When God Says No to a Dream

If you were to interview an elderly apostle Paul and ask him – “What do you think God is going to do with you in the last chapter, so to speak, the final lap of your life and ministry?”

I think Paul would have said something similar to what David Livingston, the pioneer missionary said when asked the same question. Livingston said, “I am willing to go anywhere for God, so long as it is forward.”

That was the heart of Paul.

Even though Paul was in his 50’s, and the average life span in the Roman Empire was 60, Paul was still making plans.

In one of the most touching paragraphs in the apostle Paul’s letters, as he comes to the close of his letter to the believers living in Rome, he writes in Romans chapter 15 and verse 23: 

But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and . . . I have longed for many years to come to you . . . Romans 15:23

Paul’s Desire—and God’s Detour

Paul has a great desire—an expectation—to visit the believers in Rome.

But so far, he has been hindered – he doesn’t give us the details, but simply writes back in verse 22:

“I have so often been hindered from coming to you.” Romans 15:22

In other words, I had made plans – but something got in the way.

Paul experienced what you and I experience – if fact, what every believer experiences:

• no matter how sincere the desire;
• no matter how clear the impression from God;
• no matter how carefully you’ve planned it all out –
• it doesn’t happen.

Something hindered it – something got in the way.

And we tend to think that whatever got in the way had nothing to do with God.

Surely, he would stamp our plans with the insignia of His approval.

But the truth is, God didn’t allow it to occur.

For Paul, God allowed hardships, imprisonments, beatings, and even shipwrecks along the way!

But don’t miss his longing here – his languishing appeal here – he’s not trying to be dramatic, he’s simply unveiling his heart to them – verse 23 again:

“I have longed for many years to come to you.” Romans 15:23

Get that – I have longed for many years!

Maybe you have longed for something like that. It might not have been for years, but it might feel like it:

• a job promotion coming through
• having a child added to your family
• finding a cure, or at least some relief
• hearing that closed door finally opening
• justice being handed down to those who’ve wronged you
• vindication taking place
• financial relief finally arriving

Maybe you have waited for years and it is yet to happen.

Think about this: the apostle Paul has been longing for most of his Christian life to serve the Lord in Rome.

He wasn’t just a small town kind-a-guy –

• he loved the city –
• the major crossroads of the empire –
• he wanted to serve God in the capital city of Rome.

And we know from biblical history, he’s gonna make it – finally – in the last lap of his life.

But even when he finally arrives, it doesn’t turn out like he thought it would – he’s not going to arrive as a pioneer; he will arrive as a prisoner.

But here’s something else that’s easy to miss.

Paul didn’t just want to go to Rome – he wants to stop over in Rome and after a long weekend or two, repack his suitcase for the final – and most important – leg of his journey.

Follow this – Paul writes in the latter part of verse 23:

I have longed for many years to come to you. I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while. Romans 15:23b-24

He wanted to go to Rome, but he really wants to go on to Spain.

Rome was a stop-over – Rome was a pit stop. Rome was Buckey’s on the way to Texas. Get some homemade barbecue and banana pudding and you’re on your way. What a pit stop.

If you fill in the blanks, Paul is planning to go to Jerusalem with a special benevolence offering for the hard-pressed believers in Macedonia.

As soon as he drops off that financial gift, he’s going to head to Rome.

So Paul explains here in verse 28:

When therefore I have completed this and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will leave for Spain by way of you. Romans 15:28

In other words, he’s gonna spend some time with the believers in Rome, but what he’s really longing for is to travel on to Spain.

The Spain That Never Came

Now, why Spain?

The only other person in the entire Bible who wanted to go to Spain was the prophet, Jonah.

God had told Jonah to go to Nineveh and deliver a warning.

Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. It was a demon-worshipping, brutal nation, known to impale their enemies on stakes and then burn them as torches – a practice that Nero would adopt 800 years later in Rome, during the days of the apostle Paul.

The last revival Jonah would ever wanna be a part of is a revival in Nineveh.

So he runs from the presence of God.

Don’t misunderstand – Jonah isn’t trying to run away from God – he knows better – the New Jewish Translation clarifies that Jonah is running from the service of the Lord. [SOURCE: ^{David J. Clark & Eugene A. Nida, A Handbook on The Books of Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah (United Bible Societies, 1978), p. 53]}

In other words, Jonah was resigning. God was asking too much of him. Jonah was a already a famous prophet in Israel – he had already delivered the word of God faithfully. But not now – not this time – not to the Ninevites.

So, Jonah is effectively turning in his prophet’s badge – he’s retiring from ministry, rather than fulfilling his ministry.

So he heads 20 miles south to Joppa to catch a boat – my guess is, just about any boat will do.

But wouldn’t you know it – there’s a boat heading for Tarshish – that’s a town on the western coast of Spain. It was considered the edge of the known world.

Jonah says, “That’s the boat for me!” He’s gonna travel as far away from Nineveh as possible – he’s literally going to the edge of the known world.

He’s done!

This is where Paul wants to go.

Jonah wants to go to Spain to get out of the ministry – Paul wants to go there to start a ministry.

Jonah wants to go there out of the will of God. Paul wants to go there in the will of God.

Jonah was running from God, and Paul was running for God.

But neither man will make it to Spain.

Jonah ends up inside a whale and Paul ends up inside a jail.

The question is, are you heading to Spain, so to speak, like Jonah, or Paul?

To serve God, or avoid God?

It’s possible to make plans to serve God – and it’s possible to make plans to sin against God.

For Jonah, Spain was rebellion; for Paul, Spain was a submission.

He had longed for years to go to the ends of the earth – why? Just as the Lord had commanded!

Before ascending back to heaven, Jesus would tell His disciples, “Now don’t sit on your hands” (that’s my translation) – take the gospel to Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

Every time Paul heard that command, he thought of Spain – that was the end of the earth.

But God wouldn’t allow it.

For both Jonah and Paul – one of them running in sin and the other one running to serve – both of them would have never expected the plans God had for their lives.

This is a reminder of God’s grace – when we sin and when we serve.

God speaks through His prophet Jeremiah – not only to a disobedient nation like Israel, but it’s applicable to you and me today:

God says “I know the plans I have for you . . . in other words, I have MY plans for you . . . you can trust my plans – especially when they are different from yours. (Jeremiah 29:11 New English Translation)

God’s Plans Often Look Different Than Ours

We should never assume that unmet expectations or some disappointing turn in life mean God’s love has been canceled or you never deserved His blessings to begin with.

God often leaves unexpected plans, unexplained.

We all have a running list of expectations or plans that we’ve written somewhere in our heart.

• it might be one or two things we expect God to do with our lives;
• one or two things we never expect God to allow in our lives
• what we expect from career paths and financial investments
• what we expected marriage
• what we expected from children and grandchildren
• where we thought we’d live at 30 or 50 or 80 years of age
• where we thought we’d be serving the Lord in the latter years of life

We have plans that we write out in magic marker – big thick letters – and the Lord transfers them over to His ledger and transforms it all into pencil and then reaches for an eraser.

Life is not what you’ve written down – life is what God is rolling out.

Theologically speaking, God doesn’t make plans – He’s has always had plans that stretch back into eternity past.

The question is, what will we do when what He planned is different than what we planned?

When we discover – and we discover this often – that God is developing in us something deeper. He has been equipping us – perhaps – for something different.

Well, think of the changes encountered by the apostle Paul as an older man.

It reminds those who are older, to follow the advice of Vance Havner, who used to say, “Don’t think of your latter years as retirement, think in terms of reassignment.”

What does God have for me next.

Dr. Charles McKoy’s One-Way Step of Faith

And with that I want to introduce to you a legacy of light in the life of an older man who would have never expected what God had in store for him.

But he was willing to take the next step of faith, even though he was in his 70’s.

For many years during the last century, Dr. Charles McKoy pastored a church in Oyster Bay, New York.

While pastoring, he used his spare time earning several doctoral degrees. One of his PhD’s was from Dartmouth and one was from Columbia University.

He never married but faithfully served his congregation.

Finally, as he approached the age of seventy-two, the bylaws of his denomination required that he retire from pastoring.

But he was healthy, involved, and invested.

Frankly he didn’t wanna stop preaching and serving the church. He had planned on staying in Oyster, New York, to serve his church until he passed away.

But then, his denomination wouldn’t budge. He would have to retire in a few months after all.

He told his biographer, “I would lie on my bed at night thinking, “my life is over, but I haven’t really finished – I haven’t done all I want to do for Christ.” [SOURCE: ^{Excerpts from Ted Engstrom, The Read McKoy (Zondervan, 1956) and Franklin Graham with Jeanette Lockerbie, Bob Pierce: This One Thing I Do (Word, 1983)]}

But evidently, God was finished with his service and it was time to retire.

Shortly before his retirement, he invited an Indian Pastor to preach for him one Sunday. They struck up a friendship, and the pastor from India invited Dr. McKoy to come and preach for him at a mission’s station connected to his church.

McKoy laughed about it, because he’d never traveled far from home – in fact, he’d never been on an airplane before.

Besides, he was already planning to move to a retirement center in Florida that was reserved for missionaries and pastors.

But this Indian pastor insisted that with Dr. McKoy’s tall stature and head of white hair, he’d earn immediate respect – he oughtta reconsider.

Well, over the next few months, as his 72^nd birthday grew closer, Charles couldn’t get that invitation off his mind. It was the last thing in the world he’d ever planned to do.

But he had begun praying about it as well.

Finally, he made up his mind that he would indeed travel to Bombay, India and preach at that pastor’s church.

Dr. McKoy’s congregation in Oyster, New York thought he’d lost his oysters! The chairman of the deacon board challenged him and said, “What if you get sick and die in India?”

Dr. McKoy responded, “I suppose it’s just as close to heaven in India as it is in America.”

So, when they celebrated Dr. Charles McKoy’s retirement, to the consternation of everyone, instead of traveling to Florida, he sold his furniture and automobile – put his clothing and necessities in a trunk – and with that he had just enough money to buy a one-way ticket to Bombay.

Folks in church and around town thought he’d lost his mind.

When he arrived in Bombay, he discovered that his trunk had been lost somewhere along the journey. It would never show up.

All he had was the suit he was wearing, along with the address of the mission station in Bombay which he had clipped from a newsletter.

When he arrived, that pastor was out of the country, and the missionaries had never heard of him. They didn’t quite know what to do with him.

They settled him in a little guest room and worried about this 72-year-old. He was described as a gentle giant – 6 feet plus, 250 pounds, dignified bearing with a full head of white-hair.

They asked him about his plans – and he didn’t have any.

After a few days though, he announced to them that he was going to meet the mayor of Bombay. They smiled and said, “We’ve been trying for years to get an appointment – you’ll never get in there.”

Dr. McKoy said, “God brought me here for something – I don’t know exactly why – but I’m going to the mayor’s office unannounced.”

With that, he took off for the Mayor’s office. When he presented his business card to the receptionist, she saw all those PhD’s and assumed he was an important dignitary from America.

She asked him to wait while she hurried off to tell the mayor. He assumed the same thing and decided to delay meeting him until he could plan a reception for this guest of honor, later that afternoon.

When Dr. McKoy returned, many of the political and military leaders in Bombay had been assembled. Dr. McKoy simply presented the gospel, along with his personal testimony.

Among the guests was the Commanding Officer of the National Defense Academy – India’s version of West Point. He was so moved by what he’d heard that he invited Dr. McKoy to preach at the academy the following week.

From that reception, invitations began arriving from all over India – from churches, political leaders, military officers, mission’s agencies, universities and businesses.

For the next 16 years, Charles McKoy traveled throughout India and accepted invitations to other countries.

Today there are churches in Calcutta and Hong Kong, and Egypt, and North Africa – planted by his visit, and his preaching of the gospel.

One biographer wrote, “Charles never had enough money than to get him to the next place he was invited to preach.”

And get this, as God unfolded these new plans for his life, Charles never returned to the home of his birth . . . never once.

Finally, at the age of 88, he was in Calcutta, resting in his room for a worship service he was to preach that evening.

While he was asleep, he discovered that it was true – he was as close to heaven in India, as he was in America.

How to Live with a Legacy of Light

Do you think Paul came to the end of his life with regrets. Do you think he talked to his closest friends and said things like, “You know, I never did have that ministry in Rome like I wanted – and I never did make it to Spain.”

Was Paul resentful and bitter with God for refusing him one of his greatest longings in life?

No. In his final letter to young Timothy, Paul wrote, “I have finished my course. I have run my race – not the race I would have chosen, but the race He unveiled for me to run – and along the way, Paul writes, “I have kept the faith.”

Sounds like someone surrendering to allow God to equip him for something different; to allow God to develop in him, something deeper.

I was reading the other day from an author who’s been gone now for many years. He quoted a Dr. Watkinson who had faithfully served the Lord for decades. Dr. Watkinson was walking at the beach with his grandson one evening when they met an old minister who was also taking a walk. The older man recognized Dr. Watkinson and stopped him to complain about this and that.

The author writes, “He was disgruntled with the church and everything else – and he also complained that while walking on the beach he was now suffering from sunstroke.

The little boy had been listening all along and when they finally parted and walked away, Watkinson’s grandson looked up at him and said, “Grandpa, I hope you never suffer from a sunset.” [SOURCE: ^{William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke (Westminster Press, 1976), p. 132]}

You’re Not Headed for Sunset—But a New Dawn

We’re not walking toward a sunset – we’re walking toward a new dawn.

And it all depends on how we view Spain – the expectations that never come to pass.

Frankly, it isn’t so much about sailing into Spain, it’s really about sailing with the Savior.

Let’s sail with Him today.