Peace producing plan

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While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart. (Francis of Assisi)

People who work for evil make trouble, but those who plan for peace bring happiness. (Proverbs 12:20)

What is your 'plan' moving forward? It doesn't really matter that you have made a mess of the plan up to this point - it matters what you will do moving forward. Our planning is important - God's plans are more so. What God plans can change the heart of a man - our plans merely change 'things' around us that may affect our heart, but rarely does it change our heart for good. We need God's plans worked out - especially when we have made a mess of the plans we imagined!

Plan for peace - get your heart right with God - them move on. The more we turn our plans over to God, the more we may find those plans have been affecting our heart (our inner man) in some ways that have actually kept us from realizing all God has for us. Sometimes we need that 'adjustment' that God does in order to turn from our plans and trust his plans fully. Will we always understand his plans? Absolutely not! We can trust them, though. Plan for peace - bring your plans to God, leave the ones there that don't align with what he purposes, and step out into the ones he has prepared for us in advance of us asking for his wisdom.

People who work for evil will make trouble in this world. Do all the planning yourself and you are likely to be planning to make 'trouble' even though you don't realize it. It will be easier to step on each other's toes, creating chaos, and inciting others to rebel when we are reliant upon our own plans as the way we will 'do business' in life. God's best comes when we are willing to lay down those plans, submitting them to his scrutiny, and then executing the plan he reveals. Will his plans always be dramatically different than ours? Not always, but when we submit them to him, we have a much better chance of them producing a peace within us as we move forward in executing them. Just sayin!

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