....say/sing it with me "tell Him your plans"....
One of my life passages is Jeremiah 29:11-14, which says: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the L
ORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the L
ORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the L
ORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile."
I think one of the biggest things that people stress about is plans: plans for future, for children, for day to day activities, etc. In Jeremiah, God declares that He knows the plans He has for us. I have never really thought about the saying "If you want to make God laugh tell Him your plans" in relation to Jeremiah 29:11. He already has plans for our life - so why do we allow ourselves to stress about making those plans for ourselves? God says clearly, that when we seek Him with all our hearts, we will find Him! So, God laughs when we try to take the planning of our lives into our own hands because He has the Master Plan.
I cannot say that I have an "easy" time not planning - those that know me know how schedule, planning, and to-do list oriented I am. And I cannot say that I am stressed about it all the time - but I do know that I need to get better about not taking so much time to plan every little detail of my life out, and spend more time at the feet of Jesus and in His word.
{kind of a side note: While I was still a member of the work force, I worked in a small office with about 8 people. We had an open floor plan and there were only 2 men. So, you can imagine that, even on a good day, we sometimes would be annoyed with each other, or have a hard time concentrating in general on our tasks. I found myself stressing out daily because I couldn't concentrate on my tasks and my to-do list for the day because I could hear every keyboard clicking away at each of the desks and hear every detail of every phone conversation. For those of you who don't know me well, I graduated college with a degree in American Sign Language interpreting - so, part of my training was to hear everything going on around me so I could accurately interpret for the person I was serving. Therefore, noises easily distract me and make my head spin to the point of being overwhelming at times. I have the ability sometimes to shut this "extra sensitive" hearing off, but more often than not, while I was working, I would be overwhelmed. So - I came up with an acronym to help me during those "flipping out" moments.}
"When face with
STRESS remember to
breathe!!"
Satan
Tries to
Ruin
Eternal-minded
Security &
Sanity
Believe that the
Redeemer
Endured
All, so
Trust
Him for
Endurance
Satan tries to distract us from our true focus by making us think we have to plan our life down to the minute details. However, our true focus needs to be serving Jesus by loving and serving others around us. This journey can be TOUGH - we stress out and become frazzled, and, therefore, less effective in the roles that Jesus has called us to. Again, I cannot say that I am and expert at this by any stretch of the imagination, but I had an epiphany, so I thought I would share. Maybe you have thought about all of this before, so it is a reminder to you. Maybe this is a new perspective for you on something that has been on your mind or that you have been stressing out about. Either way, I hope that it will make a difference to someone.
Until next time - remember to breathe!
