Proverbs 16:3 ESV
Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+16%3A3&version=ESV]
The plans we make go, in the words of the Scottish poet, ‘aft agley,’ which (translated from the original) means ‘often awry.’ Sometimes, looking back, this is a remarkably good thing. Sometimes those plans weren’t just practically flawed but actually aimed at a wrong goal or trying a wrong means. Sometimes the retrospect is less relieving; sometimes we look back, and we wonder why it had to go wrong, what good comes of this. To all these problems the Lord gives answers.
What does it mean to commit a work to the Lord? In light of the verses surrounding it and Jesus’s words in Luke 12:22-34, we can come to this definition: it is to set all hope of success, of fulfillment, upon Him and His mighty hand. There’s more to it than this, though. We have many, many plans, of varying and ever-imperfect moral quality. I can plan to steal all the money out of my neighbor’s bank account; is that a plan I can commit to the Lord?
God does not bless evil deeds. Consider Deuteronomy 23:5’s statement on the matter: “But the LORD your God would not listen to Balaam; instead the LORD your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the LORD your God loved you.” The Lord does not give His blessing to the works of evil, and so to commit a plan of evil to the Lord is obvious foolishness. Indeed, it is worse than useless. When Israel brought worthless sacrifices, they were for this cursed (Is. 1:11-13); when Cain brought unfitting sacrifices, he was disfavored for it (Gen. 4:Is). To bring a plan of evil to the Lord is to bring an evil sacrifice, a blemished beast (Ex. 12:5) or the blood of the innocent. To commit a plan of murder to the Lord is to say of Him that He approves of that murder, and indeed such that is abomination (human sacrifice, in essence).
So an evil plan committed to the Lord is worse than fruitless (and in some constructions of the term, impossible, if ‘commitment’ includes His acceptance from us), but what about all the other plans? Are there other plans? Let’s be honest: we’ve never made a plan that didn’t have a problem, somewhere in it. The motive, the goal, the means: something in these is morally flawed. Usually all three. However small, the cracks are there. Yet to say that this means we can’t commit any plan to God would be ridiculous; it would make this verse a void and a mockery. That being impossible (for God’s word does not return to Him empty (Is. 55:11)).
Our plans are sinful, even just a little, but so is everything we do. Every praise we give to God is flawed, and yet He calls us to give that praise. We never quite fulfill the Greatest Commandment, but still we are to love Him. What reconciles this? It is the grace of Jesus Christ. His blood it is (Heb. 12:24) which speaks of righteousness; by His blood our paltry offerings are made worthy of being presented to Him. So it was with the sacrifices of Israel’s covenant (Heb. 5:1-9); so it is for our sacrifice of praise and of service.
So God blesses what is good in our plans, despising and cleansing the evil; what does this blessing mean? In some cases, the results are simple. We get what we were aiming for, a little different from how we expected (because we are too small, too sinful to truly understand the future God purposes, so as to anticipate it in our desires). This is the result we usually think of first, but very often it’s not what actually happens. What actually happens is this: we don’t get what we wanted, certainly not nearly the way we wanted it, and the path getting there is hard, and at the end we wonder if our plan had anything to do with it. Well, in a sense, no. The plan didn’t really decide. We don’t really decide. In another sense, yes, because God used us and our plans to accomplish His plan.
We are promised, though, that if we commit our plans to Him, He will establish them, right? It’s a fair interpretation of the verse, but remember what we learned: we cannot commit evil to Him. Thus already the ‘plan’ we thought of committing must be changed. It must lose that evil which we gifted it. God doesn’t stop there, though. He is not so stingy as to give us merely what we ask for. No, this God is He who gives us lodging in His ‘Father’s house’ (John 14:2). He takes the plan we have, imperfect and made by men who hardly know their right hands from their left hands; He wrests from it the evil which it would do, all the true harm to us (Rom. 8:28), and then He goes farther. He gives us goodness unanticipated, greater, beyond our ability to anticipate, beyond our holiness on this earth to desire.
This is one of the great lessons of the Lord’s Prayer: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). His will is done already, but He leads us in His will to do that will ever more joyfully, ever more by love rather than obliviously (or rebelliously) as do evil men. He does His will for our good, and can we ask for more? Yet He gave His own life for ours, that we might live eternally, and therefore let us repent, have faith, and praise forever more.
God bless
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
