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God’s Perfect Plan, by Mark Paul Bishop, M.D., chronicles his journey through life as his “outer man” is broken down in order to remove the pursuits in his life that glorified him as an individual and replaced them with pursuits that glorify God. Through his own personal narrative, readers are given the testimony of one man’s triumph over adversity—and through the faith that guided him through the darkest times in his life.
Although the breaking down of his outer man has come at the cost of “great embarrassments, humiliations, pains, and sufferings,” ranging from being the source of a citywide public scandal as a result of his first wife’s infidelity to an accident that deprived him of his physical health and later the economic collapse that cost him his financial security and pursuit of material trappings, Bishop maintains that this process was necessary to serve God properly.
Bishop relates that “everything I have ever feared in my natural life has become a reality to my family and me;” although this is a process that occurs in everyone’s life, it is “usually not recognized, identified, or reasoned, since we are not naturally spiritually minded” and many “miss the purpose and meaning of sufferings, pains, and sacrifices.” Bishop maintains that although life may break our wills “one character trait, one personal strength, and one outstanding attribute at a time,” God will preserve our spirits “so our person and spirit fall under the subjection to God’s will rather than our own.” For those who are seeking reason in their trials through life, he offers the proverbial silver lining that, “Like all those who choose to serve God, I had to be broken before God could effectively us me.”
Once our human nature has been proven to be “inadequate, insufficient, and inept,” we begin to look for God’s nature in the form of His Holy Spirit as our guide in life; “God allows us to encounter tough times, which we cannot overcome in our own strength so that we learn not to look only to ourselves, but instead look outside of ourselves to God.” Although it may be difficult to keep this in mind as our lives present us with challenges, the end reward is great for those who maintain their faith throughout their trials; “When we die to self, we become alive to God. God can only fully use one who has seen the total depravation of self and then chooses to serve not self… but God.”
In God’s Perfect Plan, readers are given an uplifting message of the meaning behind the crises in their lives, a particularly relevant message during the times of socioeconomic crisis that we have faced as a nation, with many of our greatest fears becoming a reality. Bishop guides the faithful through the difficult times in their lives and offers an important message for those who have yet to find God, providing them with meaning to their suffering. |
