Plan Well.
Just Do It, Part 15
Life is one decision after another. Most decisions will have very little long term effect on our lives. But some decisions chart the very course of our future and impact the lives of others. No one wants to make bad decisions. So, how do we make good ones?
“As we plan ahead, leave room for direction from the head
planner.”
Scripture:
James 4:13-17
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
Highlights:
• The average person will make 773,618 decisions over a lifetime and will come to regret 143,262 of them.
• So many people fail to make good decisions because the process by which they go about making decisions is defective.
• “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin
• We make bad decisions when we plan presumptuously.
• We may fool ourselves into thinking that we can control life, but one thing we can never control is death.
• We plan, but God will determine whether or not our plans are carried out.
• God’s plans for you are: to make you His own, and change your life to mirror the life of His Son.
• God’s plans for us are good, to do good for us and not to harm us; not to allow evil to destroy us.
• How to plan well and make good decisions:
Use the knowledge you have.
Seek the knowledge you lack.
Recognize that not all facts are equal.
Consider the consequences.
Lay it all before the Lord.
• As we plan ahead, leave room for direction from the head planner.
