Detours by Tony Evans ~ A Book Review

I am so grateful for getting the opportunity to read Detours by Tony Evans. This book grabs your attention and shouts “HEY! This is for you right now!”

Detours is a book about how God ordains the pathways of our life, leading us to exactly what He has for us. Detours in life don’t appear to be good or desirable, they annoy us and make us want to give up.

Tony Evans makes an excellent case for staying the course and trusting God amidst your detours. He tells us the story of Joseph from the Old Testament. Joseph had many things go seemingly wrong for him. His life was a story of several trips through hardship from being in a literal pit having been rejected and sold by his own family into slavery, to later being in a jail cell for years because he was wrongfully accused.

However- God had a greater plan.

That’s the application for us. Our lives are not nice, neat, straight lines from point A to point B. We have trips down alleys, two tracking it down unpaved roads, pothole-filled roads under construction and once and a while getting to experience that perfectly paved road without detours. The key is HOW you walk through the detours in life.

On page 91, Tony says “One of the reasons some of us haven’t gotten off our detour is we are still too self-sufficient. We still feel like we can handle it ourselves. We think we know the right people, or have the right money, or even work the right job. We think that because of our own hookups, human abilities, talent, contacts, or even our own resources- that if we just toss a prayer on top- we can get to where we want to go.”

“It doesn’t work that way. God doesn’t work that way.”

This book came at such a great time for me personally. It was confirming to where God had been leading me in my own life and encouraged me to stay the course and trust the Lord to continue to lead me one step at a time.

I loved the alliteration Evans used in his chapter titles. There are 16 small, easy to read chapters beginning with “The Purpose of Detours” and ending with “The Path of Detours”.

He does such a good job explaining how sometimes our detours have the appearance of evil. That God takes what was intended for evil purposes and turns it into something good that glorifies Him and puts you further on the path to your purpose in life. “Evil. God. Good.” is the pattern of many detours. You can’t get to the good without it starting bad and God intervening. If we constantly try to be in the way, manipulating things and try to work it out ourselves, we will stay on that detour for a longer time than if we had surrendered our will to God’s perfect will.

Tony Evans will give readers the answers to several crucial questions that many of us have in life.

• “How do you find the destiny God has designed for your life?”
• “How can you make the most of the detours God has planned for you?”
• “Is there a way to shorten a detour and speed up your progression in life?”
• “What is the purpose of a detour?”

I am so grateful to Dr. Evans for writing this book, it was so timely for me. I also want to thank B&H Publishing for the opportunity to review this great book.

You can get your own copy by visiting http://detoursbook.com/ or Amazon

When we expect God to choose from our multiple choice options

How often when we pray do we give God multiple choice or ask Him to give us an answer on “either this or that”? It’s like playing a card game with God asking Him to choose from only the options you’ve presented Him with. 

We forget that God exists outside of time and knows the exact perfect will and plan for our lives.

Romans 8:26 says “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too 

deep for words;”

So often we use prayer as a second choice or even last resort after we’ve come to end of ourselves and what we can do. By the time we take it to prayer, we are desperate, especially desperate for the exact outcome we desire.

By the time we pray about something,  we are so desperate for it to have the exact outcome we desire that  we forget that God’s will might be different than what we want.

We are flawed, imperfect human beings. That also means that our prayers are flawed. We ask selfishly, or incorrectly without knowing the whole story like God does. That is why He tells us that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, praying spiritual groanings too deep for words.

Have you ever felt so deeply for something you were praying about that all you could do was cry, lay in silence or just repeat the same words over and over? The Holy Spirit takes our heart cry and delivers it to the throne room of heaven.

The amazing thing about God and prayer, is even when we don’t quite ask right, or our motives are wrong, He answers in the best, most perfect way because He knows our hearts and also knows what is best for us in His perfect will. Matthew 7:11 says "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!” and also Psalm 145:9 “God is good to one and all; everything he does is suffused with grace.”

My husband and I had an experience with this. We were praying about my employment. We had several factors contributing and not the least of which was making sure we could afford our 4 teenagers and that we felt called to give to our church’s building project. I was working and the current life circumstances were pushing me towards leaving that job for another. However, through prayer we had no peace. We kept praying and asking God for an answer regarding the two options. We only prayed about those two though. God did not give clear direction on either option.

After a couple of months, we sought some counsel and on the way there asked God to speak through the Pastor we were meeting with to provide us with an answer. Well…answer He did! Just not the way we expected at all!

I am now a stay at home mom and have been able to obey and follow God’s leading on several things that would’ve never happened if I was working all day every day. We also had to learn a fuller dependence on God and He has been faithful to open the heavens and shower us with blessings! It is clear as day that He gets all the glory for what has happened!

Isaiah 55:8-9 says “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

We have no idea what the future holds and what God’s perfect plan is. We can pray to the best of our ability, but we have to keep our hearts open to the possibility that He might answer off our multiple choice plan. I am so grateful that He answers the way He sees fit and not the way I see fit!