"Plans That Work"
By Jerry D. Ousley







Have you ever made plans that just didn’t work?  There was a day I had planned to do some writing.  There were several projects I’d been working on and this day was reserved for getting as many of those finished as possible.  There were just a few errands that had to be taken care of first.  A trip to the bank was necessary.  Okay, that wouldn’t take very long . . . except it was the first of the month when people who received government checks did their banking.  The five minute trip I had figured on turned out to be forty-five minutes.

Then we needed a few things from the department store, there were movies that had to be returned, a required trip to the hardware store, and a stop at a local restaurant for takeout.  Okay, I don’t mean to be complaining here; these things were all necessary and had to be done.  The problem was that I had made very ambitious plans to accomplish too much in a single day.  I got some of my writing done; perhaps not as much as I had intended but then, all in all the day had been a successful one.

Plans don’t always work.  At times it’s mainly because we try to cram way too much in a twenty-four hour time period.  But there is a way to make plans work.  If you’re like me one of the things I do is try to do too much.  We need to make our plans first of all workable, then reasonable. 

The temptation that I am plagued with is that once I make all these plans then I go at it like my butt’s on fire trying to get everything done.  What happens next is that they all turn out to be work and burdensome.  What should have been something I wanted to do was transformed into something I dreaded to do.

If we want our plans to turn out differently we should take a look at Proverbs 16:3 and see what the Bible says about it.  It says, “Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established.”  First of all we need to do what we do like we are doing it for God because in fact we really are.  In Colossians 3:23 Paul writes, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men.”  Our plans should be thought of as work given us by God.  It is committing our works to God.  If we think about it in this way it suddenly becomes an honor to do what we do.  It is not being done for men but for God.  Our attitude should reflect one that would be expected if we were on a very important mission for the Master.  To be chosen to accomplish our duties, no matter what they are, if we are doing them for God and they are tasks that our Lord would do, we can not only be happy in our work but also consider ourselves fortunate and privileged to do them.

Proverbs 3:23 tells us something more.  It says that after we have committed our works to the Lord that our thoughts will be established.  It means that we can accomplish what was put into our minds to do.  It’s like an artist that has finally finished a masterpiece.  He or she must feel elated to finally see what was in their minds eye, now before them on the canvas.  What they had envisioned is now a reality.

There is a key to this.  We must be listening to God in order for our plans to be His.  We do what He wants us to do.  If our work is His work then it must be according to His plan which means we’ve got to get ourselves out of the way.  We can’t expect God to put His blessing on something that is selfish or might do harm to others.  But if we’ve put our plans in His hands then the day will come when we can stand back and admire the finished work.  These plans will work.

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