ByWhat’s a plan? It’s an orderly way of executing sets of tasks to bring desired results. Planning is good. But sometimes, we leave this practice to organisations alone, forsaking it in our private lives.
Many people, especially the young generation, barely plan their lives. Some see no reason to do it. Others also think it’ll make their lives too narrow to do what they want. But what does God’s Word say? Let’s look at Proverbs 16:1 (NIV).
[1] To humans belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the proper answer of the tongue.
The plans of the heart belong to us, not God. However, God is obliged to direct our steps by telling us what we ought to do each step of the way.
Here’s what God does. He gives you a dream or a picture of how your future will look but denies you the knowledge of how to get there. Think about the life of Joseph. God gives him two dreams that he’ll rule over his family and several others. And few chapters after, he was sold to Egypt as a slave. If I were him, I would have blamed God for giving me a false dream. But how God does His things are sometimes mysterious to understand.
God is the giver of vision, and where divine vision is clear, it gives meaning to life. In other words, when you know where God is taking you, you can begin to plan your life in that direction. For example, if God has called you to reach the world through art, then you’ll know that studying law in university won’t be beneficial to you.
Knowledge of purpose simplifies your life. And from this understanding, you can now begin to do life planning with the requisite wisdom and resources. Here are six steps (not scriptural per se, but according to experience) to undertake purposeful life planning.
If you plan and fail to state how you’ll execute the plan, you’re setting your own trap for failure.
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1. Document your ideas
Ideas are seeds in your mind. They only grow to become huge in manifestation when you pay attention to them. Countless people conceive ideas daily, but only a few execute them.
Sometimes, you’ll not have divine encounters like Moses, Jacob or Joseph to know your purpose in Christ. God may reveal it to you through a simple idea in your mind. And when you give attention to it, He then starts to broaden its view to you.
You only give attention to an idea when you document and meditate on it. If you want to use a book or a frame to record your ideas, please use it effectively and put it where you’ll see it daily. But if you’re like me, who is so engulfed in technology, you can create a private repository on your device or wallpaper graphics to remind you of your purpose and the specialities God tells you to do. Remember that you’re human, and you can forget things too. So document your ideas to ponder over them later when you are meditating.
You only give attention to an idea when you document and meditate on it.
2. Pray to God about your ideas
The second step is simply prayer about ideas. Some ideas are not godly. Some are also from our personal ambitions. Others don’t connect to our divine purpose. Others are also good, but the timing to execute them is wrong according to God’s calendar. And yet, some ideas are directly acceptable before God. They vary. But God will help you to refine them well only when you pray about them.
Because God knows your purpose and has an entire life plan unbeknownst to you, He tells you what to do based on what is in His plan for your life. He’ll not always reject your ideas. He can inform you to do some and archive the rest, not because He’s bad but primarily because of two reasons: wrong timing or wrong motive for approach. But the most important thing to do is to obey God wholeheartedly. Be open to hearing from Him as you pray.
3. Separate what God tells you to do from what He rejects or tells you to hold on
After praying about your ideas and hearing from God, separate the ones God tells you to execute from the ones He rejects or tells you to hold on to. You can do this through paperwork on a table or an online document.
For the ones God reject, delete them from your list of ideas. But for the ones, He tells you to hold on to, or it’s not the right time, get a place to archive them. You can return to them later on.
4. Study and determine how to execute them one after the other
Now that you know what you must work on, take them one after the other. It’s important to note that just because God has given you a go-ahead to do something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t study. One primary necessity required to sustain anything you start is wisdom. Without it, what you begin won’t last, even if God is the One who told you to do it.
One primary necessity required to sustain anything you start is wisdom.
For example, if God tells you to build a house, and you don’t count the cost and how to build buildings and maintain facilities, don’t be surprised if you start and don’t finish it. Wisdom is the principal thing. Get the right resources to begin well. And don’t forget that as you move ahead, you must study how to sustain what you’re building in your life so that it doesn’t go down the drain.
5. Work, work, work
Fifth is work. Without work, ideas will remain as seeds in your mind and on paper, even if it’s God who gave them to you. Some people unnoticeably disobey God by neglecting to work out the processes involved in turning an idea into manifestation. Don’t do that.
If you plan and fail to state how you’ll execute the plan, you’re setting your own trap for failure. You’ll have a goal but lack the process to achieve it. Plan the execution process in detail, and handle each step distinctly. At this stage, I don’t recommend multi-tasking, especially for men, because of the concentration mix-up. Take on the tasks one at a time. Celebrate the little wins and give glory to God for victory.
6. Wait on God
Lastly, wait on God to fulfil His promises. It doesn’t mean you should become inactive. No. Continue working, but leave your expectations to Him. He can empower you to work faster than you thought. So keep praying, working and living purposefully. Shalom.
