Are you a planner who puts some thought in what you are going to be doing this day, this week, this year, or even this decade? Or, do you basically just go with the flow without scripting anything?
Planning is good, especially if you ask God for some guidance as you plan. I suspect that all of us plan to one degree or another. The Bible has some good advice about planning in the book of James, chapter four and verses 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.
Basically these verses are talking about people who make plans, whether short or long term, but who leave God out of the planning process. The problem with that is that we don’t really have a clue about what is going to happen to us tomorrow or ten years from now. Anyone of us could have moved, or died, or changed our interests. Our country could have been taken over in a war, or our economy could have tanked and left us without a job. Who knows? James says that to plan our lives that way is basically being arrogant, boastful, and just plain wrong.
There is one who does know the plans He has made for us and He would really appreciate it and things would probably go much better for us if we consulted Him (God) when we make plans. This is true even of the little things in life. I once heard a speaker named Hans Peter Royer who said, “90% of life is the little stuff. So, if you leave God out of the little stuff, you leave Him out of 90% of your life.”
Life goes better with God. If you walk with God, you’ll get where He’s going.
