I was brought up learning to have a mission and objectives
with strong goals for life in every category like health, wealth, work,
hobbies, and relationships. Planning is next to godliness was an unspoken rule.
In fact I traveled the country facilitating strategic planning for hospitals.
Each had to have a mission, vision, 5-year objectives and an action plan for
achieving them. My life, however, was a disaster in many ways.
I was working pretty much on my own recognizance in my
pre-Christian days. My own emotions and desires dictated my ways. My center was
built around my needs. That led to some pretty bad decisions. My career was
peaking, as I was the CEO of hospitals in the early nineties. Yet I had
isolated myself as many at the top do. I found myself alone often. In fact I
was a way from home, some 400 miles. I was working hard, often 14-16 hour days.
I exhausted myself and started drinking and losing judgment. The hospital was turning around successfully,
but I was turning too, away from good to bad. Decisions I made hurt many
people, even if the hospital succeeded. It took a crisis to turn me to God in
the middle of the night driving home in a blizzard. There in the snow by the
side of the highway, I knelt and received Jesus Christ as my Savior. The Lord
part would come slowly and is the subject of this three volume book, This
is the Way, Walk in it. His ways and thoughts are higher than ours, Isaiah 55 tells us.
I have changed in my approach to life. It
isn’t that I don’t think about a plan and make lists. I do. But today, God
leads my steps. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own
understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths
(make you paths straight)” (Proverbs 3:4-6). Is planning a bad idea, no
I don’t think so, but ask God first and not to plan and ask Him to bless them.
God said in Jeremiah 29:11-14, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord,
“plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Then
you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when
you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares
the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all
the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will
bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.” He is saying that He has plans
for the Israelites return from captivity caused by their disobedience and
rebelliousness. He even tells them to live normally and be thankful in their
struggle and that then He will bless them. He tells them through Jeremiah the
Prophet to seek Him in prayer with all their hearts. God is directing their
paths back home.
Job
said, “I know that You can do all things. No plan of yours can be thwarted” (Job
42:2). Another Scripture like it says, “I have learned the secret of being
content…I can everything through Him who gives me strength” (Philippians
4:13). God does not want this to be a secret, but it seems to be for most
humans. Solomon expresses his dismay and troubles in Ecclesiastes saying, “Everything
is meaningless!...Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes
12:9,13). He had tried life on his own without God and it had failed. It is thought
that Solomon also wrote the Book of Proverbs in which he says, “Do
not those who plot evil go astray? But those who plan what is good find love
and faithfulness” (Proverbs 14:22). He continues in Proverbs to speak
about planning. “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed” (Proverbs
15:22). In Proverbs 16:1&9 he says, "To a man belongs the plans of the heart, but
from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue…In his heart a man plans his
course, but the Lord determines his steps.” A similar thought comes in
Proverbs 19:21, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it it’s the Lord’s purpose
that prevails.” Perhaps then a summary of these proverbs might be
Proverbs 14:12 saying, There is a way that seems right to a, but in
the end it leads to death.” Well, think about that one.
The
Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians admonishes us, “In Him we were also chosen,
having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything
in conformity with the purpose of His will in order that we, who were the first
to hope in Christ, might be for the praise and glory of God” (Ephesians
1:11-12). Christ is the center of God’s plan. It is only in relationship to
Jesus Christ that there is a meaningful future destiny.
Jesus
said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Enter through the narrow gate. For the wide
is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many who enter
through it. But small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life,
and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts.