Good Morning everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Planning”
Our Bible verse for today: “Woe to the rebellious children!’ This is the Lord’s declaration. ‘They carry out a plan, but not Mine; they make an alliance, but against My will, piling sin on top of sin. They set out to go down to Egypt without seeking My advice …” Isaiah 30:1-2 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “It’s foolish to make plans without seeking God’s guidance.”
This morning in my personal Bible reading I came across Isaiah 30:1-2 and the thought occurred to me that this is a lesson God repeats over and over again all throughout the Bible. Depending on which translation of the Bible you look at, the word “plan”, and the concept of “planning”, appears more than 100 times.
Why does God keep bringing us back to this subject and giving us instructions about it? It’s because as humans it’s our nature to want to plan things. In an attempt to gain some control over the future we envision how we would like things to turn out; we make plans for getting us from where we are to where we want to be; and then we attempt (with various degrees of success) to carry out our plan.
That’s fine, unless we are doing it in our own wisdom and with no thought to what God wants. The fact is that God is Sovereign and I am not. God is all-knowing and all-mighty, and I am not. God has a good and perfect plan, and I usually have foolish plans that make little sense and which often get me in trouble if I haven’t checked with God first.
That being the case, when it comes to making plans, we have to seek God’s guidance. Since His plan is perfect, and ours is not, it needs to be His plan that we desire and seek.
Otherwise we could end up like the children of Israel, stupidly looking to Pharaoh (their enemy) to meet their needs rather than to God. The equivalent situation for us could be something like coming to the conclusion that you need a new job in a new city so you can have more income, when God actually wants you to stay put and trust Him for your needs. Or you decide to go ahead and marry a person, mostly because you’re tired of being single, rather than being patient and waiting for God to bring you the spouse He has chosen for you. Or… a thousand other examples, but you get the point.
Interestingly, a little later in that same chapter, in Isaiah 30:21, God told them that if they would seek His guidance they would receive it: “…whenever you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a command behind you: ‘This is the way. Walk in it.”
Proverbs 3:5-6 promises us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and he will guide you on the right paths.”
There are many other similar passages but God’s point is clear: “It’s foolish to make plans without seeking His guidance.”
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 