It is only natural for us to make plans, in fact, it is necessary for us to make plans for certain things in life in order for us to be successful. We may have short term plans for tomorrow, next week, next month and so on, or we may have plans for much further in the future.
We have the understanding that many things may hinder our plans and that it is natural too, and we may even have some backup plans ready for when that does happen. Having plans is not a bad thing, but how we plan them, execute them and the expectations we have about them, could be where we tend to go wrong.
We have an idea of how we want our lives to turn out or where we want things to go, we have so many desires for ourselves, our families, our kids and all the other parts that make up our lives, but sometimes what we want is not what God wants, sometimes our plans are not what God has planned and how we deal with that, is what makes all the difference.
Let me direct you to James 4:13 to 17: “Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
In our comfort of knowing what God can do for us, knowing that nothing is impossible to Him and that He said we could ask Him anything, our prayer life is much more drawn in the direction of our needs and desires, in fact, almost all of what we pray has to do with something that we want God to do for us. I am not saying this is wrong by any means, He is our provider, our Father, our helper and our healer, where else will our help come from (Psalm 121:2), but how do we so often forget that we are to serve Him and not the other way around.
God has given us a gift that we do not deserve, His love has bridged the widest gap for us, for our benefit, there is nothing anybody could give you with more value than that. Maybe we should return to our first love, maybe we should go back and realise who He is and what He has done and that He is perfect in all His ways, because when we pray, we really should be seeking His will and not our own.
We should be wanting what He wants, we should be offering our lives as a living sacrifice and what that means is, that we should be willing to let go of everything we want, and I mean everything. I am not saying we should let go of everything, I am saying we should be willing to.
Think of Abraham, we all know what God asked Him to do, would you be willing to go that far, to sacrifice what YOU want, love, need, desire? Do you love God that much? I know this is an extreme example, but this actually happened, and this is actually just how little your own will should matter compared to the will of God.
Jesus prayed to God before His crucifixion and He asked: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.” (Matthew 26:39)
Maybe we should stop and think, really think about the fact that He knows the end from the beginning, and that what He wants to do with your life is definitely more important than what you want to do. Most importantly for the sake of His Glory and then for the sake of others, for the sake of your life and what He know will have eternal benefit for you.
Let us put God first with our planning, starting from the moment we first think of where we want to go with something, in the process leading up to what we have planned, at the execution of the plan and even after, in all of this, let us always pray and say what Jesus said: “Yet not as I will, but as You will.”
God bless,
Miryna van As