Word To The Wise: Make Your Plans With God In Mind!

We make all kinds of plans in life.  A plan for lunch.  A plan for the weekend.  Summer plans.  A plan for our future.  A game plan.  Short term plans.  Long term plans.  Strategic plans.  Our culture is obsessed with the idea that, “if we fail to plan, we plan to fail.”  Having a plan is closely tied to our “goals” and the things we want to accomplish in life.  A plan defines what we are going to be doing and the details of how we are going to do it at any given time.  A plan steers us in the direction we want to go in our lives.  A plan often expresses our priorities, what we value, and the things that are most important to us in life.  There is nothing wrong with making a plan in life, but our plan must include something greater than our own personal wants, desires, interests, ideas or agenda.

READ:  Proverbs 16:9

Here’s our WORD TO THE WISE for the week from the book of Proverbs:  Make Your PLANS With God In Mind!  God has given us the freedom to make our own plans.  All the plans of our lives come from a simple desire which originates in our heart.  Freedom to make plans is exactly what we want because we want to control the direction of our own lives.  We cherish the freedom to make plans because we want to be the ruler of our own existence.  And yet, our plans are woefully inadequate because they are always tainted by selfishness and sin.  The only way for our plans to be redeemed is to allow God to make our plans for us!  In our hearts, we must want God’s plan for our lives.  We must trust that whatever God’s plan is for our lives is the best possible option.  How do we keep God in mind while we are making our plans?

The Lord is intimately AWARE of our plans (Proverbs 5:21) – God knows everything about our plans.  As we go about making plans for our day, our week, our month, our life, God is watching and He sees and knows exactly what we are doing.  Our plans are not hidden or a mystery to Him.  Not only does God know our plans, but more importantly He knows our selfish and sinful motivation for why we a making those plans.  This knowledge should encourage us to make plans that we would not be ashamed of Him knowing about and would be pleasing to Him (Romans 8:5-8).  In order to avoid the shame of the fact that “God knows”, it would be wise to make plans that He not merely agrees with, but pursue plans that He’s already made for us!

The Lord has a PURPOSE in His plans for us that NEVER CHANGES (Proverbs 19:21) – Our plans are like a piece of trash being blown around in the wind, constantly shifting and changing directions.  The chaos and confusion of our life’s circumstances cause us to continually change our plans.  In contrast, God’s plans for our life are like a mountain, grounded firmly on an immovable eternal purpose that He has for us.  No matter how much the circumstances of our lives change, God’s plans for us will “stand” firm.  Our plans may change or fail, but God’s purpose will remain the same and always be accomplished.  Therefore, we must never put confidence in our own plans, but rather, in the glorious plans that have been revealed to us by God (Jeremiah 29:11).

The Lord will ESTABLISH our plans if we COMMIT them to Him (Proverbs 16:3) – It’s easy to identify someone who’s making plans with God in mind.  When they talk about “their” plans, they speak in terms like, “I feel like God is leading me to . . .”, or “I sense that it is God’s will that I . . .”  This language signals a desire to make plans with God’s plan and purpose for our life in mind and not just our own.  Jesus expressed it best in Luke 22:42 when praying about enduring His Father’s wrath on the cross by saying, “not my will, but yours, be done.”  Making plans starts with the question, “Lord, what are YOUR plans for my life?”  The motivation of our heart must be to “commit” everything we do to the Lord and allow God to “establish” the plans for our life (Eph. 6:7; Col. 3:17, 23).

CONCLUSION:

James 4:13-17 says, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’-yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.  What is your life?  For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that”.  We must trust the Lord with the plans of our lives and humbly give Him the authority to guide and direct us according to His good, acceptable, and perfect will (Romans 12:2).  Ultimately, making plans with God in mind means wanting nothing less than God’s plans to be our plans!