Whose plan is it?

When I got sick a few months ago, many of my thoughts focused on my plans — plans that suddenly had been ruined. I had plans to complete projects at home and projects at work. I had plans to play in some tennis leagues. I had plans to take my family to Florida for vacation.

Getting cancer had not been in any of my plans. But even after my diagnosis, I still found myself planning. For example, I planned to finish this blog post in mid-April. Oops.

“Man plans, and God laughs” is the English translation of an old Yiddish saying. This Psychology Today piece uses it as a starting point for how to deal with both unexpected struggles and successes in life. (As an interesting aside, it’s also the name of a Public Enemy album because the leader of the group heard Julius Erving (my favorite basketball player growing up) mention it in a documentary.)

The Bible has some thoughts on the plans of man and how they compare to the plans of God. One of the most well-known passages appears in Jeremiah 29:11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'” Unfortunately, one reason the passage is so well-known is that it is often misconstrued as some sort of guarantee that we will only prosper (i.e., our plans for ourselves will come true) and never encounter hardship.

That view misses a couple of key points. One is that this passage is from a letter Jeremiah sent to about 3,000 Jews who were imprisoned in Babylon. Jeremiah’s goal in this portion of the letter is to encourage the Jews to wait for God’s deliverance (i.e., God’s plan) … which leads to the second point in the next two verses:

“Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

Jeremiah 29:12-13

When we seek God with all our heart, we must surrender our plans to him. I am still working my way through all of the books that people gave me during my initial stay in the hospital (I think I’m on the last one, actually), but two of the books I’ve finished are relevant to the idea of surrendering to God: (1) Rees Howells, Intercessor (available for free download here); and (2) The Autobiography of George Muller.

The Howells book describes the life of a man guided by only the Holy Spirit — again, this means God’s plans, not man’s plans. Among other things, the book describes how the Holy Spirit changed Howells’ approach to prayer: “[Howells] was no longer to pray for all kinds of things at his own whim or fancy, but only the prayers that the Holy Spirit gave him.” [emphasis added] The Muller book describes his ministry and his devotion to caring for orphans in England. Over the course of several years, the orphanages grew in response to demand, which obviously led to higher operating expenses (including new buildings) … but Muller never asked anyone for money. He never had a capital campaign, took out a building loan, or sent out pledge cards so he could set his budget. Instead, he prayed for God to provide what was needed, and he prayed this prayer again and again for years. And God provided. As this article describes it:

George never did any fund-raising, never asked for any money but prayed every day for the resources needed to care for the orphans. He received answers to his prayers through the generosity of thousands of gifts given or sent to him by the people of Bristol and, as the work grew, from all over the world. In his lifetime, he received over £100m in today’s money and cared for over 10,000 orphans in his lifetime.

The books describe the remarkable lives of two men who may have had plans of their own but instead handed everything to God. To go back to the Bible on this topic:

In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.

Proverbs 16:9

The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.

Psalm 37:23-24

In January – a few weeks before I got sick – I made another plan, although it was one I hope God shared for me. I joined a men’s group that was undertaking a spiritual exercise called Exodus 90. My illness derailed my ability to participate at anything close to a 100% level, but I tried to keep up with the daily readings and kept in touch with the other men in the group. The reading for one day included the following:

When God asks you to do a specific thing at a specific time, it is because he has a plan in mind for you and those in your life. You may not know the whole picture, but you can trust that the plan is good. That doesn’t mean it won’t be challenging or uncomfortable. But it will always be good, even in its precise timing. God called you to a challenging and uncomfortable time, yet you are probably able to see results, even if the whole plan is not yet clear to you. [emphasis in original]

The Exodus 90 project included reading the entire book of Exodus. In the book, there are multiple times the Israelites — even after being miraculously freed from slavery — don’t want to follow God’s plan. They complain. They say they want to go back to Egypt. They build an idol. They refuse to enter the promised land because it sounds dangerous. And it was not the only time in the Old Testament that they complained about what God was doing. At one point, the prophet Isaiah told them:

Why do you complain, Jacob? Why do you say, Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God?” Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 40:27-31

But let’s not be too hard on the Israelites. We complain all the time today, don’t we? Our ideas about how things should go don’t come to fruition, so we whine. We moan. We say it’s unfair. We forget to turn our thoughts to God’s plans — plans we often cannot even begin to grasp.

For a more modern, although fictionalized, example of this scenario, let’s turn to Ray Kinsella, the protagonist of the 1989 movie Field of Dreams. For those who haven’t seen the movie, Ray is a struggling farmer who destroys a significant portion of his cornfield so that he can spend lots of time and money to build a baseball field … all because a mysterious “voice” told him to. Everyone thinks he is crazy, but he stays the course (reluctantly at times), and all kinds of interesting things happen to Ray and the people around him. I don’t remember when or why, but at some point I came across an old movie review that describes Field of Dreams as “the best Christian parable in movie history.” I encourage you to read the entire article, but here is a (lengthy) excerpt. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, the author is comparing “The Voice” in the movie to God in our lives:

For Ray, his actual mortgage hangs in the balance. To build a baseball field — one that has no apparent purpose, no less — on the very land he grows his crops (i.e. his livelihood) is foolishness, and it’s certain to cost him the very land that he feels led to transform.

But he follows The Voice anyway because it’s about what The Voice wants, on The Voice’s terms.

Ray makes a decision to submit. It’s a decision he must continually resubmit to in the face of mounting reasons not to, including his own bitterness about how things are working out for him (or aren’t).

…

One key lesson for Ray is that his journey is not just about him reaching his necessary healing; it’s also about helping others reach theirs. I’ve often found that the only way God can get me to help others is to cause me to initially think that these people were meant for my journey, rather than me for theirs. We each love to see ourselves as the lead in Our Story, but The Voice likes to cast us as the supporting catalyst in others.

The Voice doesn’t call you to your bliss; it calls you to other’s burdens. It doesn’t call you to your dreams; it calls you to ministry. It calls you to your life’s true purpose, a holy vocation, a calling that your passions and reason are quite possibly (even likely) distracting you from, not pointing you towards. That’s why it takes supernatural guidance, a kind beyond one’s own understanding, to lead you there.

To go back to one of the key sentences above: We follow God anyway because it’s about what God wants, on God’s terms. Planning can be prudent, even wise. But when we make and follow a plan, we should pause and ask … whose plan is it?