The Great Plan to Walk out the Door!
Last week we talked about putting questions to ourselves in this New Year. When we question ourselves it leads us into a plan resulting in change but what if we don’t know how to plan. Didn’t James say, “we do not know what tomorrow will bring so don’t make plans!” We could use this verse as a great excuse to avoid making plans yet we would be incorrect. James was talking about bragging about the future. Planning is a whole new ballgame God has a hand in. Before you begin your plans though there are three directives from God we need to think about; count the cost, commit them to the Lord, and watch them.
Luke 14:28 says, “Count the cost”
A lot of people never reach their goals because they never first counted the cost of getting to those goals. Let us use the goals of last week as our examples for this week. If I am to know God more I need to count the cost of doing that in my daily life. What will it take to know God better? Reading the Word. How much reading? This will take the rest of my life and it is unreasonable to think that I will be able to spend all day just reading. A good way to start is five minutes per day. This is the beginning of a plan but what is the cost of this plan. We need to be alone, we need to make the time and we need a Bible. The cost of getting to know people better is ‘shutting up’ to hear them talk about themselves. The cost of knowing ourselves better is probably a box of tissues. No matter what the plan is there will always be a cost to be counted otherwise the plan will fail. Do you think Jesus knew the cost of His plan? He did! Regardless, the plan still went forward and many people benefited from His obedience to God! When you count the cost and you are not willing to spend it then you are not willing to purchase your goal either but if you are willing many people will benefit.
Proverbs 16:3 says, “Commit them to the Lord.”
If you have counted the cost and decided you are willing to spend the time, the resources and the effort it is time to commit the goal to the Lord. Is it what you are being called to do? Has the Spirit been leading you to do what you are about to do? This is the stage of goal setting most people will forgo because the goal they have is not the goal God has for them and they know it. If you know it right now stop going so time is not wasted. If you are sure the directive is from the Spirit then let’s go! Commit the thing to the Lord every time you work on it. Each time you create a plan or act commit it to the Lord too. It is in doing this He establishes our plans. His way of establishing our plan is to give them a nay or a yay. We can only know the difference when we know Him. If we go in the directions He guides us into we will get to our goal. Elohim will establish our plan if the goal is His. To commit your work to the Lord is to commit your goal to the Lord and follow Him throughout the whole process. You will go in directions you never dreamed and accomplish more than you ever imagined.
Proverbs 21:5 says, “Diligently watch them!”
We can count the cost and go! Commit them to the Lord but if we just let them work themselves out they are bound to fail. We have to work our plan from the time of conception until fruition. When we start slacking in our work the goal starts to fall apart. This is where the hard work and commitment come into play. Without hard work there is no plan and without commitment our hard work will go nowhere. Diligently watching our plan means knowing it location and its direction. Where are you right now in the plan? Beginning, middle or end? Determining that information is important because the work changes as the plan continues. There may be days we work endlessly and stand still. There may be days when we think the plan is working on its own and everything in between. If we do not know where we are with our plan we will not know how hard to work or for how long, leaving us lagging in our commitment to it as well. This lagging is not in our plan but in God’s plan too. This is very costly for us for our future. Not only for our goals but for our residence on the New Earth too. If we cannot be trusted with the small stuff we will not be trusted with the big stuff (Luke 16:10). I do not want to be stuck with the small stuff for eternity, do you? Let us watch our plan so it goes exactly where Elohim wants it to go.
Planning is time consuming and tedious work but avoiding it will leave us with failed goals all of our lives. We can talk about a goal and dream about the fruition of the goal for years but the day we start planning the goal is the day we get one step closer to completing the goal. I know there are a lot of folks out there who have trouble planning their goals as a result they have trouble accomplishing their goals too. Once we get used to planning, it then becomes the first thing we do outside of going to the Father with our petition to adopt the goal as our own and the direction He wants us to go. He does not come down and move our feet for us He expects us to move our own feet. Just put one foot in front of the other and you too will be walking out the door.
