Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.
Have you ever read a story? One of the basic rules of a story is that something will go wrong. It’ll go wrong for the hero, because that is what causes the story to have conflict; it’ll go wrong for the villain (hopefully), because that’s how the hero wins. Another rule, one an author has to learn, is that when character make a plan and the audience is let in on the plan before it’s enacted, the plan is going to go particularly wrong. For reasons of tensions and of avoiding redundancy, any plan the reader knows about has to have some twist unexpected. The rule’s not ironclad, but it is a rule with few exceptions. The rule even seems to apply to life: the more thoroughly we lay our plans, it seems, the more thoroughly God reworks the reality we anticipated.
“The well laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley,” or at least my memory insists that’s the quote. Or, on the same topic: “Man proposes; God disposes.” We men have limited knowledge and flawed wisdom; we make plans nevertheless (as is appropriate (Acts 21:17-26)). Then, when time comes for the plan to go off, circumstances change, our assessments prove flawed, and causes have unforeseen effects. God makes clear to us that what we expected ain’t what we’re getting.
Remember the last time you made a big plan. Some bits of it, hopefully, went off tolerably close to plan, with the sort of deviations almost expected—you got to your destination five minutes early, one time, and five minutes late, another. But, by the end, the reality is often very different. An opportunity you saw for one blessing turns sideways into a seeming curse (a trial), and perhaps at the end into a new blessing. A home becomes a trial, forcing you to move, but at least you now know about the mold or allergen that’s been turning your brain inside-out and playing tiddlywinks with your wits (I speak with a little experience). Even when the reality comes off fairly close to your expectation, apparently within the margin of error, even when you’re perfectly on target, honesty would require us to acknowledge the incompleteness of the expectation. Results anticipated have a different quality from results experienced.
Here’s the crucial point: God is sovereign; we men are merely seeking dominion. Our authority and power are given to us by Him (Gen. 1:28; Rom. 13:1). We make plans, flawed by sin on this earth, but we have neither the right nor the ability to control His world, His choices. He decrees the end from the beginning (Is. 46:10); our ‘decrees,’ our plans, they come second to Him, without true competition. When we seek to cling to those plans or to promote them above His, we make of them and thus of ourselves an idol.
Now, that does not mean we ought to cease planning. Prudence for the morrow is wise (Ex. 20:12). The sin we must abhor is the sin of pinning our hopes upon ourselves, of expecting our plans to be our salvation or relying upon any but Him for what will come. In Matthew 6:25-34, Christ commands us not to be anxious regarding the morrow but to lean upon God. The command is not to stop exercising foresight (verse 33 particularly implies the propriety of considering the future). The command is to rest in His decision and His sovereignty.
The nature of sinful man is to seek control. Sin is essentially, “There is no God” (Ps. 53:1), the replacement of God’s authority with my authority over myself (and everything else), with autonomy. We become anxious, therefore, about the future; we seek to by thought and effort become sovereign over its events. Yet the future is not our work; it is the Lord’s. We are to plan; we are to work righteousness and faith in the present; we are to work towards the future, taking dominion (stewardship) rather than lusting for sovereignty. But we are to rely always on God, who truly creates what will come, who gives fruit to our righteousness both in this world and the coming. He see our plans—and He makes of them better than we are willing to see (Rom. 8:28).
God bless.
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.
Colson Potter writes copious fiction and nonfiction, including a weekly Proverbs post and his blog at Creational Story.
