plans

Opening Prayer:  O Lord, help me to stop living according to my plans and start living according to yours.  Amen.

Scripture: Jeremiah 29:11-14

Journal:  Where in your life are you operating by your plans rather than God’s?  What would it look like to allow him to make the plans?

Reflection: Question: How many plans have you had to change in the last 10 months?  How many times have you had to cancel something, or had something canceled on you?  Lots, right?  Canceling things has been raised to an art form these days.  Just today I had to cancel a day of solitude with a couple of dear friends because two of us were in contact with someone who “may have” been exposed to the Coronavirus.  And that has become commonplace.

Maybe God is trying to tell us something.  Maybe he is trying to get us to stop making our own plans and to start asking him what his plans are.  After all, he is the one who said: “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

Who knows, maybe it’s time for us to stop planning and start listening.  Maybe it’s time for us to stop being the initiators and start being the responders.  Maybe we have gotten so used to this mode of operation that we hardly notice it anymore.  Maybe the whole reason we have to keep canceling things is because they were our things and not his.  Maybe God is trying to get us on his page, rather than us constantly trying to get him on ours.  Maybe this is a time, and a season, when he simply wants us to “Be still and know that he is God.” (Psalm 46:10)

Prayer

Closing Prayer:  Your plans, O Lord, are the ones that matter.  Help me to be still long enough, and keep quiet long enough, to actually know what those are.  Amen.