THE PLANS OF THE HEART

Proverbs 16:1 “To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue.”

Some years ago Albert Einstein was on a train bound for New York City. As the ticket taker came walking through the car, Einstein reached into his pocket to retrieve his ticket, but could not find it. He frantically searched his coat pockets, turned his pants pockets inside out, but still could not produce the ticket.

The ticket taker said, ‘Don’t worry, Mr. Einstein, we all know who you are. Forget about it.’ About 20 minutes later, the ticket taker came back through the car, and by this time Einstein was on the floor searching everywhere for the lost ticket. Again the ticket taker tried to reassure Einstein by saying, ‘I told you not to worry about the lost ticket. We trust that you purchased one, and that is good enough for us.’ Einstein looked up at the railroad employee and said, ‘Young man, this isn’t a matter of trust but of direction. I need to find the ticket because I forgot where I am going.”

Do you have a clear sense of where you want to go in life? Are you headed toward that destination, moving away from that destination, or simply standing idle? The first foundational secret for wise living is simply this: Wise people have a sense of their God-given destination and have made plans of going there. Wise people know where they want to go in life and have a plan for getting there.

No body arrives at their destination in life by accident. The only thing that arrives at its intended destination by accident is airline luggage. In fact, without a plan, we tend to drift away from our dreams.

The best way to allow Satan to destroy your dreams is to do nothing. Continue to live with no action plan, and you will never arrive at your desired destination in life. Why? There is a law that works in the natural world that is also operative in your life: the second law of thermodynamics. This principle, simply stated, tells us that the physical world is decaying and that the direction of all creation is downward, not upward. Everything eventually runs down.

Have you ever wondered why a garden left untended eventually becomes overgrown with weeds? The answer is that everything in the world is decaying. What is true in the physical world is also true about your life. If you don’t believe that, just ask yourself a few questions. Does your body tend to get healthier as you age? Does your vision improve the longer you live? Can you hear better when you are sixty that when you were twenty? If unchecked, the same decay that pulls your physical body downward will also destroy other parts of your life. Because of the sin nature we inherited from Adam, we do not naturally drift toward God or moved toward his plan for our lives. Instead, if we do not exert a proactive counter effort, the natural course of events will lead to the depletion of financial resources, the disintegration of our families, the deterioration of our bodies, and yes, the destruction of our souls. That is why it is essential to develop a plan to reverse the natural direction of your life and transport you to your desired destination. A plan is simply a road map for getting you to your desired destination in life.

Don’t just sit around and hope that every thing will work out the way you want it to be. Be wise. Plan for God’s best in your life.