God's Purposes, Not Our Plans

03.26.07

It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. 
Phil. 2:13

To live a God-centered life, you must focus your life on God’s purposes, not your own plans. You must seek to see from God’s perspective rather than from your own distorted human perspective.

Let’s use Noah for an example. What about all the plans he had to serve God? They would not make much sense in light of the coming destruction, would they? Noah was not calling God in to help him accomplish what he was dreaming, ..he was going to do for God. You never find God asking anyone to dream up what they want to do for Him.

Who delivered the children of Israel from Egypt? Moses or God?...God did. God chose to bring Moses into a relationship with Himself for that He-God-could deliver Israel.

We are to be His servants, and we are to adjust our lives to what He is about to do and to His ways of doing it. If we will not submit, God will let us follow our own devices. In following them, however, we will never experience what God is waiting and wanting to do in our behalf or through us for others.

Why do we not realize that doing things God’s way is always best? We cause some of the wreck and ruin in our lives because “we” have a plan. We implement the plan and get out of it only what “we” can do.

Focusing our attention on God’s plans, purposes, and ways rather than our own is essential. Any other focus will misguide our involvement in God’s work. God Himself is the One who initiates our involvement in His work. He does not ask us to dream up something we can do for Him. Oh, that we would discover the difference when we let God be the Head of that body. We will accomplish more in six months through a people yielded to Him, than we could do in sixty years without Him.

Tim Carlisle