Making Wise Plans for the Future
Proverbs 16:9
November 2, 2003
Introduction
We have looked at how to live life in view of God’s control, or sovereignty as the theologians call it. We looked last week at developing a biblical mindset, and next week we look at how to live a life of anticipation of heaven, and of God fulfilling His promises on earth while we wait.
Today I want to talk about how to make plans for the future, as we continue to look at how to live a life in the peace of God.
The Scriptures are clear that planning is a good thing. The Bible says we are to plan on having money to support our family by saving, by looking at what the future might hold, and planning for it, and so on.
So planning is a good thing.
My main emphasis as we go along today will be along the lines of job and career choices, since these are so crucial to our emotional and spiritual well-being, as you will see as go along today.
I’m not going to talk about such things as planning your wardrobe, what color to paint your house, or anything like that. You have a brain, and I’m going to assume at this point that you are capable of making some of those decisions on your own.
But I want to offer you three keys to making wise plans, and my hope is that you will actually make the effort to integrate these into your life.
You won’t regret it, and you may just open yourself up to new adventures for God.
Let’s get started, shall we? The first key to making wise plans for the future is to…
1. Plan with the purposes of God in mind.
This will be where we spend most of our time, so buckle your seat belts!
Proverbs 16:9 –
In his heart a man plans his course,
but the LORD determines his steps.
Two weeks ago, we talked about the fact that God is in control, no matter what, and that man can do nothing to thwart God’s plans.
This verse is stating that our planning should take into account that God’s plans are most important, and that we need to be open to what He wants us to do, even if that means a course correction in mid-life.
Let me share some ideas to help you make plans with the purposes of God in mind:
Ask God for His vision for your life.
We are generally self-sufficient beings, not wanting help from others, because we don’t want to look weak or indecisive.
But if we want to be people of wisdom, we need to listen for God’s voice to give us direction for our lives.
Are you willing to take the time to ask and wait for Him to answer?
You might be thinking that maybe you’re too far along for God to give you His vision or direction for your life, but remember, it’s never too late for God. He is sovereign, remember?
Important: ask for patience from Him in this. Sometimes we get in a hurry, and that’s when we make wrong decisions.
So be serious about asking God to give you a vision for what He has for you.
Next…
Seek godly counsel:
The Bible says that with many counselors there is success.
Get input from others. Sometimes we don’t always see things as they really are, because we are so wrapped up in the circumstances, we can’t see outside of them. So it’s very valuable to get counsel. Let me offer you, very quickly, three major sources of counsel that you can take advantage of:
• Spouse
Did you know that one of the chief reasons God gave you your spouse was to complete you?
This implies something: you are incomplete! If you’re married, you have a goldmine of inside information about your personality and strengths, temperament, and all sorts of stuff that no one has access to except him or her.
Part of how your spouse completes you is in helping you make wise decisions.
Ask your spouse about what you’re thinking. And be willing to listen. Even if what they say is not in line with what you are hoping or planning.
This is humbling, believe me. I’ve had to re-think a lot of things after talking to Debra, but after I get over my pride, I see she’s usually right after all.
Quick disclaimer: if God has called you to be single, then you are still incomplete, but you find completeness in God and others, not a spouse.
My talk of incompleteness is not meant to be a slam against being single, nor is it meant to proclaim that everyone should be married.
I don’t think Scripture would support that view, so don’t take my comments the wrong way, okay?
The next source of counsel is…
• Your Pastor
Lay your plans before your pastor, to see if he can give you insight to your situation.
When I was considering different job choices over my life, and I’ve had a few, I always visited with a pastor, because they could help me sift through the vital issues.
One of the best things they did was to help me find the right questions to ask of myself and of the opportunity.
What I mean is that I needed to look past just the dollar amount. I needed to ask other questions like about how my family is viewed by my employers – as an asset or a liability?
Would it affect my current ministry responsibilities like teaching Sunday School or leading the choir?
Does this opportunity make the best use of your spiritual as well as natural gifts?
Your pastor can help you ask the right questions. The last main source of counsel is…
• Other third parties.
Your friends, co-workers, bowling buddies, or whatever. See what they think, and let them ask questions so they can give you good input.
As you seek that godly counsel you need to also keep in mind the third idea for making plans while keeping in mind the purposes of God, and that is to…
Make sure certain bases are covered:
• Your family is provided for.
The job, career, ministry, or whatever might look great, but if it doesn’t feed your family, you need to think twice.
The Bible says that if you are not providing for your family, you are worse than an unbeliever!
I heard a guy once quote that Scripture from another translation that said you’re worse than an infidel. He said he didn’t even know what an infidel was, so he sure didn’t want to be worse than one!
Provide for your family. The next base to be covered is to …
• Make sure your plan doesn’t hinder your relationship with God.
If it takes away from time you have normally given to God in personal worship and church, it is not a wise move.
God would never give you a plan that would require you to spend less time with Him.
We need Him! Don’t let a job or career interfere with that.
The point here is that if what you’re planning to do will take away time from God, it’s probably not a wise move.
The third base to be covered is to…
• Tie up loose ends.
Leaving town to escape debts or obligations is not a wise or godly plan.
The cause of Christ suffers, not to mention your personal integrity when you skip out like that.
Whenever I had to change jobs, I made sure my former employers knew how to contact me if they had questions.
I think you get the idea.
The fourth idea to planning in light of the purposes of God is to…
Eliminate some choices.
For instance, God never tells anyone to take part in sinful or illegal activities.
God’s not going to call you to a ministry of robbing banks or committing adultery, okay?
God never tells anyone to leave their spouse for the sake of ministry. Unfortunately, there are some high-profile Christians who believe that they have the right to dump their spouse if they are in the way of that person’s “ministry.” Wrong.
You made a vow to God to stick it out through thick and thin. If you think God can’t work anymore because you’re “tied down” to a spouse who doesn’t see things your way, then you’re God is too small.
And you have NOT heard His voice.
The God of the Bible is not tied to you – He can and will raise up someone else. You need to remain faithful to God and your spouse.
God would never tell you to make choices that are clearly against Scriptural principles.
If the choice is legal but unethical, I can tell you right now it’s a choice that needs to be eliminated.
One way to eliminate some choices is to use the next item, and that is to…
Take an inventory of your strengths and interests.
God gave each of us certain strengths and interests.
I am not made for a modeling career. I don’t have the looks, nor the desire. So that would be a choice I should eliminate.
I am also not mechanically inclined. One of the biggest challenges I faced when I began selling office furniture was that I had never used a power drill before, and was scared to death that if I put the screwdriver bit in that thing I’d either ruin the furniture I was putting together or kill myself.
We have a set of rabbit ears on our TV, and if I want to watch TV, I need to unhook the VCR and screw in the rabbit ears. But I have to turn the TV all the way around, because for some reason I can’t turn the little nut thing that holds the cable in if I don’t.
Some of you guys are just laughing to yourselves, because any idiot knows “right tighty and lefty loosy.” The problem is that I’m not able to translate that when I have to do it upside down and backwards.
So don’t let me work on your cars, for crying out loud. I don’t even change my own oil, because I’m afraid to screw it up.
Being a baseball fan redeems me though, to most guys.
But let me be quick to say that my wife has no problems in this area. She seems to be quiet gifted mechanically.
You know what she wanted for Christmas last year? A power drill. No kidding.
But I love to help people find Jesus and strengthen their relationship with Him through personal contact and church ministries. So pastoring is a good fit for me.
Anyway, look at what you do well and what your interests are. Most of the time these match up pretty well.
Students are generally given the opportunity to take aptitude tests to help them see where their natural gifts lie.
If you are an adult, contact the local job service, and they will help you find out what you’re good at.
The sixth and final idea to help you make wise plans in the control of God is to…
Refuse to make hasty decisions.
Especially in career and job choices.
Some of the worst decisions I have ever made in my life were ones where I was offered a job opportunity, and they demanded a quick answer.
So I now have a policy that if someone offers me a job and demands an immediate answer, the answer is always no. If they are not willing to give me adequate time to consider the offer, make sure all the bases are covered, pray, seek counsel, and all that stuff, I can be sure that it will be a bad fit.
So apply these six ideas so you can make wise plans with the purposes of God in mind.
Let’s move on to the second key to making wise plans:
2. Bathe your plans in prayer.
Proverbs 16:3 –
Commit to the LORD whatever you do,
and your plans will succeed.
One of the things you should pray about is whether your plans are based on selfish motives or godly ones.
When I took the job in Florida, my motives were not entirely pure. I was looking for prestige, and three months into the job, I was let go, and I lost my prestige and my salary, forcing me to work as a waiter at a place that forced us to work 10-12 hours without a break. But I needed the money – I had a wife and a baby to feed.
I was not willing to listen to God about the bookstore job, and it cost me dearly.
So you can bet that since that time I have taken everything to prayer, with one exception. And wouldn’t you know, that was a bad decision. Hello! You think I learned my lesson that time? You better believe it, baby!
Get a bunch of people praying for you. You can’t lose.
And when you have prayed about it, and you are convinced that you are making the right decision, move on it, with the confidence that you are in the will of God.
The third key to making wise plans is to…
3. Allow God to change your path as He sees fit.
This is a toughie for a lot of people. We have a career that we love, security, a house that’s paid for, friends, a good school, and whatever else, and we sense that God may be asking us to move on to something else, either in ministry or for our career path, to put us in a better position to take care of our families or invest in the kingdom of God.
The natural reaction to this is to say, “this can’t be God! Why would He take us out of our comfortable situation?”
Well, I hate to tell you this, but sometimes He takes us out of our comfortable situations simply because we’re comfortable. Too comfortable, and not willing to exert ourselves in ministry to others.
What I want to address here is just simply the fact that God has the right to put you where He pleases.
James 4:13-15 –
Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14 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. 15 Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that."
Are you willing to live your life under the watchwords, “If the Lord wills?”
You know folks, I was pretty comfortable in the thought that I would be selling office furniture the rest of my life, although I must admit I thought I would be involved in some sort of ministry, probably leading discipleship studies through the church in Brookings.
So when God called me to full-time ministry, I was shocked. I was in my 30’s, had four kids and another on the way, working a job that paid okay, and living in my mother-in-laws house, not paying any rent, because she didn’t want it or need it, and because it held all of us.
I had a choice. I could say, “No, Thanks, Lord. I’ve got everything under control, and I’m just fine.”
God would have found someone else, and I would never have known what I’ve missed.
But God had been working in me for a while before that, to be able to say, “Okay, Lord. I’m not sure what all this is about, but I’m confident that You know what You’re doing, so we’ll do it.”
And I thank God for a wife who saw the hand of God in all this and encouraged me, although it would be hardest for her.
I have a job I absolutely love here at the church. I work a second job I enjoy and am successful at.
But let me just give you one example of how God has moved since coming here. Our foreign exchange student, Marcin, gave his life to Christ while living in our home.
Since graduating, he has influenced a number of people for Christ, including some Japanese foreign exchange students at the Christian college he attended his first year.
He is currently leading a discipleship Bible study at Simpson College, and people are flocking to it, because they’re sick of the liberal atmosphere of the “religious” offerings on campus.
Marcin will impact untold numbers for Jesus. And I would have missed out on that if I had not been willing to say, “I’ll sell office furniture unless God has something different for me.”
How about you? Are you willing to let God make a mid-course correction in your plan?
Let me tell you, I know it’s tough to consider changing. Mark Twain once said that the only person who likes changing is a wet baby.
Here’s my counsel to you: hold onto your plans loosely, so that if God decides to alter them, it will not be traumatic. It will be exciting, as you anticipate what God plans next for you.
Conclusion
There is a mentality that says God is not interested in our plans, job choices, or whatever, because He’s only interested in our “spiritual” life.
But nothing could be farther from the truth. He is interested in every detail of your life.
You see, folks, the problem isn’t God’s interest in us, it’s our tendency to compartmentalize our lives, particularly in two areas: secular and spiritual.
We see our jobs, homes, cars, and hobbies as being secular, and our church life as being separate.
But that’s not how God wants us to operate. He wants it to be all considered spiritual. We work because God gives us the job and the skills, and we do it as if working for Him.
God is an active part of all we do. And we make a mistake to separate them. After all, if we really don’t believe God is interested in where I live or what I do for a living, why should we bother to consult Him about them?
Don’t make the separation. Your work matters to God, no matter your job. Please don’t think otherwise.
Get into the habit of seeing God’s involvement with every aspect of your life, since He is involved anyway.
And when you develop that habit, you begin to see things from a different perspective, and you’re more open to allowing God to have His way, even if it means making a career change down the road.
And when He has His way in your life, you begin to make plans and decisions that are pleasing to Him, and that brings a whole host of benefits, not the least of which is the peace of God, which is the focus of this whole series.
Make a commitment to yourself, to God, and your spouse, if you have one, that you will no longer make plans without consulting God, His Word, and His people.
Save yourself the hassles of regret and second-guessing. Open yourself to the joy of knowing that because you allow God to move in your plans, you are assured of His peace, and the success He wants you to have.
