What We Write with a Pencil and What We Write with a Sharpie
January 11, 2026
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Discussion Questions
What plans do you have in 2026? If you don’t have any, why not? Think about them in different spheres of your life, whether work, family, or health. Also think in terms of spiritual goals and church goals and goals in your Christianity.
It can be helpful to think of these “spheres” as different areas. But how are they all integrated? What is lost when we don’t include God in these goals that seem to, at first glance, have little to do with him?
What goal, if not achieved, would you be most angry about? Would you be angry with God? Why? Where have you been guilty of saying “yes” to your plans and then expecting God to say “yes” to them.
How in the gospel do we see Jesus living out the dynamic of “pencil desires” and “Sharpie with God’s plans”? How does that work for the benefit of Christians?
Scripture Reading
2 Corinthians 1:12-24
12 For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. 13 For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand— 14 just as you did partially understand us—that on the day of our Lord Jesus you will boast of us as we will boast of you.
15 Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. 16 I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. 17 Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? 18 As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. 19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. 20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
23 But I call God to witness against me—it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth. 24 Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith.
It’s going to seem like this passage won’t have anything to do with us, anything to do with you; it’s just about Paul’s ancient travel plans and says nothing about our plans and lives. That would be very wrong. As you make your plans this year, as you wrestle with hopes and dreams and prayers—perhaps those so tender you don’t even share them with others—this passage has a lot to say about those hopes and dreams and plans.
Let’s say a prayer, and we’ll look at this passage together.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
To understand 2 Corinthians, particularly to understand the passage in front of us, you need to understand the complexity of the relationship between Paul and this young, gifted church plant. And to call their relationship complex might be a euphemism. Their relationship might better be described as a hot mess. That wasn’t true all the time or even with everyone, but that their relationship was rocky was true often enough and it was true among enough people, both in the church and the broader fringe of the Christian community, that complex would be generous.
One pastor said that as Paul writes 2 Corinthians, Paul has a kind of “holy paranoia” (John Piper, “Working with You for Your Joy,” September 20, 1987). By that, the pastor means that in every word, every sentence, every paragraph, Paul must think through not only how God wants his words to come across but also the ten different ways people might hear his words wrongly. Maybe you’ve sent texts or emails that felt like a minefield. That’s sort of what Paul is trying to navigate in a holy, God-honoring way that loves them and is faithful to what God wants for all of them.
Let me make it a bit more concrete so you really get the complexity. We all just had the holidays. Many of you will have seen family. Picture a family with some complexity. Maybe this family I will describe is like your own immediate family or extended family.
Picture a husband who gets divorced. He and his wife had several children before the divorce, and it’s all very messy now. Let’s say he wasn’t a Christian, but after the divorce, he repents of his sin, seeks forgiveness through Jesus, and he’s changed. That’s the guy.
Then there is a woman. She was in a long-term relationship with a woman. They had adopted children. Then they break apart. Then she also meets Jesus. It’s all very messy.
Now, both of them happen to find themselves at the same church, a church that loves Jesus, just as they both now love Jesus. The two end up getting married. They have their own children together. It’s all very wonderful and all very messy.
Okay, now, let me add another detail: Back in their life before they met Jesus, they worked in some businesses that were, shall we say, a little shady.
Now it’s Christmas Day, and this new Christian husband and new Christian wife have a party. They invite people from both sides of the family. They invite former co-workers and new co-workers. Some of them love Jesus, and some of them hate Jesus. There are children from the previous relationships on both sides who are now grown up, and those grown-up children bring the people they are in relationships with, and all of that. Some of the people are so mad at this “Jesus character” who changed their mother or father or friend or co-worker. Like, they are really mad about it. They don’t understand Jesus, but what little they think they do understand of him, they do not like.
They are all there in the living room and kitchen, hanging out together with all the awkwardness beneath the surface. Then let’s imagine the couple invites their pastor to that party. We’ll just call him Pastor Paul. Pastor Paul comes in, and he’s like really dressed up, maybe a little too dressed up. Some of the people just sneer, Look at that fancy-pants. How much do they pay him for that one hour of work a week? Or maybe Pastor Paul comes in a hoodie and ball cap because, well, it’s vacation and a fun party and it’s all very chill. Some people see him in a hoodie and are like, Ahh, cool; he’s a normal dude. And others are like, Doesn’t he know this is a nice get-together. Pssst.
Then Pastor Paul greets everyone and smiles and listens to their stories and asks them endearing questions. Some people sneer, This guy is a politician here to shake hands and kiss babies. Then he’s offered wine, and he says, Oh, not today. And people are like, What, is he too good for us! Or maybe, instead, what happens is that Pastor Paul brings a bottle of wine, and some people are like, Oh, thanks, that was really nice of you. And others look at it, and they are like, This stuff is cheap; he probably got it on the bottom shelf on clearance.
Then, someone in the room says something about Jesus, and when asked later no one can remember if it was something nice or mean that was said about Jesus, but all people remember is how everyone started yelling and how it was one hot mess of a party.
If you have a taste of what that is like, then you have just a taste of what Paul’s relationship with this church is was like.
All this is super important to know when we come to this passage. When we come to this passage at the start of the letter, the issue is not about wine or nice clothing or how friendly he is, although it does relate to that. I just picked most of those to show that, for the most part, Paul can’t win. No matter what he does, he’s always wrong.
The particular issue in this passage, strange as it might sound to us, is Paul’s travel schedule: what he said he was going to do and what he ended up doing. While that sounds tame and benign, and it probably would be in a healthy relationship, it was all very complex and charged because their relationship was all very complex and charged.
But we can get that way too with our plans. We can hold on to our personal plans so tightly that it causes real problems, especially as we find out that we are not fully in charge of our plans, and we are not fully in charge of our lives. Maybe even now, at the start of this year, you have plans you’re making—plans for a better year, plans for a more healthy year, plans to serve the Lord in this way or that way, plans to retire, plans to start a new relationship, plans to graduate, plans for a new place to live, plans for a career change or career advancement. This passage, in principle, speaks to all of that.
Specifically, this passage speaks to the anger and disappointment and confusion that happens when we hold our plans as fixed and start to believe that God is the one who should bend to our plans. We say Yes to our plans; then God says Yes to us, we think.
That was a long introduction. But let’s look at this passage in two ways. I’ll phrase the two points the way I did in the sermon title: First, what we talk about what we write with a pencil, and then we’ll talk about what we write with a Sharpie, which is to say, what we consider fixed and permanent.
1. What We Write with a Pencil: Our Plans
Let’s talk about what we write in pencil, meaning what we hold loosely. Look at the first half of the verses again, vv. 12–17.
12 For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. 13 For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand— 14 just as you did partially understand us—that on the day of our Lord Jesus you will boast of us as we will boast of you.
15 Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. 16 I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. 17 Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time?
With the complex nature of their relationship in the background, I hope you can see what’s going on here. Some in Corinth are frustrated that Paul didn’t come to see them as he had said he would. They are mad that Paul changed his travel plans. He promised one thing, he said Yes yes, and then he broke his promise and said No no.
Therefore, some conclude, this Paul guy is wishy-washy; he’s hot and cold; he says he loves us, but he doesn’t love us. We can’t trust him with his plans. And if we can’t trust him in his travel plans, why should we trust him at all? Maybe this Jesus guy he keeps telling us about is not trustworthy either. That’s their accusation.
Now, to be clear, that is a real accusation in the sense that this could be true. Even if not true of Paul, it could be true of someone. It’s a real accusation. It’s not like they were saying, “You know that Paul guy, that guy is from outer space; he’s a Martian.” This is not what they are doing. They make a real criticism that he can’t be trusted. But the question for us is, is the criticism true? Did Paul change his plans? Can he be trusted?
The answer is complex; it’s messy. He’s not denying that at all. I did change my plans. Several times, actually, he would say. I don’t want to bog down here, but Paul is in print, so to speak, with plans different than what happened. You can see it in 1 Corinthians 16, that he had planned to spend perhaps even a whole winter with them. Then, when he did come, he told them he would visit them twice, first he’d start with them and then go north to Macedonia, and then he’d come south to them again. But he didn’t. And one time, instead of coming to them, he wrote a letter.
It takes a while to sift through all the details to show this. I’m not doing that now except to say that Paul is not denying any of these changes. But the question is why? We need to hear his answer. It comes in the next section of verses. Before I read them, let me just say how normal this is. [Cf. Mark Lewis and missions.] Our church, Community Church, is not the church in Corinth, and none of our leaders are the apostle Paul, but we did encounter the issue of changed plans when we planted Midtown Church.
I won’t give you the long history that goes back over twenty-five years and the desire to plan a church, but let me just give you the parts I know best, which is the last dozen years. When I got here, I learned how much people wanted to plant a church. Great, so we started looking at it more closely and at how we could plant a church among the people already coming from the city.
As we thought and prayed about it and talked to others, we believed it would go better if we moved buildings into a bigger space first, which would allow us to send 50–60 people away, which would be easier with a church of 250 than a church of 150. So one of our pastor-elders made some PowerPoint slides, and we showed them to the church, and… well… we started the plan. But not exactly.
We almost bought one building, and that didn’t work out. So we bought this one instead. Then we sold the two buildings we were in, the church building and the office building, and we moved into a school for fourteen weeks while this building was renovated. Then we started to grow here, and so we said, “Let’s get those slides out and have a member meeting and talk about planting that church.”
But then—plot twist—the other co-lead pastor told our leadership that he was going to another church. That’s a big deal. So we took those PowerPoint slides and filed them away and never showed them, at least at that time. Then we started to get healthy again, and talk about a plant resumed.
Then Covid happened. And we stopped even thinking about a church plant and just tried to survive. I just tried not to quit. And, by God’s grace, we more than survived.
Then three years go by, and we planted Midtown church. We planted with Pastor Ben, who hadn’t been in ministry but a year or two when all this started. But now he had eight years of experience, a pastor’s graduate degree, had grown into a gifted leader and preacher, and he was now ready to plant the church. We didn’t have that planned when we started. And the group of people living in Midtown in the city, well, some were the same, but many of them changed. And many of those who came later were mature and missional and all of that, and the church plant worked in a way that I’m not sure it would have if our first set of plans had happened.
You know, it’s funny. During that time of build-up to the church plant, I’d have other pastors ask me, and some of you ask me, if we had ever planted a church before, like did we have experience doing this thing. I’d say, “No, I’ve never done that. But one of us did make some very pretty and very detailed PowerPoint slides about planting a church, and if you had only seen how compelling they were.”
I’m making a bit of a joke. But you see the issue, don’t you? If the relationship between the church and the leadership had been rocky and full of mistrust, there would have been one hundred chances to say that Community Church is Yes yes when we are really No no. And if you were really antagonistic toward God—which maybe some of you are; you’re angry and upset at God and the church; I’m glad you’re here—then you probably would look at all those changes of plans and say, “Yeah, God can’t be trusted.”
Remember, this passage is speaking to the anger and disappointment and confusion that happens when we hold our plans as fixed and start to believe that God is the one who should bend to our plans. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we need to write our plans with a pencil. Yes, plans are good. Lots of places in the Bible would say, even command, that people should make plans. Most of the book of Proverbs is about the wisdom and godliness of plans. But we have to write our plans in pencil. This is spelled out in a passage near the start of the book of Proverbs that summarizes the posture we should have toward our personal plans and our posture toward God’s plans. You don’t need to turn there. But it will be familiar to many of you. Listen to Proverbs 3.
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
7 Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.
8 It will be healing to your flesh
and refreshment to your bones. (Prov. 3:5–8)
We have to remember and be very careful that when we make plans and goals that we are not, in the words of Proverbs, leaning on our own understanding, or what Paul calls in 2 Corinthians earthy wisdom and making plans according to the flesh (vv. 12, 17).
When we make plans, we have to be so careful that our hearts are tricked into thinking that we are not making a “deal” with God. “Yes, God, I’ll serve you in this way and do this for you, and tell you Yes yes, so that then you’ll have to, in fact, God, you are obligated to say Yes yes to me.” When our hearts do this, it leads to anger and confusion and probably cynicism toward God and the plan of salvation.
How does Paul respond to this criticism? He says he did change his personal travel plans. But why? How did he explain changes? This brings us to the second point.
2. What We Write with a Sharpie: God’s Plans (or our allegiance to God’s Plans)
We write our personal plans in pencil. What do we write with a Sharpie? I would say nothing. Only God writes plans in Sharpie. But what we do “write” in Sharpie is our allegiance to God’s faithfulness. We should become those who, in permanent ink, write our willingness to follow God’s leading. We may not write anything in Sharpie, but Christians are those who know the joy of building their lives on the permanence and rock-solid promises of God. That’s how Paul responds. He says my travel plans may have changed, but what didn’t change was my faith and following of God’s plans. Look at vv. 18–24.
18 As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. 19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. 20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
23 But I call God to witness against me—it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth. 24 Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith. [Cf., our mission statement.]
In the midst of talking about his personal travel plans, the apostle Paul makes a massive theological statement: everything God has ever promised becomes Yes in Jesus.
Has God promised to love us and forgive us and change us? Yes, he has, and his yes is true in Jesus. HasGod promised to care for his people, no matter what trials they experience on the path of obedience? Yes, that’s in Sharpie because of Jesus. Has God promised to send his Spirit to work among his people, anointing them for ministry and sealing them for the day of Christ’s return so that no one can snatch them out of God’s hand? Yes, and he’s written that promise in permanent, never-fading, never-changing ink that is the blood of Jesus.
Let me quote one verse from a letter that Paul wrote to a church in Rome. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). In other words, if Jesus lived and died, and rose and ascended to the throne of the universe and all the wrath of God against your sin was swallowed by Jesus on the cross, and all of the good works that Jesus did are seen as though you had done those very good works that only Jesus did, then how will God not say Yes to us in everything we need to follow him all of our days and on into eternity? If God did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, and he did that in Sharpie, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Paul asks.
And to that, God’s people say, Amen. That word Amen, means Yes, let it be so. This is why we say Amen at the end of our prayers; we mean Yes, let it be so. This why people sometimes say Amen to a preacher in a church service. You don’t do it much here, but we can work on that.
If you look at the logic of the passage, we see something helpful. It’s not that we make our plans Yes yes, and force God to say Yes yes to our plans. The order is reversed. God says Yes to us in Christ, we say Amen back to him. Paul believes this is where joy comes from: faith is our joyful response to God’s Yes toward us. And this is what Paul labors among them for, their joyful response to letting God be in charge of their lives.
This is a long way to say that Paul’s answer to why he changed his travel plans was that they were written in pencil; they always were and always will be. Paul was always submitting his personal plans to the plans of God. In fact, perhaps it would be worth going back to 1 Corinthians 16 for a moment. It’s not the only place Paul talked about his plans to them, but it is one. Look at 1 Corinthians 16:5–7.
5 I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, 6 and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter, so that you may help me on my journey, wherever I go. 7 For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits.
Do you see it? “I intend… perhaps I will stay… wherever I do… I do not want… I hope… if the Lord permits.” All of these describe a higher commitment to the Lord.
This is the posture the Lord wants of you in this new year, and every year. You should have some plans for 2026. I want to be one of the pastors of a church that is dreaming and praying and planning how they can love and serve and grow in every area of their lives. God wants us to plan to go here and go there and love these people and those people and serve God in this way and get this degree and start this relationship and make this change in career and share the gospel with this person and that person and on and on. Let’s be a church that plans and dreams. Maybe we’ll plant a church in the coming years. Maybe we’ll move buildings again. Maybe we’ll keep growing. Perhaps we won’t. But in all our planning, we need to say, “Not my will, but yours be done.”
That phrase, of course, comes from the very moments when Jesus was going to the cross and dying for our sins and purchasing our salvation for us. In the garden of Gethsemane, perhaps an hour before his arrest and then his torture and then his crucifixion, we read of Jesus wrestling with this very dynamic. In the end, Jesus says Yes yes to God and us, and now, forever, we can utter our Amen Amen to him.
Let’s pray. “Dear Heavenly Father…”
