God’s plans for you will always be bigger than the plans you have for yourself. Don’t waste your life working on your plans. Focus instead on God’s plans. It’s a radical mind-shift to no longer pursue our dreams and goals. For those of us who have spent decades in pursuit of something, it seems unnatural to let it go.
Perhaps what you’ve been chasing is what God intends for you to do, in which case you can continue the pursuit but with a different motive for your desires. But often, God’s intention for us will differ from our dreams. Our dreams are tainted and influenced by what the world tells us we want. God’s dreams for us are not only bigger but more pure and meaningful. When we spend our lives in pursuit of His plans, our lives will be full of meaning and satisfaction.
Pursuing God’s plans for you will look different from how you go about pursuing your plans. Instead of setting goals and stressing out as you attempt to reach them, you will learn to trust God to do what only He can do. It doesn’t mean you won’t still have to work diligently. But it does mean your work will happen with a whole new perspective. You may still find yourself in stressful situations, as the enemy will always oppose the work of God, but the desire to achieve, compete, and complete will no longer stress you out. Instead, pursuing God’s plans leads to a fulfilling life of rest and the knowledge you are spending your life on things that matter for eternity.
We live in conflict with what God desires for us when we waste our time in pursuit of financial success and the unending desire to have more. Stress occurs in your body whenever you are behaving in ways that contradict who you are. The quickest way to avoid stress is to behave in ways that are consistent with who God created you to be. And the only way to behave that way is to pursue God’s plans and not our own. It’s about praying and asking God, “What would You have me do in this situation?” whenever we encounter a decision. It’s seeing every individual you meet as someone created in God’s image and worthy of our love. Our lives are not our own. They belong to Jesus and are to be spent in the service of Him and our neighbors so that they too may be saved.
God’s plans for your life are better than your own. They may not bring riches and fame here on earth, but they will assure you of peace and honor in His Kingdom for eternity. You’ll never regret pursuing God’s plans over your own. In the end, the only thing you will ever regret is not spending every waking moment in service to Jesus. He is our Lord and every minute we spend in pursuit of anything else is a wasted minute.
You can have peace and live a life of great impact and meaning. But this will only occur if you spend your life pursuing God’s plans and not your own. The things of earth which seem so desirable at the moment will fade and dissolve into the illusions that they are. Every good thing we see in this life is but a shadow of the real thing treasures found only in Jesus. Don’t waste your life pursuing what you will only lose. Spend it in service to our King and gain what can never be lost.