“Father,” He said, “Everything is possible for You. Take this cup from me. Yet, not what I will, but what You will.”  Mark 14:36

     Last year I was sitting at a dinner table talking to a young pediatrician who practices medicine in West Africa. As she talked about how hard it was for anyone in medical school to understand her life choice, I asked her, “What did cause you to make the decision to be a medical missionary?”

     She said, “I heard a story and that story guided me in the decisions and choices I made.” Here is the story:

     There is a man who lived in Romania whose name was Nicolae Moldoveanu. When he became a Christian, he felt that God had called him to write hymns for the church in Romania. He was called to be a song-writer. But in 1959 he was sentenced to 12 years of daily work and 10 years of loss of civic rights for writing these hymns. As he sat in prison (he would be there for 8 years), he felt total loss. How could he serve God? What was he to do now? What could he do in this place? This was not what he thought God has planned for him. Then he said, “Break my plans.” It was a prayer of submission and surrender to God.

     This young doctor looked at me and said, “All the way through medical school, I said to God, ‘Break my plans.’”

      In my mind, I had an immediate push-back. Break my plans?! I said to her, “Isn’t that a hard prayer to pray?” Her reponse, “Isn’t that what Jesus prayed in the Garden?”

     She was right, of course. “Not my will but Thine be done.” Maybe I had said that phrase so many times, I had lost the true meaning of what I was saying. “God, I have plans, but if they don’t line up with Yours, then break my plans. Yours are better.”

     Moldoveanu ended up writing over 300 hymns in prison without an instrument or pen or paper. He was released and went back to the church, where they still sing his hymns today. A song has been written in his honor. The chorus says: Break my plans, shape my heart, take my will to where You are.

*Are you willing to pray that today? Whose plans are more important to you?

Father God, I come once again in surrender to You. Maybe I’ve said it so many times it’s become cliché, but I want what You want. If my plans don’t line up with Yours, break them. I offer my will in surrender to Yours. I’m so grateful I can trust that Yours is best. With a grateful heart I pray, Amen.


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