Don’t Plan Without God
Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and
He shall bring it to pass —Psalm 37:5
Don’t plan without God. God seems to have a delightful way of upsetting the
plans we have made, when we have not taken Him into account. We get ourselves
into circumstances that were not chosen by God, and suddenly we realize that we
have been making our plans without Him— that we have not even considered Him to
be a vital, living factor in the planning of our lives. And yet the only thing
that will keep us from even the possibility of worrying is to bring God in as
the greatest factor in all of our planning.
In spiritual issues it is customary for us
to put God first, but we tend to think that it is inappropriate and unnecessary
to put Him first in the practical, everyday issues of our lives. If we have
the idea that we have to put on our "spiritual face" before we can
come near to God, then we will never come near to Him. We must come as we are.
Don’t plan with a concern for evil
in mind. Does God really mean
for us to plan without taking the evil around us into account? "Love . . .
thinks no evil" (1 Corinthians
13:4-5). Love is not ignorant of the existence of evil, but it does
not take it into account as a factor in planning. When we were apart from God,
we did take evil into account, doing all of our planning with it in mind, and
we tried to reason out all of our work from its standpoint.
Don’t plan with a rainy day in mind. You cannot hoard things for a rainy day if you are
truly trusting Christ. Jesus said, "Let not your heart be troubled . .
." (John 14:1 ).
God will not keep your heart from being troubled. It is a command— "Let not. . . ." To do it,
continually pick yourself up, even if you fall a hundred and one times a day,
until you get into the habit of putting God first and planning with Him in
mind.
(Taken
from Oswald Chambers – “My Utmost For His Highest” July
5)