“Where do you see yourself in five years?”, she asked from across the table.
There have been times in my life when that question has stumped me. But on this particular day, when my friend got curious, I knew my answer. In fact, I could see it playing like a movie in my mind’s eye.
And so, after articulating it to my friend, I walked away excited. I was excited to do the work and chase my dreams because I believed God had given them to me.
I have to confess, though, that it wasn’t too long before excitement gave way to overwhelm.
You see, as I started to actually work toward my goals, I realized just how hard each step was to take—and how the results I wanted didn’t always follow the work I put in.
Can you relate?
Even with a vision in mind, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by tasks that feel too big and factors we can’t control.
But thankfully, Proverbs 16:3 offers a remedy for this kind of overwhelm.
It says,
“Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.” (Prov. 16:3, NIV)
That word “commit” literally means to “roll.”[1] So, the writer of Proverbs is encouraging us to roll our work and all the tasks that overwhelm us over onto God.
And there are 3 practical ways we can do this: look, lean and leave.
ONE. Look to God for the plan.
This is where we need to start. As we’re coming up with our dreams and plans in the first place, we should invite God into the process (like I talked about in this post on decision-making).
We can ask Him to give us His vision for our life. After all, He has a plan for us just as He does for everything else He created. He knows who He is making us to be and He knows the best route for us to take through life.
So, we can lay our plans open in prayer, inviting Him to redirect us when our plans start taking us off His path. And we can use God’s Word like a map to direct our steps.
As Christians, our lives are not our own anymore—every sphere of our lives belongs to Jesus, now. So, we would be wise to roll our plan-making over onto our all-wise Lord who is ever involved in our lives.
TWO. Lean on God for the ability.
One thing I’ve learned during my time in ministry is that if God has called you to do something, He will enable you to do it. He will give you all the strength and the ability you need as you depend on Him.
But this isn’t just true in ministry—it’s true in all of life! As we follow God in our careers, families, health goals and passion projects, we are invited to trade self-reliance for dependence. We can lean on the Lord’s strength when we need to make sacrifices or walk into intimidating rooms. And we can lean on the Lord’s ability when we need to learn a new skill or take a big step. The things that are too heavy for us are not too heavy for God.
So, we can roll all the pressure we feel to “make things happen” over onto Him.
THREE. Leave to God the results.
As I mentioned earlier, sometimes we put in hard work toward our dreams, but the results we want don’t follow. I’ve been there before and it is so frustrating!
But here’s the beautiful thing about committing what we do to the Lord: it means we can stop trying to control the outcomes.
We cannot determine how a person will respond to us or control whether a door opens or closes when we knock on it. We can only take the next practical step before us, as we follow God’s lead and depend on His power.
And that’s enough. Because, ultimately, the outcomes are God’s responsibility, not ours.
You know, this verse can be confusing because it sounds like a promise that if we just commit our plans to the Lord, they’ll turn out just the way we want them to. But I don’t think that’s exactly true. Since this verse is a proverb, it isn’t so much making a promise as it is saying, “this is how things typically work.”
Throughout Scripture, we do see the principle that when someone’s work is aligned with, dependent on and surrendered to God it is often blessed. But we also see examples of God-honoring plans that didn’t go as anticipated. David, for example, wanted to honor God by building Him a temple, yet God stopped him, letting him know that wasn’t his assignment. (2 Samuel 7)
So, whether our plans succeed or end up altered in some way, we can be comforted by the words in the very next verse. After the writer said, “Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and he will establish your plans,” he added this: “The LORD works out everything to its proper end…” (Proverbs 16:4, NIV)
Even when our plans change, we can trust that God’s plans are right on schedule.
His plans are good plans that can be trusted and never thwarted. So, we can roll control (and all the factors we can’t control) over onto God.
In a different sense, we can see how committing all we do to the Lord establishes and makes firm our plans.
Our plans may very well change, but when we depend on God for everything—our plans, abilities and outcomes—we’re no longer basing our hopes on the shaky foundation of what we can control. We’re basing our hopes on Him!
And wherever we end up in five years, we can know: God will still be with us to lead, enable and work things out—just as He always intended—for our good.
This devotion is based on one of the Scriptures from my reading plan: “Wisdom from Above” which covers Proverbs, Ecclesiastes & Job. To receive a copy of the reading plan (and future reading plans), sign up for the email list below. Hope you’ll follow along!
[1] https://biblehub.com/hebrew/1556.htm
©2024 Paige K. Burhans
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®
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