trying to knock down the the milk bottles with the ball cuz it looks so easy, then you realize not so easy. You miss You misjudged the difficulty. Okay, my point is Why am I saying all this silliness? Because in a certain way, the way that God runs the world is >> [laughter] >> somewhat similar to the three-card monte game in that you are exercising free will. Like from your perspective, no one's forcing you. No one's standing over your shoulder and saying, "Pick that one." You're free to pick whatever you wish. It's just that you're you're playing with someone who knows how your brain works and is skilled enough to exactly orchestrate the options in such a way where he knows what you're going to pick. Now, he knows what you're picking, but he's not forcing you to pick. You have free will. He's not standing over you and forcing you to pick something you don't want to pick. You want to pick, but he knows how to create a situation that is going to basically make it 100% predictable that this is what you're going to pick. So, getting back to our discussion, you're saying, "If I wouldn't have If I would have been smarter and I wouldn't have made that dumb choice, I wouldn't have saved myself any suffering because God would have found another way to put me through the same turmoil. And what I'm saying is and that is not correct. Because then you're basically saying that some aspects of your life are free are free choice to the extent where it derails your life from even in in in the details, it derails your life from from God's plan. And then there up there but it also the way you're saying is but eventually you know, there's like the comes back to the to the default setting and you're not going to ever get too far away from the story that God had planned for you. What I'm saying is no, that's incorrect. Like literally every single detail down to the most minute detail down to the buzzing of subatomic particles like down to the minutia to the infinitesimal. Everything is exactly calculated, meticulously orchestrated. And yes, you have free will and therefore you're accountable for your choices. And yet nothing you do even on the most microscopic level causes your life to diverge for even one moment from the story that God already had prepared for you. And so, let's put it very simple. You were always going to make the choices that you made. You were never going to learn the lesson till you did. Looking back you said, well now hindsight is 20/20. Precisely. You know what you know now. And it couldn't have been any other way. So you can stop you can I'll put it this way. You know how it's like futile to to resent other people and to say, "Oh, you ruined my life. The day I met you, I ruined the day I met you because, you know, you messed up everything and from that day I went off on the wrong path." Okay. And eventually you got to give up all your resentments and realize that human beings don't have that power. Okay. What I want to tell you is the next level is to realize even you don't have that power. Even you can't mess up your own life. Now, you can cause yourself a lot of pain, but that doesn't mean you messed it up. Meaning if that pain was part of your life, then it was part of your life. And it was a necessary part of your story.