Planner With No Plans

"The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry." --Robert Burns

I don't know about you, but I'm a planner. The first thing I do in the morning is make a rough draft of what the day is going to look like. In all honesty, I tend to do this for a week at a time too: I like to be able to tell you what I'm doing at any given moment in the week to come by the Sunday night prior. My friend once titled me, "Captain Agenda". It's pretty bad. There is something to be said about planning in the Bible: 

"Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit" -- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." -- James 4:13-15

I've made my fair share of plans in my life and not many of them have worked out the way I intended. I have hopes and dreams that I get crushed when they don't work in my favor. But you know, and here's the cliche, God has something better.

"Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." -- Psalm 37:4

For the longest time, I understood this verse to mean that if I follow God and love Him enough, He'll grant me my wishes. Somehow He became a genie in a bottle here to me. However, I believe this verse to mean so much more now: As we walk with the Lord, He will continue to mold and shape us to be more like Him, therefore placing HIS desires in our heart. 

I am not saying that God was not the one to place the desires that you have in your heart, but it's the willingness to be molded and changed that gives Him liberty to exceed those dreams. 

I still like to plan. I have a tentative plan of what this entire day should look like. But I also know that God has an ultimate plan. So as you try to plan your day, your week, your life, remember that God is in control and He has a good plan in store for you.