Planning my life away.

I have a bad habit. Some of you are laughing, thinking I have more than one and you are right. There is only one that I want to talk about today though. I call it a habit because it happens so frequently that it's almost second nature, like biting your nails when you're nervous. What is this habit? Well, I'm a planner. It's just how my mind works. When I have a dream it includes a cost-benefit analysis and a 12 step plan for accomplishing it. No I'm not saying planning is always a bad thing, but I have a tendency to plan God out of His own plans. I'll feel a nudge from God or a pull in a certain direction and my mind is gone, flying a million miles an hour, figuring out what I need to do. But, my plans are really doomed for destruction from the start for two reasons.

First, how can I expect to be fulfilling God's call if I'm not listening to Him each step along the way? I imagine God sitting there shaking His head, like a father watching an overeager child, as I run around trying to accomplish what I believe His plan is. As I pause for a moment to breath and ask myself, "Why isn't God's plan working out?" He's smiling thinking it's not working because I sprinted off before I heard the second half of the instructions. The only way to know God's plan is to spend time with Him. To sit quietly and listen for His voice and feel His pull on your heart. Human planning and knowledge will never be able to replace this, and why would we want it to? The one who created us wants to tell us His specific purpose for our lives, yet often we listen for a minute and spend 30 trying to figure it out on our own.

Second, the more I plan, the more I focus on the plan instead of God. In Revelation 2 the church in Ephesus is praised for their "hard work and perseverance" among other things, but then it says, "Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love." God didn't create us simply to do tasks. Above all else He wants to be in relationship with us. If we sacrifice our relationship with Him, even to do what we feel His will is, we are missing the point. The biggest part of God's plan for our lives is to be with us daily. When we lose sight of God in all of our planning we know we are not fulfilling His plan, because it involves Him being there always.