MAN PLANS AND GOD LAUGHS—PERHAPS
There is this old adage, “Man plans, and God laughs”—perhaps.
Did you notice Proverbs 16 clearly lays out the relationship between our plans and God’s involvement/response?
Let me just say that again: Proverbs 16 clearly lays out the relationship between our plans and God’s involvement/response!
First, note the relationship of our heart to our plans. In verse one we read the plans of our hearts belong to us. And verse nine declares that our heart plans our way.
So, the heart of the issue—is the issue of our hearts.
This is not new. In chapter three we identified the deep issue of deeply planting God in the center of our hearts.
In that chapter, I tried to emphasize as much as I could the fact we have to contend for this outcome—daily.
Remember Proverbs 3:5-6:
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.
Thinking of the metaphor from Proverbs 14, if we want to build our house, build our life, in a godly way, then we must lay out the plan trusting entirely on God.
And that means, getting our hearts right—Jesus is the answer for our heart condition.
We know being with Jesus is not something you do once—it is a life-long relationship.
One post earlier I spoke of how “getting wisdom was a full-contact sport”; relationships just don’t happen. You might say, we need to practice.
In addition to practice, we need a plan—and that plan must come from, and be fully committed, to God.
“Commit you work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.”
This is the verse that clearly lays out the relationship between our plans and God.
Commit our work, whatever it is, to the Lord. Here again is another of those places where the directions are simple to understand—just not necessarily easy to do every day.
This is an act of surrender—surrender of the heart.
We cannot know what God will call us to do. Whatever it is, big or small, it must first start with it being committed to the Lord.
He has told us in Proverbs 15:16, “Better is a little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure and trouble with it.” And in this chapter verse 8, “Better is a little with righteousness, than great revenues with injustice.”
“Better is a little”: most of us do not right plans with that as the goal.
What if the plan had less to do with size, and more to do with God?
Over and over Proverbs has been imploring us to pursue righteousness, to surrendering our plans, our very hearts, to God. When we do, we have no idea what the “this world” outcome will be.
Here is the question for me, “Will I reorient my plans, not away from how much/little I hope to achieve, but rather create those plans having their prime orientation towards God?
I need to go an cogitate on that, how about you?