Daily Prayer: When God's Plans Are Better Than Mine
Daily Prayer: When God's Plans Are Better Than Mine
"Listen to advice and accept discipline, and at the end you will be counted among the wise. Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails."
— Proverbs 19:20-21
I found an old planner in the back of a kitchen drawer this morning. One of those spiral-bound ones with the cheerful cover and the month-at-a-glance pages filled in with my own handwriting — color-coded, even.
I stood there for a second, holding it, reading through a few months of my very organized, very confident past plans. Some of them happened. A lot of them didn't. And honestly? Some of the ones that didn't work out turned into something better than what I'd written down.
I put the planner in the recycling bin and poured myself another cup of coffee.
I Have Always Been a Planner
I come by it honestly. I like knowing what's coming. I like a good system. There's real comfort in mapping things out — the week, the budget, the five-year stretch of what I hope our life looks like.
My husband will tell you (and has, more than once, with great affection) that I have strong opinions about how things should go. He's not wrong.
And yet.
The plans I made for my kid's childhood looked nothing like how it actually went — and that turned out fine. Better than fine, actually. The job I almost took, the house we almost bought, the season I was so sure I had figured out — God kept rerouting me with this gentle, persistent patience that I didn't always appreciate in the moment.
I appreciate it now.
The Part About Listening
Proverbs 19:20 starts with listening. Not planning. Not executing. Listening.
That first part — "listen to advice and accept discipline" — used to feel like the less interesting part of the verse to me. I'd skim right past it to get to the Lord's purpose prevailing, which felt more poetic and less personally convicting.
But lately I think the listening is the whole point.
Wisdom, the Bible keeps telling us, isn't something we generate on our own. It grows in us when we're willing to hear things we didn't already know. When we stay teachable. When we don't assume we've already figured it out just because we've been at this a while.
I've been at this a while. I still have a lot to learn.
My adult kid teaches me things regularly — about patience, about how the world looks from a different angle, about how to hold my opinions a little more loosely. My husband does too. So does the woman at church who's been walking with God for forty years longer than I have. I try to actually listen when they talk.
I don't always succeed. But I try.
Many Are the Plans
I love that this verse doesn't say "a few plans" or "sometimes plans." It says many. As if God already knew exactly how many tabs I'd have open, how many lists I'd make, how many times I'd think I had it sorted.
There's no shame in it. Making plans isn't the problem. Being a person who thinks ahead, who wants to be responsible, who cares about how things go — that's not a flaw. The verse isn't scolding us for planning.
It's just reminding us — gently, wisely — that our plans live inside a much larger story. One we didn't write and can't fully see from where we're standing.
That used to feel like a limitation. It feels more like relief now.
His Purpose Prevails
Prevails is such a good word. It doesn't mean our plans get erased or that our hopes don't matter. It means that underneath all of it, God's purpose holds. It wins out. It stands.
I think about all the moments I was white-knuckling a plan — trying to make something happen through sheer determination — and how often the thing I was holding so tightly either slipped away or got replaced by something I hadn't thought to want.
And how, looking back, I can trace a kind of thread. A purpose that was moving through all of it even when I couldn't see it.
That's not me being sentimental. That's just what I've actually noticed.
The color-coded planner in the recycling bin is evidence of my best guesses. God's faithfulness is evidence of something else entirely.
What I'm Sitting With Today
I don't need to have the next chapter figured out. I need to stay teachable. I need to keep listening — to people wiser than me, to Scripture, to the nudges that don't always make logical sense but turn out to be right.
And I need to hold my plans a little more like suggestions and a little less like contracts.
I'm working on it. Slowly. With some backsliding. Which is, I think, exactly how this kind of growth tends to go.
A Prayer
Lord,
You already know about all my plans. The ones written down and the ones just living in my head. Thank You for not being annoyed by them.
Help me to actually listen today — not just wait for my turn to talk, not just gather information to confirm what I already think, but really hear. From You. From the people You've put in my life. From Scripture when I sit still long enough to let it say something.
When my plans don't work out, remind me that You're not being careless with my life. You're being purposeful with it. There's a difference, and I forget that more than I'd like to admit.
Count me among the wise someday — not because I had everything figured out, but because I kept coming back to You when I didn't.
Amen.
🛍️ Shop my specially designed gifts for any celebration in my Etsy shop
Explore all my personally crafted digital files on Creative Fabrica, or Download from.
#dailyprayer #christiancreative #introvertlife #faithandlife #thoughtfulliving #emptynester #workinglife #quietwork #midlifevoice #artinsciencedesigns #slowcontent
Comments
Post a Comment