Proverbs: On Planning Carefully

Transcription

1 Transcript July 5/6, 2014 Proverbs: On Planning Carefully Jake Barker Proverbs 16 What s up Traders Point? I hope you guys have had a great weekend thus far. Hopefully you got to see something explode. This is very exciting. Hey, if you are new or just getting to know us, we are so incredibly glad you are here. We know that there a bunch of other places you could be and there are a bunch of other things that you could be doing with your time and you are here with us. We don t take that for granted. So we are incredibly honored that you spend your time with us. What we believe is that God is about to do something through His Word so we are just excited to see where that goes. We hope to have a little fun in the process. If you weren t with us last week, Matt did a great job kicking us off into a brand new series called Proverbs, Life in the Details. If you are not familiar with the Bible or specifically the book of Proverbs, let me break it down for you a little bit. If you take a Bible and open it up almost directly to the middle, you will be really close to the book of Proverbs. What it is, the book of Proverbs exists in this series of books called Wisdom Literature. There is a series of books there in the Bible that really focus in on wisdom, and Proverbs is probably the most famous of all the books of wisdom. As you are reading through it, what you will experience are some kind of quick- hit, one- liners about life s sayings, life s teachings, about any number of subjects. So there are some about our pride, there are others about our marriage, there are others about our money. So throughout, you will see what may seem a little like random shots of wisdom that are there. We are going to work our way through it this summer. Now in my experience as a Christian and as a Bible reader, I think people treat the book of Proverbs almost like a fortune cookie. Anybody like Chinese food here? Do we have Chinese food lovers? Anybody General Tso s specifically? All right! My people right there. You know that the best part is the end of the meal. You are given this oddly shaped, kind of tasteless cookie. It was packaged roughly 18 to 24 months ago. So the deal is, you are supposed to open it up and inside is this piece of paper. This piece of paper is supposed to be your fortune. It s going to be this wise saying, all right. So I m going to read you your fortune, according to this cookie. I m not going to give you the numbers because I don t want you to go home and think, oh, God gave me the Powerball numbers at church and I m going to go win because God gave me the Powerball numbers at church. It s right here; it says so. I m gonna be a millionaire. It s going to be awesome. It says, Keep your feet on the ground even though friends flatter you. Now, one of the best parts is going around the table and hearing everybody else s fortune. So this basically as generic as good advice as you can possible have, to where it will apply to anybody at any time at any moment. A lot of us look at Proverbs as this kind of quick- God- shot that I can open up real quick, point to a random Proverb and think, oh, that s going to probably apply to my life; I read the Bible, I feel really connected to God. Now in reality, in Proverbs there is much more to it. There are many threads that run throughout the entire book with some big, big ideas. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

2 Proverbs: On Planning Carefully July 5/6, 2014 That s where we are going to be working on this summer. Now you and I know, and Matt said last week, our culture, our world, the people with which we do life, everybody is looking for some sort of wisdom to make sense of all of this, this life, all these relationships and all these challenges that we have in front of us. I m trying to figure it out and I can t totally get it. I m just trying to grab as much wisdom as is out there and formulate my own worldview so hopefully I can do this life kind of well. That s the goal. Some of us have opened up a newspaper and read a horoscope. Because I was born in this certain amount of months, this is who I am and this is who I should marry or not marry and this is who I should talk to or not talk to. This is the wisdom that is going to guide my life. Others of us follow certain personalities on social media. We take their quick- hit, 140- characters or less ideas and we try to formulate our own life. Others of us watch TV and we have our favorite talking head that has their life figured out. So we try to take what they think and apply it to our own lives. All of us are kind of grasping with this smorgasbord of wisdom from all different kinds of sources and we try to create the way that we are going to do life. The book of Proverbs is not this random, seemingly un- related shots of truth, this actually all goes together. What we are going to find today is that even though this was written well before Jesus life, Proverbs and Jesus are inextricably linked. You can t separate the two; in fact, true wisdom is found in Jesus. If you are taking notes, this is the first thing that I really want you to grab onto today. It s that true wisdom is found in Jesus. Wisdom is found in the grace of Jesus; who could take a broken mess like me and make something beautiful out of it. Wisdom is found in the gospel of Jesus; this is there is some really good news for some really bad people. In fact, Jesus ends his most famous sermon that he ever preached- - - it s called the Sermon on the Mount- - - by saying wise people are those that listen to my words and apply them. They are like the man who built his house upon a rock. When a storm came, his foundation was solid and so he survived and was safe. But foolish people, those that lack wisdom, they are like the man who built his house on sand. When the storm came he lost everything. So true wisdom is found in Jesus and we are going to find that over and over throughout this series and specifically even today. Now if you consider what God cares about, you may have come to the conclusion at some point in your life that God cares about the really big things, but because He is God, because He is like big G God, He is up in the heavens, like no way He cares about the little stuff in life. Of course He cared about the creation of the world, that was huge. But no way He cares about my friendships in the hallway at school. Or, yeah, he cares about eternity, he cares about heaven but he doesn t really care about my family s budget. Like, why would God care about the little stuff like that? But as we spend time in Proverbs, what we are going to notice is that the contributors really dove into the weeds of life; that God not only cares about the creation and eternity, but He also cares about our day- to- day. He is very much interested in your Monday morning. He is very much interested in the way you interact with people, the way that you use the resources that you have. God cares about the big and the small. Today we are talking about planning carefully. When God thinks about your future, when you think about tomorrow, and this time next year and five years from now where you are going to be, what does God have to say about all that? When we talk about planning, and where we are going to go and how we are going to get there, how does God interact with all that? We are going to see it all over Proverbs. Now before you showed up, do you Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 2

3 Proverbs: On Planning Carefully July 5/6, 2014 have a pen or pencil, maybe even your phone you can type this in real quick? What I want you to do is answer this question. Before you showed up today, before you sat down, thus far in life what was the plan, your life plan? Where are you headed? What goal are you trying to accomplish, what are you wanting to be? Where are your energies and your relationships and your resources going toward? What is the plan? Just write that down because it s going to come in handy a little bit later. All of us have that dream. Here s who I want to be. Here s where I want to be. Here s who I want to be with. We kind of have that plan and most of us are working towards that. So I want you to write that down and hang onto it for a little bit later. Now before we dive into the Proverbs specifically to this, we need to acknowledge the fact that in a room like this, we have a bunch of different kinds of planners. Everybody plans differently; there is this spectrum of planners. So over here on one extreme are the Type A, spreadsheet- loving, year planners. All the I s are dotted and the t s are crossed. In fact, if you don t have your life figured out, they are silent judging you and they would love to help you plan your life. That is like the Type A Super Planner, Planner Extraordinaire. On the other end of the spectrum are the more go- with- the- flow, laid back types. When I ask you what your plan is, you are like, don t make me plan! Maybe I will eat lunch, I don t care. Each morning is a blank slate. I m going to carpidiem the snot out of this day. I don t do plans, all right? Like, fly by the seat of my pants, cross every bridge when I come to it. I don t plan! So just real quick, if you had to choose, let me see a show of hands, how many of you are Type A, Planner Extraordinaire, you ve got it all figured out. They are looking around. They had actually planned on raising their hands before I even asked the question. They were like, I know where this is going. I m ready. I m ready, I m ready. On the other end of the spectrum, how many of you would say you are more like go- with- the- flow, just laid back, super chilled? Like, maybe I will raise my hand now, but maybe later. Maybe I ll raise it later, I don t care. Now here is the real question. How many of you are either married or dating your opposite? How many of you are? Look around this room. The Type A s had to raise the other one s hand. They were ready for that. We are actually going to have counselors down here to try and mend this thing back together. This is actually my marriage. I am a Type A, like I ve got it all figured out. My wife is a way more go- with- the- flow. In our relationship, you raise your hand (and you probably know this to be true), in one particular scenario in our marriage where this really comes to a head is that thing called vacation. I don t know if anybody else has been down that road with me. A few weeks ago we were headed to Florida as a family. I know it was going to take us about 15 hours to drive, so I had calculated where we were going to stop to ensure the greatest amount of travel efficiency because I know how to party. That s the way I roll. One variable I had forgotten to consider was that my wife is currently seven months pregnant. I don t know if you knew this but scientifically speaking, when you are seven months pregnant, your bladder reduces to the size of a thimble. So there is nothing worse for a planner than unscheduled stops on a road trip and that happened multiple times. I said, Baby, you need to wait another 13 minutes; we are so close. We stopped because I like being married. That happens to us all the time. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 3

4 Proverbs: On Planning Carefully July 5/6, 2014 No matter where you are on the spectrum, when you think about the future, when you think about where you are going, where you are headed, we kind of fall all over the place. So here is the big question. Is one right; is one wrong? When we read about what God says about the future, when God talks about planning, does He resonate with one or the other? We are really going to dive into that question and say, okay, if God is going to be a part of it, then what does He say? If you have your Bible or a Bible App, flip open to Proverbs 16. That s where we are going to be hanging out today, specifically the first three verses. As you are on your way there, I just wanted to drop this on you. There is a big thought that I want you to chew on for the rest of the morning, for this week, really maybe for a long time and it is this. God wants us to have a plan and He wants to be a part of it. God wants you to have a plan, but He wants to be part of it. So all the Type A s here are saying, See, I told you. I told you there was supposed to be a plan. But then all those that go- with- the- flow say, Yeah, but there is like this huge caveat. Does God say one or the other? It s kind of both and and we are going to learn that. We are going to feel that tension this morning. So, Proverbs 16:1-3. Let s read them together and then we are going to take our time breaking them down. Here is what it says. The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit. Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established. So what we are going to do is, we are going to live in these three verses for awhile and take them one at a time. Let s re- read verse one. It says, The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. Now usually when we talk about planning, when we think about the future; where am I going to be and how am I going to get there, it usually goes a little bit like this. I sit in a room and I say here is my preferred future. This is where I want to be, who I want to be there with. I paint a picture of my preferred future. Then I figure out how I m going to get there. So maybe you are a student, high school or college. You know this is my preferred career that I want to have. So I need to take the right classes; I need to get in the right degree program; I need to secure the right internships so that someday I can have the career that I want. Or maybe you are on the other end of the career arc and you are winding down. You are talking about things like your nest egg or your 401K. Maybe you have started plans on your dream home. God is saying, Man, that s great. That s so cool that you have a plan and that you are headed somewhere. I want you to have that. I don t want you wasting life just meandering through it all. I want you to go somewhere. But there is this massive caveat for those of us that call Jesus not only our Savior, but also our Lord. When we start talking Lord language, that means that someone else is in charge and not me. So that means this. God has a plan that is bigger than my plan. That is very, very true. I ve seen that in my own life, I ve seen it in other people s lives. God s plan is bigger than mine. If you had to guess which one wins between my plan and God s plan, which one would you guess? Like the Creator of the Universe, He wins! He wins. Now this truth is not meant to discourage us from planning. On the contrary, it is actually encouraging because what I ve come to realize is that my plan is usually a small piece of God s bigger one. So in the Bible, we meet this guy named David and he is a King. He comes up with the plan that he is going to build this temple for God. Now can you imagine a more admirable plan than building a temple Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 4

5 Proverbs: On Planning Carefully July 5/6, 2014 for God? You are thinking, well of course God is going to be happy with that. Why would you think any differently? So David starts the preparation and then he gets word from God that, David, it s actually not going to be you, it s going to be your son and I want you to get him ready. So what does David do? Does he sit down and throw a hissy fit and say, why me God? Why wouldn t you let me do this? No. he just continues the preparation to set his son up well for success. His plan was a small piece of God s bigger plan. Personally, in the summer of 2005, I showed up to this place called Traders Point Christian Church. A place I had never been before. I was coming to be a three- month intern for the student ministry. I thought June, July, August and I will be out of here. I will go finish my degree and go get a real job and start life, the whole deal. Nine years later, I m on my third kid, we got married here, and I m preaching to you. This was not my plan. My plan was this three- month itty- bitty little dot on the timeline. God said, actually, that s a good start, but I ve got something bigger in store for you and I m so grateful that He did. So our plan should always be headed somewhere. We can have our plan and say, Here s where I m headed, but with the massive caveat that if Jesus is not only my Savior but He is also my Lord, then His plan wins and I m willing to go with it. So the verse says that the plans come from the heart of man. It s my desire. It s where I want to be. But the answers of the tongue, or in other words, true action, when things really start to happen, that s from God. So my plan is the small part of God s big plan. Let s keep building on it and read verse 2, chapter 16. It says, All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit. One more time. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit. This verse is very clearly stating that the reason you love your plan is because it is your plan. Isn t that true? You have experienced this maybe a little bit? I don t know about you, but my plans are usually really, really good for about one person, me. I am usually the primary, if not the exclusive beneficiary of my plan. It sounds awesome because I m awesome and I wouldn t come up with a dumb plan, right? That s what he is saying. He is saying, of course you think it s a good idea because it came from you, but God cuts to the spirit. Now real quick, a show of hands, how many of you ever made a bad decision? Wow, like that is very terrifying. Be very careful getting out of the parking lot today. This is a group of very bad decision- makers. All of us in our past lives have made a poor decision or we had a bad plan. So there was that person and you planned on marrying them. And they were cute. And they were sweet. And they were going to make a bunch of money. And you had already got your kids names picked out. You had just designed your dream home. Now, years later you see them on Facebook, and you are like, Whew, dodged a bullet on that one. That would have been awful. But at the time it seemed like a really good plan. You were like seconds away from signing your name on that purchase to buy that fixer- upper home, and you were going to really take it from its dilapidated state and make is something beautiful like HD- TV kind of thing. Then you realized you ve never swung a hammer in your entire life and this is a terrible, terrible plan. We ve all had that moment. Growing up, I had two younger sisters. So the summer meant that unless I had a buddy over, I was flying solo on the entertainment department. I was usually playing sports by myself, shooting hoops in the backyard, whatever. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 5

6 Proverbs: On Planning Carefully July 5/6, 2014 Then on one particularly boring afternoon, I was standing in the backyard with an assortment of sporting goods around me. I had a basketball in one hand and a metal baseball bat in the other. Now I thought to myself, I ve never hit a basketball with a baseball bat before. Let s see what how this goes. So I loft up the basketball, rare back with the baseball bat, swing as hard as I can and make very good contact. I m talking really good contact. I don t know if you have ever experienced a basketball or not, but it is bouncy, as opposed to a baseball which is hard. So that metal baseball bat went straight from the basketball and bounced right onto my mouth, like Boom, Boom! Before I even know what happened, just whop! At the time I had braces. Blood explosion everywhere. It looked like a crime scene in my backyard. Someone got real mad. It was a terrible, terrible decision, but at the time it sounded like, oh, curiosity. Until I felt the pain, I realized how bad of a decision that was. All of us, while that may seem silly, we ve had the plan that sounded like a really good idea and it wasn t until we felt the pain that we realized how terrible of a decision that was. So if that is possible in our past where you had I have had bad plans before, made poor decisions before, if it was possible in the past, why would we convince ourselves today that it is impossible? Why would I sit myself on the throne of pure and excellent, 100% foolproof plans? If previously in my life I have been very capable of bad ones? God is saying, Hey, I want to be a part of the plan, because of course you think your plan is good, you came up with it. It is really good for you, but I m going to cut to the spirit, I m going to cut to your motivation. I may expose some things about your plan that show just how selfish you really are. Let me be a part of it and try to save you from some of those painful moments. That s verse two. Now let s read verse three as we continue to build on all of these thoughts. Verse 3: Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established. Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established. So what God is saying here is that there is a proper order in the plan- making process. Step 1, commit your plans to God. Step 2, watch your steps be established. One and then two. Now in my life, I will just own this and see if you resonate. My tendency is to come up with a plan first. I m a very good plan maker. I can figure things out. I will dot all the I s and cross all the t s. I will have it all laid out in front of me. And then, at the very last moment, I will say, Hey God, by the way I ve got this plan and it s a very good one. You are welcome. You didn t even have to do any of the work. Now if you could come, at the very last moment and bless this thing that I came up with, that would be awesome. And God is saying, Hey man, I wanted to be a part of Step 1, but now you are coming to me at the very last moment and asking me to bless this thing that I didn t have anything to do with? Maybe that s not the order. It says commit your plans to God first Let Him speak into it at square one, and then watch your plans be established. Jesus in his ministry in Luke 12 has this moment where these two brothers come to him and they are arguing as brothers are apt to do. They are arguing over the family inheritance. One feels like the other is being unfair, so they come to Jesus and they ask Him to settle the matter for them. They say, Jesus would you just play arbitrator and will you tell us who is right and whose wrong so that we can go home? So they come to him with this whole argument in front of Him. Jesus, as he often does, even in my own life, doesn t give them the answer that they wanted. In fact, He teaches them something bigger. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 6

7 Proverbs: On Planning Carefully July 5/6, 2014 So watch in Luke 12 as Jesus just addresses this very issues of planning. He says, And He told them a parable, saying, The land of a rich man produced plentifully,and he thought to himself, What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops? And he said, I will do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years, relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? so is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. As I was working on this this week, that last line just really haunted me. As Jesus is explaining to these two guys, apparently there is a difference between storing things up for myself and then being rich toward God. Jesus opposes those. He is saying they are not the same thing. They are not the same motivation. There is a difference between exclusively planning for my own benefit and then being rich toward God. As I was wrestling with this more, I realized that the guy s plan to build the bigger barn, doesn t that sound like every financial investment commercial that you see during a sporting event? That s the idea. Just save up more. If you run out of room in the barn, then just build a bigger barn and then some day, you can just sit back and relax and eat and drink and be merry. It s going to be great. Now is Jesus saying, Hey, don t save? Absolutely not. Is He saying, Retirement is the wrong thing to do? No. He is saying, Apparently there is a difference between saving up for myself and being rich toward God. In fact, Jesus is the Creator of the universe is saying, Is it possible that we have to consider just for a moment that eat, drink, be merry and relax is not the point of life? As the one that put the purpose inside of us, He is saying, Look, that is not wrong in moderation. That s not wrong in a season, but that s not the point. He is saying there is a difference between being rich toward yourself and rich toward God. Now let me ask you, that thing that you wrote down earlier, the plan, the plan thus far, the plan that you have been operating on since you sat down. Where would that fall? Pass it through that filter. Am I operating into being rich toward myself or being rich toward God? What you are planning for is the big question. What are you aiming at? Where are my resources going? Where are my energies going? Where are my dreams going? Am I the exclusive, primary beneficiary of my plans or am I aiming at anything bigger? So what was it? Maybe your plan right now is to enter next school year and make as many friends as possible. You are tired of not being popular so you are willing to do whatever it takes, whatever compromise or lifestyle change you are in because you are sick of it. You just want to fit in and that is just the plan. Maybe it is the title and you are aiming at climbing the ladder to get the office with the window. That s the plan and that s what everything is aimed at. Maybe you just want to live up to all the other moms on Pintrest and look perfect like they do, have the smiling kids that we only see on Instagram, just be like them. Maybe that s been the entire goal. I don t know. I don t know what your plan is, but if you had to put it in one category or the other, being rich toward yourself or being rich toward God, that is a hard, hard question. Now let me ask you a second one. What would it look like? Let s dream a little bit. What would it look like if you planned to be used by God? What if you planned to be used by God? What if that became the target and our plans, our lives started situating ourselves so that we could be used by God? See, God has this habit throughout the Bible of Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 7

8 Proverbs: On Planning Carefully July 5/6, 2014 using the least likely people to do the most amazing things. He got this boy- shepherd who was tending to his sheep and He asked the boy to go slay the professional soldier. He called this young, teenage girl to carry his Son. Then he picked this former killer to go plant churches. None of us are disqualified. God uses the least likely people. He wants to use us. So what would it look like if we planned to be used? One of the biggest things for us, I think, that is getting in the way of us getting used is our availability. How available are you? Is anybody super bored and has a ton of cash? Does anyone have that life? Anyone raise their hand? You see, I think all of us are trying to work toward something, whether it s comfort, security, we are all trying to work toward things. Even in our world, our culture, we are very addicted to busyness, addicted to activity. Even if we are not going anywhere, we like to get on the wheel, like the gerbil, and run. At least my legs are moving. So we ve got a lot of things going on. It may be the obstacle in the way of our availability. Maybe it s the season of life. Maybe you have kids going in all kinds of different activities. You play chauffer all the time. Maybe it s relational. There are a couple of really close relationships to you right now that if you actually responded to God s call on your life they would bail. They just wouldn t be there for you anymore. Maybe it s financial. You ve made a couple decisions, whether it s a student loan or a new car or a house. That number just hangs over your head all the time. Let me ask you, why would you say no? If God wanted to use you right now, why would you say no? If God came to you and said, I really want you to mentor that guy or that girl and they are 20 years younger than you. You ve been down the road that they have and you could be a great influence in their lives. Why would you say no to that? If you know that in your family, adoption is something that has been stirred up in your hearts, why are you saying no? If you have been volunteering here for awhile and its been the same for a long time and you know it s time to step up into greater leadership, why are you saying no? I mean, we all have our excuses. I have a great list of excuses. I could convince you that I m not supposed to do what God is asking me to do. I m good at that and I know some others are too. So what is the biggest obstacle in the way of our availability? What if we plan to remove that obstacle so that we can be used? If the point of life, according to Jesus Christ is to not necessarily eat, drink and be merry, and relax, we can enjoy life but there is something bigger at stake. What if we planned to be used by God? As we wrap up today, I want to give you three handles on what a wise plan looks like, according to the book of Proverbs. These characteristics will be true if God has been part of Step 1and he has helped you to develop this plan. So, number 1, the first guaranteed aspect of a wise plan is this: you get wise advice. Get wise advice. Proverbs is super clear that any plan, developed in isolation is almost bound to fail. Get wise advice. Proverbs 11:14 says Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety. Proverbs 15:22 says, Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed. So big question is who else gets to speak into your plan? If you are young, maybe a teenager, maybe twenty- something just getting started, let me just have your attention. Let me point something out, in love, because I care about you. Your friends are awesome. I know they are because you are also and you wouldn t have lame friends. I get all that. But if your friends are the only support system that you have, if they are you only sounding board, if you are exclusively talking to people at the exact same life stage as you, you may not be getting the perspective that you need. I say that out of love. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 8

9 Proverbs: On Planning Carefully July 5/6, 2014 I know old people are weird. I get it. They say weird words and they dress weird and they listen to music on vinyl before it was cool. I get all of that. But, is it possible that you can invite someone that is a little further down the road into your life to speak truth, to open up your perspective a little bit? And no matter how old you are, let me ask you this question. Is anyone allowed to disagree with you in your life? Like intentionally, I don t mean go find that naggy person that is always difficult. Not that. I m saying that have you intentionally invited someone to come into your life and they are allowed to disagree with you? They are allowed to wake you up, saying, Hey, that plan that you ve developed, that road that you are headed down, you are walking into oncoming traffic, and I need you to stop because I care about you. Let me ask it this way. Is there anyone in your life that is more interested in your maturity in Jesus than they are in your immediate happiness? We all need that. We need someone that is willing to speak up, even when it s hard, and say I know you are not going to want to hear this right now, but I promise you it will help. I have that in my life. I have three guys that we meet on Tuesday mornings at 7:00am. We talk about what we ve read in God s Word, we challenge each other to be better dads and better husbands. I need that. I need them to speak up and say, Jake, by the way, you are being an idiot. I have allowed them to speak into anything they want because I know that I need good and wise advice. So who else is speaking into your plan? Have you invited anyone else to point out when it s not going well? That s a really, really important to a wise plan. Get advice. Number two is this. Create a fair and honest strategy. Create a fair and honest strategy. Ideas don t just happen. There is no idea fairy that goes around sprinkling dust and then voila. So we need a plan; we need a strategy, but it has to be fair and honest. Here is what Proverbs 21:21says, Whoever pursues righteousness and kindness will find life, righteousness and honor. So the opposite is implied. Let me just put it like this. If your plan necessitates cutting corners, a lack of ethical behavior or white lies, then God probably wasn t part of the plan development. Even more simply put, your plan necessitates sin, then God wasn t a part of the development. We need a fair and honest strategy. If we are looking to commit our plans to God and then watch Him establish our steps, our plan will be covered in integrity, and will honor God with its efforts. The last thing is this: remain open handed. I can t say it enough, that our small plan is often part of God s big plan. Proverbs 16:9 says, The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. So as those of us that call ourselves Christians, those of us that say God is Savior and Lord of my life, we are opened- handed with it all. We are saying, God, you get to call audibles whenever you want because I trust that you have more perspective and care for me than I even have for myself. I m willing to be open- handed with the whole deal. So for those of us that love to plan and love to have it all figured out, this is a tension. For those of us that would rather just go day to day and just figure it out, this is also a tension. God wants us to have a plan and he wants to be a part of it. So what is He stirring up inside you right now? As you are answering these questions mentally, as you are wrestling with these things, why have you been saying no? Is it time to plan to be used by God? Right now we are going to do this thing called Communion. It s our weekly opportunity to remember God s big plan. There was a problem ahead of us; we were sinful and broken. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 9

10 Proverbs: On Planning Carefully July 5/6, 2014 We had no hope for ourselves. God s plan was to send His Son. Jesus took the punishment that we deserved and gave us the reward that only he could earn. And through his death, burial and resurrection we have hope in this life. When an awesome thing to sit and remember. As you are wrestling with these questions, I invite you to invite God in. Ask God, hey, you haven t been a part of it so far, but I want you in now. Then watch where He takes you. I promise His plan is the one you want to be a part of. Let me pray for you. God, we are so grateful that we even have another day. We are grateful that there is hope, grateful for forgiveness and the fact that you care about us to have a bigger plan than one we can create. We pray for the courage to step out and follow you. We pray for the clarity as to the right direction. I pray that we can all just loosen our death- grip on our plans and let you speak into them. The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit. Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established It is in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 10