Plans

How many of you have made a plan only to see it fall apart piece by piece?  Or told everyone you possibly could of something you were planning only to have it not come to fruition?  I do it all the time.  I mean, all the time.  I have big plans and then I either don't follow through or the plans change.  Within the last year I was reading through James (my favorite Bible book) and I read a verse that stumped me for a sec.  James 4:13-17 says, "Now listen you who say (he was talking to me), "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 and brag.  All such boasting is evil.   Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins."" 

I had never thought of making plans as bragging.  Do I know what tomorrow brings?  Absolutely not!  How many times have I made plans to go somewhere, clean something, meet a friend, and not been able to do those things because of a situation that has come up?  I wasn't even thinking about the Lord's will, only my own.  I give no thought to God when I am making my plans, I don't think about what He wants to put in my day.  I just selfishly fill my days with whatever I want to do.  God gets his 10 minutes in the morning and the rest of the day is Mine, All Mine! Bwahahaha!

I know we modern day Christians try to fit in with the rest of the world as best we can because the rest of the world already thinks we're freaks.  If we start speaking Christianese, we're just going to get more outcast.  If we all start sentences with "If it's the Lord's will..." we are going to get some funny looks!  Maybe we could find a way to change the way we speak so that it honors God and doesn't make us look weird.  Unless looking weird is your thing...   I like saying, "My plan, if God wills it, is...  Or my plan is to..."  I'm still working on it though, I forget sometimes.

Proverbs 19:21 says, "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails."  I don't think the Lord wants us to stop making plans, He just wants us to include Him and make room for what He may plan.  People ask me all the time why I have 6 kids.  I tell them that I only planned 2 of them, the Lord planned the other 4.  I may have had my "plans" but God knew what was going to be best for me. 

How about you?  What plans did you have that God changed?  How was your attitude when the plans changed?