When we think about the future, we can come up with a lot of plans. We start to think we should have a job by a certain age. Get married at a certain age. Make sure we’ve had children by a certain age. And if those plans don’t seem to be coming to anything, we can become despondent, angry, or anxious. But it’s God who has the best plans for our lives. In Isaiah, God says, ‘My ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts’ (Isaiah 55:9 NIV). His plans for us are always going to be better than any we can come up with ourselves. So why do we end up trying to plan everything ourselves? We often like to have control; we don’t like to surrender and let someone else decide things. We want to know what’s going to happen, and when. The unknown is scary. But when we surrender our plans to God, He can help us walk in His plans. The Bible says: ‘In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.’ It’s God who is ultimately in control. He has the best plan for our lives, and He wants to help us walk in it. We need to take time out to think through all the plans we’re making for our lives, and to see whether they’re what God has for us. We can do that by asking Him to guide us, and to show us where we’re following our own desires rather than His. We should get stuck into reading our Bibles, so that we can line up our hearts with God’s and want the same things as Him. We need to surrender our life plans to Him, and let Him work in and through us instead.

What Now?

Write down all your plans for the future. Then surrender them all to God. Maybe use Jesus’ words in Luke 22:42 – ‘Yet not my will, but yours be done’ (NIV) – to guide your prayer time.