Unexpected Grace

Unexpected Grace...
 
I came to Konya not having any plan for how I was going to get to the surrounding sites (Antioch of Pisidia, Lystra, Kilistra, Derbe, etc.) because they were very remote and there was no public transportation. While I was on the bus heading toward Konya, I had 4 hours to figure it out. I decided the best course of action was to rent a car and just drive to all these sites personally. I located quite a few car rental businesses on one of the main streets in Konya. I figured I would find the right city bus to me in to take me in that direction and then walk from there if I had to. Needless to say, I ended up walking a little more than I expected because the bus I took dropped me off at the beginning of the street and I did not think it was necessary to get on another bus and pay twice when I was just going up the street (what I thought was a little ways...haha).
 
After finally arriving at the spot on main street with the car rental businesses, I went into the first one on the street and asked for car rental availability. Now, I had to speak a little Turkish in order to convey what I was looking for since they did not speak English (I have found that English is not well spoken by and large in Turkey and the people in Turkey who speak English speak very poor broken English and they do not understand English even when you speak slowly to them with small words).
 
To my surprise, they had no cars available to rent for at least 7 days. I was like huh? Well okay then, on to the next one. I entered the second one and repeated my request. To my further surprise, they also had no cars available to rent for at least 5 days. All right then, moving on to the next business. In the third business, I asked about renting a car and to my astonishment they said they had no cars to rent for at least 10 days. I was like “What is going on here?” Is car renting like a super popular thing in Turkey that these businesses would have no returns for multiple days? Well, I found out that there was some special Turkish holiday going on in the nation and many people were traveling that week. I guess they were referring to city residents who likely did not own personal transportation vehicles. Regardless, car rental options appeared to be in high demand that week.
 
So, I exited the business and went to the next one....and then the next one...and then the next one....and so forth. I was confounded that they ALL had no cars to rent for several days. Along this stretch of main street, there were 15-20 car rental businesses side-by-side to each other for 2-3 blocks straight....NO JOKE! Talk about trying to beat out your competition....lol. Maybe they were thinking of just setting up shop next to another company and then just advertise with a bigger banner. But apparently there was more than enough business coming in for all of them to co-exist next to each other.
  
When I reached the end of the businesses it had been about 1.5-2 hours since I began my quest. I was a little dismayed by this outcome and sat down to think for a few minutes. I prayed and asked God that if he was shutting the door to help me figure out another plan or if the right thing to do was to wait for a car to become available in a couple days (3 days was the earliest). Mind you, I was carrying ~50 lbs of weight in my backpack the whole time while going in and out of these car rental businesses so I was tired of just walking around and getting nowhere in my mission.
 
Then, I stood up and put my backpack on and started walking back to where I started my search. As I approached the first business, I asked someone on the street if there were any other car rental businesses in the area. He turns and points down the street a little ways and says the word “AVIS”...haha. I had missed the one American car rental company along the entire street. At that moment, I got a rush of enthusiasm and walked hastily toward the store. As I approached the door to Avis, I was sure that this was the detail in my search that I overlooked and that there would be a car available. I walked into Avis and was pleasantly entreated by English speaking Turkish employees. How nice for a change!  :)  I asked them about renting a car and they looked at their computer and reluctantly had to inform me that they had nothing available for a couple days as well. My spirit plummeted and I felt dejected thinking that possibly my last option was just extinguished.
 
Just as I was leaving, the representative called out to me and motioned for me to return to her desk. She said that she found one car that just became available. I am not sure what the reason was or how it suddenly appeared in her system, but I became instantly interested in the ONE OPTION that had come to light. It turns out the car was a nice mid-sized Fiat sedan. The price was a little higher than I wanted and so I asked if there was an “American” discount. She looked at me with a very perplexed look like, what the heck is an “American” discount?....rofl. She did say that there was a discount that she could apply that would reduce the cost by ~20%. She applied the discount and the price became more reasonable, and thus with no other option, I choose to rent the car and get going to redeem the time I had left in the day. I ended up driving 3 hrs right after that and sleeping in my car next to Pisidia Antioch so that I would be ready when the site opened at 8am the following morning.  ;D
 
This instance just reminded me that grace can come unexpectedly and in ways we might not conceive of at the time. It just so happened that God's grace enabled me to continue with my original plan. But grace does not serve our desires. Grace connects us with the blessings of the Lord that may be for or against what we have planned to do. I used to think that the Lord's grace and blessings were something that were supposed to get me what I wanted. For me, grace sort of worked under the assumption that if I believed hard enough for something, then it would happen like that, "POOF." I had to fight the temptation to think that if I just believed, then it would automatically make a car appear for me to rent. That could not be farther from the true purpose of faith. Faith does not serve us a dish of our own choosing. Faith asks for the best dish from the menu and gladly accepts whatever the chef chooses to prepare. It might be an exquisite dish with exotic seafood like we really wanted, or it might be turnip and broccoli salad with vinegar because it is what we needed to eat and not what we wanted to. Faith is required but faith is not in control. We can "believe" for whatever we want, but if it is not in the Lord's will, why should we expect him to bend to ours? We can ask him for anything, and if it is in his plan, then we will receive it. If not, why be so stuck thinking that faith will cause it to happen regardless when the Lord is working in a completely different way.
 
It has been a difficult tendency to unlearn, but I have released the notion that I somehow dictate the form that God's grace should appear in my life. Trying to control grace was not something I consciously did as though it was my objective to displace God's providence with my own clever ideals and desires. It was just a by-product of thinking that God provides exactly what I believe for if I believe “hard enough.” Such “hard enough” believing made my head hurt and I did not understand why I was trying to mentally coerce God into granting my request if it was not in accord with his will. 

Having faith does not consist of promoting our agenda. The whole point of faith is not to have your desires appeased but to trust in the Lord to provide what he wills. We are not in control of God's grace and we don't determine the exact blessing his grace will bring. Faith is not a “have everything go you way” program for Christian's. Faith is trusting that whatever the Lord has planned to do (whether to provide something or withhold something), it is a better plan than you could ever have. So let's stop trying to be the coach who calls the plays and start being one of the players on the field who adapts to the coach's direction at a moment's notice. We may think that we should believe for something specific (and it is not wrong to ask for something specific) but that can be a slippery slope that generates false expectations when they are not fulfilled. Believing for a particular outcome to happened (and that outcome alone as the sole solution to your problem) is not believing; it is hoping, it is wishing, it is thinking we have the answer and only that answer  that will do and expecting God to follow through with it. Believing for an exclusive answer overwrites God's wisdom and goodness and leaves only one possibility as the answer – YOUR answer.
 
In conclusion, Max Lucado probably said it best, “ “Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. It is the belief that God will do what is right” (He Still Moves Stones). How often have we confused the two and fallen prey to the temptation to act like our faith is supposed to be the means for achieving what we want in life. In that false perception, we have ruled out God's perfect wisdom for our lives and turned him into a self-serving convenience rather than our all-knowing commander. If we trust him in faith, let faith embrace what he gives and not be stuck only on what we want.