Misdirected Plans Redirected

Are you praying for God to bless your plans that seem to be failing? Instead of being the captain of your own ship, why not have Him navigate your course? 

Lately, I have been thinking how many of our plans can go awry. When this happens, we bemoan our derailed dreams and we ask God, “Why me?” Well, could it be that our plans were not His plans and we were leaning on our own understanding. I am not alluding to plotting ill intentions, but rather strategizing a seemingly exceptional agenda for our lives, except God is excluded. Yes, I know, we may have asked God to bless our proposed program for our lives, but did we actually ask Him what His plan for our lives was? We must never forget that the Lord has declared that He knows the plan He has for us to prosper and to not be harmed, but to have hope and a future. (See Jeremiah 29:11)

Now, if God has a plan for us, wouldn’t it be best to ask Him to direct us to His plans, rather than devise our own? His proposition for us is to submit to His ways, so that we will not fall prey to evil. Frequently, we leave the door open to the devil because we have a good plan, which is not of God. This results in worldly sorrow that leads to our demise. We will undoubtedly encounter grief even when in God’s will, but this sorrow produces repentance without regret and leads us to salvation. (See 2 Corinthians 7:10)

Our aspirations may appear to be inspired by God, but could very well be our soulish desires. There is nothing wrong wanting to be married with children and living in a house with a white picket fence. But, it may be a misdirected plan and as we focus on a path to achieve our agenda, the Lord redirects us with obstacles in our way rerouting us on an unexpected and unappealing road full of potholes. We beseech God to remove every hindrance, and we declare and decree that the mountain move and the walls fall. Yet, nothing happens. Why? Is God not listening? He sure is. And He is also waiting for us to get with His program. Those delays, denials, dead-ends and defeats are actually our deliverance from ourselves as we deviate from God’s design for our lives. We ambitiously draw up inept blueprints without considering the Adept Architect and our Firm Foundation, Jesus, and without Him, everything we build is on shaky ground.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. James 4:13-16

I understand about thwarted plans. I had hoped to have a good job and to do some ministry on the side. But, God had another way. As rejection after rejection piled up God was redirecting me back on His track, which made people think I was “crack” - the Jamaican parlance for just plain old crazy. My friends thought I lived in an unappealing neighborhood, I had little funds, and no good job, but God was using all these to prepare me for His full-time ministry in the inner-city. I could now empathize with these folks who face many prejudices because of where they live, their little income and what looks outwardly like insignificant influence.

How many of us would truly say we look forward to having no worldly inheritance and have the Lord as our only inheritance? (See Deuteronomy 18:2). Come on now, speak the truth, it will set you free. I am not going to lie to you, I would love to have nice vacations, have my own home and buy what I want, when I want. Oh yes, and God would be in the mix as I thank Him for being so good to me. However, that is not what God longs for. He wants us to view everything else as rubbish and see Him as our One and Only, even when we have nothing.

The Lord yearns for us to delight in Him and then He will place desires aligned with His heart in us. (See Psalm 37:4). When we put God first, we will want what He wants. Our priority will be to please Him, and not all others. We will commit all our plans to the Father, knowing that we may plan our path, but He is will direct our steps.