Planning with the Master Planner

 

Think about it- how many times has it happened that you did due diligence to plan for an important day/event/trip and then something totally different happened that day?

Man proposes, God disposes, it seems.

Some say, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

To me, that makes God sound like a sadistic person who enjoys disrupting our lives with His whims and fancies.

So what if we don’t plan anything and just take each day of life as it comes? Then pretty much nothing that requires planning would get done. If you have a baby and wait till the last minute to buy diapers, you might get none because your local retailer also waited till the last minute to buy it from his wholesaler. If you wait for the school/college to announce the exam time table to start studying, you might find yourself studying to pass rather than excel.

So, what do we do then? Keep investing our time and energy planning and then just be ok with it when something totally different happens?

How does one who is truly submitted to God, plan for life’s ordinary and extraordinary tasks?

As someone who grew up in abusive home, I have spent my entire life seeking safety in predictability. Being unprepared and/or late for anything is terribly disturbing to me. In the initial days of following Jesus, I used to plan my work independently and then ask God to bless my plans. It took me a long time to realize that’s exactly what Abraham and Sarah did. They got fed up waiting for God’s plan for them to have children, so they decided to use Hagar to conceive Abraham’s child. And when they had to take the consequences of their ungodly decision, Abraham pleaded with God to let Ishmael live under God’s favour. Unfortunately, this insistence of doing things their own way led to so many problems for so many other people too.

I remember, one morning, I had a lot to do that day and so I woke up an hour early to pray and plan. But I decided that my thoughts about what I wanted to get done that day were distracting me from praying, so I spent the first hour planning in detail, my very packed day and then sat down to pray ‘peacefully’. After I finished my hour of praying, and was ready to start executing my plan, I received a phone call that changed the whole day’s plan- throwing all my work out of the window because I had a huge problem to solve instead. If I had spent the first hour praying, truly prioritising God’s presence over my plans, I would have had the peace and strength to be prepared for that day really brought me.

 

Other times, I have got so paralysed with fear about making a decision, I used to wait until the very last minute to hear from God about something because I didn’t want to make the wrong decision.

 

Still other times, I have been very fruitful when I’ve been able to hear God direct me step by step through a amazing adventures that truly only He could plan- not me.

 

So how should someone like me, who really needs to plan to be able to get anything done, plan with the Master Planner?

 

1.  Seek God first.

As important as having an effective, smooth day is to me, I choose God to be more important to me. The truth is I live on a planet with billions of other sinners, who just like me are trying to do their best to survive and end up hurting each other. None of us have absolute control over what’s going to happen today. It’s scary to think of all the ways in which my day, my life could just fall apart with the amount of evil we live amidst. So really the only thing I can truly depend upon is God Himself. His presence through any situation – however uncontrollable by me- is the real game changer. And so I begin my day, by seeking God. By sitting with Him, in the silence, in the darkness, and often in my sleepiness, before my brain can start scrambling to attend to 5 things at once, and I sit with Him in order to soak in His Presence.

 

2.  Seek God’s kingdom.

In His presence, with my heart and mind totally open to Him, I am able to truly seek His kingdom- one of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. This I seek not just for myself and my loved ones, but for all humanity. I know and I trust that if my gaze is fixed on Him and my hands committed to seek His kingdom on earth, He will provide all other things to me, in accordance with His plan for me.

 

3.  Seek God’s specific will in my life.

However, there will always be specific things I need to address each day and I’ve learned the hard way, never to make any decision/commitment- even if it seems like a ‘good’ decision on every front, without first seeking God’s will in that decision. When I say I’ll pray about it and get back to you, you might have to wait a while, because I’m really not in any hurry to make a move unless I know I have God’s permission to move ahead. Other times, God has given me clear instructions to stay put/stay silent/ do not react/let go and all of this has required much more from me than ‘doing’ something. Yet, every time the Lord told me to take my hands off something or someone, I really saw how well He handled it when I got out of His way. Both in Dec 2019 and in Dec 2022, God gave me very specific direction for the year ahead. The last time, obeying His specific instructions, really rooted us for 3 whole months before the pandemic affected us. This time, I do not know what is in store, but I know that God has not wasted His time given me these specific instructions and obeying Him will be enough for whatever is to come.

 

4.  Trust God when things go ‘wrong’.

God’s perfect will is really sublime. And God’s permissive will is really hard to swallow. What feels like pain and punishment is often part of a far more important plan to bring me healing and growth. When something bad happens, I go straight to God and ask Him what’s going on. Sometimes, His answer is very clear. Sometimes, it takes time to surface past my pain and confusion. But I can look back on enough difficulty in my life and see that God did indeed work it ALLLLLL out for my temporal and eternal good.

 

5.  Face the consequences for obeying God rather than man.

Many times, I have perfect peace about the way He is planning my life and I’m obeying, but God’s plan has made other people very disturbed, angry and outright hostile towards me. Being insulted and rejected for choosing God’s way has only made me closer to Jesus because I can better appreciate what He went through for 33 years in order to give me eternal life.

 

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

 

So, seek God, His kingdom, His specific will for your life.

Then trust Him, obey and pray through whatever’s going to come.