And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing beseeching him and saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." And when he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. Acts 16:6–10 (RSV)
There is an old Yiddish proverb, "We plan, God laughs." Woody Allen expanded it: 'If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans." It may sound a bit flippant at first, but we pray something very similar, 'Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' As Luther teaches: 'God's good and gracious will is done without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it might be done among us.'
God's purposes are fulfilled throughout the ages. We certainly don't have an inside track on the fullness of God's will. Much of what God does is hidden from us according to His divine wisdom, for we would not be able to comprehend it in this flesh. Even if God chose to reveal all His will and purpose to us, we could only manage to grasp only the tiniest fragment. We would be no better off, in some cases worse, for we had seen a glimpse of the divine plan without knowing the whole.
Luther is quite correct when he says of God, 'Surely, You are a God who hides Himself from us.' The hiddenness of God is an act of mercy toward us. In His infinite love, He grants us to know what we can bear, withholding all that we could not.
For us, the fullness of God's purpose is contained in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. While we inhabit this flesh, it is what we genuinely need to know of God. The rest will come when we enter the Kingdom. I have often said that the first thing we will say upon entering the Kingdom is: 'Of course, how could it have been any other way?'
How is all this of any consequence for St. Paul trying to get to Bithynia? It was not God's purpose for him to go there. St. Paul received a vision of a man from Macedonia begging to bring the Gospel to them. St. Paul realized that his plans were not the plans God had in mind. So he went to Macedonia.
Like St. Paul, we have our plans. They may be good and useful plans, reflecting our best thinking based on prayer. It may come to us that, like St. Paul, God desires us to go to Macedonia. The Father's purpose may take us to a far country, to people and places we would not have dreamed we could go.
St. Paul trusted that the Father's will for him lay in Macedonia. Where will the will and purpose of the Father lead us? What plans that we have laid will be turned to a different purpose according to His will? This is what we pray for each time we pray the 'Our Father,' asking that His will would be done among us.