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)