Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed…In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps. (Proverbs 16:3, 9)
Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed. (Proverbs 15:22)
Do not those who plot evil go astray? But those who plan what is good find love and faithfulness. (Proverbs 14:22)
“Wanna give God a good laugh?” asks a friend of mine. “Tell Him your plans,” he says, and this answer is not making a mockery of planning. Let me explain.
I remember when my oldest son was a young boy, he was making a plan for sidewalk races in front of our house. We observed him laboring over a hand-lettered wooden sign he was making for the races. When he finally revealed it to us with pride, it said, “EVERYBODY’S STARTING AND FINISHING LINE.” We laughed…and still do.
There was nothing wrong with our son’s motivations, and his execution was impeccable. He just, at his age, lacked sufficient knowledge to realize that his well-planned sign wouldn’t work.
Sound familiar? Remember those times when you made what you thought were absolutely airtight plans only to discover that when launched they sank? Ouch!
The writer of Proverbs makes a powerful case for including God in all your planning, and His logic is impeccable: “Only the Lord can make a person’s plans come true.” As someone has said, “Remember, Noah’s ark was built by an amateur on God’s plans. The Titanic was built by professionals without them.”
Principle: Leaving God out of your planning is a fatal error. Only a fool would ignore omniscience in planning and omnipotence in execution, if available.
A former senior executive of a billion-dollar company tells of a high-level-management seminar sponsored for its honchos. In one exercise, each exec was asked to rank order a number of items to be included in a hypothetical trip back from the moon. Then gathered in small groups, the groups decided by consensus what the rank ordering should be. The exec tells how stunned everyone was to discover that the lowest group score was better than the highest individual score!
Proverbs nails it: “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors, they succeed.”
Principle: It is foolishly arrogant to make plans without consulting others, especially your spouse. It is in diversity of knowledge and experience that effective plans are established.
Finally, a crucial dimension of planning is the moral intent and methods in the plan. The Great Arbiter of the Universe polices human plans to assure that—in the long run—evil plans will be thwarted and good plans succeed.
Principle: It is better to make mediocre plans to achieve a noble end than to create excellent plans to do evil because the latter will face divine opposition and the former divine aid.
[from “Wisdom for the Trenches” by Dr. Larry W. Poland]