Man plans and God laughs.
If you are a planner, a.k.a. control freak, like I am, you will always have a Plan A (the thing you really want to do) and a Plan B (your contingent second choice) that you can fall back on if Plan A doesn’t work out. You’re good at planning. You focus on the details, you are forward thinking and when it comes to your life, your goals, and your future…. you have a well thought out game plan, your Plan A.
Did you know that God also has a Plan A for your life? And His plan is perfect. The question is, could our Plan A actually God’s B plan for us, the contingent plan that is not His perfect plan? The dilemma is… how do we know if our plans are His, and if His Plan A is ours.
What does it mean to think that God has a perfect plan for us? Sometimes the word “perfect” seems so unrealistic. After all, we’re fallible and make so many mistakes. How could anything be perfect in our lives when we keep messing things up? Thinking of our circumstances and shortcomings, we can shake our heads at this thought of a Perfect Plan A; but the plan is perfect because God is perfect.
God has a special plan for each of our lives and His ways are indeed perfect.
Even though we frequently veer off course in our imperfect ways, God can still fulfill His perfect plan in us when we submit and return to Him. This takes patience and spiritual maturity. You see, His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are above our thoughts. (Read Isiah 55:8-9 for more information on that). The key to finding out His Plan A is to wait on Him to lead you and keep your heart focused on His word.
For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. Hebrews 10:36
As soon as we say, “what if this… what if that… and we jump to a plan, not waiting on God” we have taken our attention off God’s ways and His word and we have allowed Satan to distract us with wrong thinking.
So as we think about God at work in us, we remind ourselves that God is perfection. Let’s be careful not to put our game plan in action before it’s time. Trust in Him to lead you, otherwise you may end up on His contingency plan… which, for the record, is still for our good (yet we will miss out on God’s Plan A). Romans 8:28 tells us that ALL things work together for our good and His glory, for those that love Him.
Our loving Lord pleads with us to turn our minds and hearts fully over to Him. The more fully we do that, the more completely we live by His good and perfect plan. And one day when we get to Heaven, we will talk with God about what we did with our lives. Personally, I don’t want to sit with Him and hear, oh yes Christine, but look what actually I created you to do, and at that point I see that I missed out on His perfect plan.
forcourageouswomen.com 