Making Plans with the Book of Proverbs

AJM Holy Trinity April 2003

Making plans : the problem

Good evening. How do you decide things? I don’t mean the big things, like what to do about the UN and who should be Prime Minister; I mean the little things, like what job should you do and who should you marry and where should you live. I’ve come across lots of methods over the years. I had a friend who made a key decision because when she cut open a potato one morning it had a certain arrangement of black spots inside it. I knew someone else who never decided anything at all because he didn’t know what God wanted; and as God didn’t seem able to make himself clear, he did nothing. Lots of people never make plans, things just happen to them – they get on the housing ladder because everyone does, they have children because everyone does, they look for promotion because everyone does. Then they retire, because everyone does, and after that they die, because everyone does. Now I don’t know about you, but that’s never really appealed to me as a life strategy. I want my life to work, and I want my life to count. So how do I make that happen? Well, the Book of Proverbs offers clear advice, and bit by bit we’ll see what it is.

Making plans : common approaches

As I look at the world around me I see two basic approaches to making plans.

Decide what you want, go out and get it

Help, it’s all too hard, let’s go with the flow

I think which you choose depends partly on the culture you were brought up in, and partly on natural temperament. Let’s look at them in turn.

1. Decide what you want, then go out and get it

This is the one I was born with. I like to be in charge of what happens to me. When I was 2 years old they said to me one day, stand there, we want to take your photograph. And don’t put that peg in your mouth. This was the result…

By the time I was 16 I hadn’t changed much, but I had acquired a nice long word for my philosophy. It was existentialism. Existentialism means there is no intrinsic meaning to life, and so it can be about what you want it to be about. What happens to you is a product of the decisions you take and the plans you make. The world is up for grabs. So I grabbed it. I decided what I wanted, what my ambitions were, then I set about realising them. Lots of my contemporaries did the same; these were the Thatcher years, the go out and get it years. I found that mostly this strategy worked well, but that there were 2 downsides. The first was that in between the deciding and the getting came a whole load of anxiety. The second was that one of my friends got cancer and died, and as far as I could tell she hadn’t planned this at all. So I was forced to recognise that this strategy might not always work. Proverbs has words for it:

There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death (14.12 and 16.25)

Jesus told a story about it too. He said there was a farmer who worked really hard, and he got such a bumper crop that he couldn’t fit it all into the barns he had. So he planned to build bigger barns, and to invest the profits so that he’d never have to work again. Early retirement and a house in Spain beckoned. But instead of commending him for his foresight, God called him a fool; for what he didn’t know was that that very night a fatal heart attack would strike, and instead of living it up on the Costa del Sol he’d be giving an account of himself to St Peter. And so if like me you are tempted to decide what you want, and then go out and get it, here’s warning number one, from the proverb above:

¨ your plans must have an eternal dimension

2. Help, it’s all too hard, let’s go with the flow

The other common approach to forward planning is more passive. This is the approach which says it’s all so complicated, there are so many choices, so many options, that I think I’ll just wait and see what happens. And it’s true that making plans is more complicated than ever before. There was a time when it was the Gas Board or the Civil Service; you chose one at 22 and that was it for the rest of your life. For women, it was either career or husband; I remember Roger’s mother telling me how she lost her job as a teacher when she got married in the 1930s, because you weren’t allowed to do both. But now it’s not like that. Life is a menu of infinite variety. You can now sail into a future of limitless possibility merely by setting out on a raft of your own imagination into the ocean of choice. Often we prefer, rather than grappling with the ins and outs of all these opportunities, to say well, I don’t know what I’ll be doing but I think I’ll just stay where I am. It’s all too hard.

Proverbs has words for this strategy too:

The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways, but the folly of fools is deception (14.8)

And Jesus told a story about it. When you set out on life, he said, you’re like a man who has to build a tower. Do you just build as you go along, and hope for the best? Not if you’ve any sense, because you’re liable to run out of cash half way through. No, you need to plan carefully right through to the end before you start. So it is with planning your life, and most especially if you intend to plan it as a Christian. And so here’s warning number two:

¨ hoping for the best doesn’t work

Making plans : the solution

So what’s the alternative? These are the world’s ways of making plans. Is there another way?

Well, I think it’s important to realise that each of the ways we’ve looked at comes from an underlying philosophy, a certain way of looking at life. As Christians we have a philosophy too, and it’s called God.

Who then is this God? Well, he’s a God who himself makes plans. He thinks billions of years ahead. Look at this:

Jesus was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake (1 Peter 1.20)

And what does this God say to us, who he made in his image? First, trust:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight;

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (3.5-6)

And second, think:

The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance,

But everyone who is hasty comes only to want. (21.5)

That clear? These are the twin keys which Proverbs offers us to planning. Trust God. Then think hard. Let’s look at those in order.

1. Trust in the Lord with all your heart

So, Proverbs tells us to start by trusting in the Lord with all our heart. This is our starting position. We aren’t supposed to start with what we want, and we aren’t supposed to give in to helpless despair either. We are supposed to start with God. We are supposed to trust God. Why: because God is in charge, and God has thought it through. This is what God famously said to his extremely disgruntled people through the prophet Jeremiah:

For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope (29.11).

For me this has been a key verse, as I have struggled to plan my life in the light of all the constraints it places upon me. Often I have tried to make some particular plan come about, and time after time it has been blocked. At times I’ve been every bit as fed up as Jeremiah, as doors have slammed shut in my face, as I’ve been sent to live in places I didn’t want to live in (not this one!), been forced to turn down jobs I very much wanted to have, and even been given more children than I bargained for. But gradually I think I have come to understand something. It isn’t that I should make plans, and then ask God to make them happen, ask him to bless my plans. It’s that I should ask him what part he wants me to play in the plans he already has. Since I’ve understood that, my life has been totally different. I don’t make the plans. He makes the plans. I just have to find out what they are, and then fit in with them. That’s what it means to trust God:

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established (19.21)

Or, roughly translated:

¨ my job is to fit in with his plans

Who’s making the most far-reaching plans in the world at the moment? George Bush. George Bush became the President of the US moreorless by fluke. Now he’s running the world. What does he say about making plans? Well, 2 years ago he went back to the university where he was a student, Yale, and this is what he said:

‘When I left here, I didn’t have much in the way of a life plan. I knew some people who thought they did. But it turned out that we were all in for ups and downs, most of them unexpected. Life takes its turns, makes its own demands, writes its own story. And along the way, we start to realise we are not the author.’

So you have to trust God, because really there’s not much alternative. You know that God sees far more than you do, and you want to submit to the plans that he has for your life even if you don’t yet know what they are. How do you do it? Well, effectively you have to sign a contract with him. You do a deal. You offer him your life, he promises to direct your paths. But the contract doesn’t look like this… (written sheet) It looks like this… (blank sheet). It’s a blank piece of paper. Can you sign your name at the bottom? If you can, God will direct your paths. If not, feel free, carry on and direct your own. The choice is yours. Sign, and who knows what will happen. Paul tells the Ephesians that we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us (Eph 2.10). I’m not an independent entity, a sort of island; I’m part of a much bigger picture, one which encompasses the whole world, and one which I simply don’t have the mental equipment to take on board. In the last analysis, we trust God because there is no sensible alternative.

In the words of Proverbs:

A man’s steps are ordered by the Lord; how then can anyone understand his own way? (20.24)

Let me translate:

¨ sign first, read the small print later

2. Do not rely on your own insight

So that’s the first thing we get out of Proverbs. If you want to end up with good plans, the first thing you must do is decide to trust God.

Now for the second part of that verse. Do not rely on your own insight. That doesn’t mean don’t use it, it just means what it says, don’t rely on it. In practice Proverbs suggests three sources of wisdom to guide your life by. Let me remind you what they are:

God
Other people
Your own choices

1. God

He who gives heed to the word will prosper,

and happy is he who trusts in the Lord. (16.20)

I told you about my friend who relied on the insides of potatoes. A little later she divorced her very nice husband, for reasons it was hard to see. Potatoes do not give good guidance. Scripture, on the other hand, does. Scripture is God’s guidance for living. It offers us detailed advice about relationships, lifestyle, decision-making, and priorities. Scripture is the benchmark for all your plans. Those who live by it prosper, those who don’t do not. Check it out there first, do what it says.

My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you

then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. (2.1-5)

God also guides us through prayer. The Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, will teach us all things, Jesus said. Sometimes he speaks directly as we pray, and we know what decisions to take. Paul didn’t go to Bithynia as planned, because the Holy Spirit told him not to when he prayed. He went to Macedonia instead, because he was told to in a dream (Acts 16.7). The Holy Spirit gives gifts of knowledge and of wisdom as we pray with one another. Often when I have been faced with major decisions, God has sent a word or a picture through someone else, often several people who don’t know one another, to make sure that I knew what to do. That’s not an unusual experience, it’s a common one for those who fear the Lord. Words and pictures which are genuinely from God always agree with scripture. If they don’t, you’re kidding yourself.

Here’s another warning:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Can that really be right? Should we fear the God who loves us? Well, this is what God thought of the Israelites who decided that they’d be better off in Egypt:

Oh, rebellious children, who carry out a plan, but not mine; who make an alliance, but against my will, adding sin to sin; who set out to go down to Egypt without asking for my counsel, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh, and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt. Therefore the protection of Pharaoh shall become your shame, and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt your humiliation (Isaiah 31.1-4).

So here’s the warning:

¨ doing your own thing is not a good idea

2. Other people

The second source of wisdom is other people. Seek advice, Solomon thunders at regular intervals throughout the book of Proverbs:

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice (12.15)

Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom for the future (19.20)

Without counsel plans go wrong, but with many advisers they succeed (15.22)

It makes sense. If you can’t cope with your new baby, ask someone who’s had several. If you don’t know how to handle your colleague, ask someone with more experience. If you have big choices to make, consult those who’ve faced the same choices. It’s obvious. Here’s the rule:

¨ take advice

3. Your own discretion

And finally, there’s your own insight. The prudent are crowned with knowledge, says Proverbs (14.18). Let me remind you of the second of the verses we started with:

The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance,

But everyone who is hasty comes only to want. (21.5)

That is to say:

¨ the buck stops with you

So, once you’ve taken God and other people into account, you must realise that you too have a part to play. God’s promises of guidance, be they through scripture, through prayer or through the advice of others, were not given to save us the bother of thinking. James urges us to ask for wisdom, and we will receive it. Often it’s entirely up to you to decide. I once heard an excellent sermon on marriage. Who should you marry? Well, he said, when it comes to making decisions, you’ll find that as a general rule God only has red lights, he doesn’t have green ones. In other words, there are some people you may not marry, principally those already married to someone else. The red lights are clearly described in the Bible. Otherwise it’s up to you; any light which is not red is green. Choose; and try and choose well.

The wisdom of a prudent man, or woman, is to discern his way (14.8).

So use your common sense. Don’t look for labels on green traffic lights; God mostly doesn’t provide certainty, he expects us to think. Often this is not difficult. I once knew a guy called Dave who’d got a job and needed to find a flat. His job was a church-related one, and he felt it was very important that he should live exactly where God wanted him to live. Admirable. His method of finding this out? To pray. That’s good, isn’t it. But that was all he did. No flats were forthcoming. Eventually Roger lost his patience, and suggested he might try looking in the local paper to see if there was one he liked. He found one the same day.

There’s an opposite error to that of looking for certainty from God. It’s the one adopted by my friend with the potato. It’s called superstition. I knew another couple who needed to move house. At the time they were the key couple in the church they were attending, with a growing children’s ministry. But business was going well, and they wanted to live somewhere nicer. They found a house, in a village some way away from the scruffy town. They put in an offer but didn’t get it. A while later the sale fell through, they rushed in with another offer and did get it. They said it must be God’s guidance. It wasn’t. Their ministry collapsed and various things went wrong for them. Their plans sounded nicer than God’s, but they didn’t prosper as a result. So here’s another warning:

It is not good for a man to be without knowledge, and he who makes haste with his feet misses his way (19.2).

That is,

¨ three black cats in a row doesn’t mean God’s speaking

For those who know their scriptures, say their prayers, consult their friends and think carefully, the rewards may be considerable.

4. Making plans : does it always work out?

So there we are. It’s quite straightforward. But perhaps it isn’t always as simple as that. So let’s end with a few caveats.

First of all, what happens when we get it wrong? Experience teaches us that in practice we may misunderstand scripture, fail to hear God’s voice, receive bad advice and make mistakes. What then? Well, there are various possibilities. The first is that the Lord will make sure we get to the right destination even if the methods are a little odd.

A man’s mind plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps (16.9)

Sometimes we don’t actually have the faintest idea what we are doing, but we end up with the right decision anyway. I took my first really important decision at the age of 8. It was a decision which has determined the course of my life ever since, and I remember making it very well. The decision was this: I decided that in 10 years time I would go to Cambridge University. Being unsure of the world and its ways, I thought it wise to check this out with my mother. So I did get something right; I took advice. Do you think I could get into Cambridge, I asked. Yes of course you could dear, she said rather absent-mindedly. So that was it. Ten years later I went. Looking back, it was a very good decision, for it was in Cambridge that I became a Christian, there that I found out who I was, and there that I met Roger. But I’m not sure that my thinking was quite as mature as my desire to seek advice. I remember the thought process clearly. We’d been watching the boat race. Oxford wear dark blue, Cambridge light blue. I prefer light blue – it’s still my favourite colour, in fact. So there it was. I’d go to Cambridge. And if you want to add mystery to amazement, it’s just occurred to me that it must have been a black and white TV. Often we make decisions on no better ticket than that; but looking back on it I do think God knew what he was doing.

Another possibility is that we plan carefully, and then God just says No. This happened to me too. In fact it’s happened to me so many times that I’ve resigned myself to the idea that God already has a plan and my part is merely to watch it unfold. When I’d been in Cambridge a couple of years, I realised I needed a new planning horizon. What was I going to do after that? Well, you remember I’m good at the advice bit. So I went to see my Director of Studies. Do you think I could do research, I asked. Yes of course you could dear, she said, absent-mindedly. So I decided I’d be an academic. That was all going to plan when I found it necessary for me to become a Christian. And as I prayed my first ever prayer, the words thundered into my head, No, you won’t live your life in the university, I want you to forget that. I will give you other things to do, which will stretch you more and make you more useful. And so it has been. I am still discovering God’s purposes for my life, but they are turning out to be much more exciting than teaching Italian literature. The thing that is staggering me at the moment is what God is doing in Tanzania, and how he’s using us in that. Two years ago they asked us to write some discipleship materials for them. I found out last week that there are now 90 groups of people meeting weekly to learn how to be disciples of Christ, using those materials. That is more than twice as many as we have in Trinity, and they are planning another 60. This is a project that involves lots of us, as we pray, write, fund, plan and go. That makes it even more exciting – like watching God do an amazing jigsaw.

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established (19.21)

Finally, there’s a third possible outcome. Does it always work? Are the results guaranteed? No. Simple observation suggests that sometimes it all goes pear-shaped. Proverbs is a book of generalisations. Do all this, and it is likely to go well with you. But results are not guaranteed, and you can never see the big picture. Sometimes it looks as though disaster has taken over, but then it works out. That’s often been my experience. I remember once our plans went so badly wrong that I stood in the hall and literally hit my head against the wall. Sometimes it looks as though disaster has taken over, and then it doesn’t work out. So the final moral of the story is:

¨ they didn’t all always live happily ever after

But I’ve learnt through the disasters. Sometimes I’ve learnt more through the disasters than through the good times, actually, because all this is part of my own growth and development And so I offer you a final conclusion, not from Proverbs this time but from Romans: it’s this

All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8.28)

Once I was the toddler so opposed to anyone else’s plans that I did the opposite of what they told me. Now: this is what I really do believe. I am called according to his purpose, and I trust him. I’ve learnt that more when my plans have been frustrated than when they have come to pass. Amen…