2024… God, Your Plan or MINE?

I cannot believe it is 2024, the beginning of a new year. 

I am thankful for a new year. It is a time to reset. Refocus. Turn the page. Start a new chapter. 

Can you imagine what life would be like if we never had a time to go to sleep, wake up, and start fresh with a new day? How terrible and exhausting! Days END—weeks END. Seasons END. Chapters END. And NEW ONES begin.  

The ending and beginning of things are from the Lord. A new year is a blessing.  

Many of us are asking ourselves: 

Who do I want to be this year? What do I need to change? What are my goals, and how can I improve? What do I want to accomplish? How can I make my life better?  

But I have a more urgent, more imperative, possibly the MOST crucial question…        

What is GOD’s plan? 

 Henry Blackaby, in his book Experiencing God, says:

“If you ask the wrong question, you get the wrong answer.  The wrong question is, “What’s God’s plan for MY life?” Because the focus is MY LIFE.  THE RIGHT question is, “What’s God’s plan?” And then joining my life to God’s plan.“

Henry Blackaby

When you look around at our world today, you see everyone busy trying to live the life that makes them most happy. Christians in America are focused on inner healing, being their best selves, and working on loving and accepting themselves and who God has created them to be. One rarely asks the hard question, “God, what is YOUR PLAN, and how do I get on board?”

Religion can be a distraction from God’s plan. It can be full of spiritual rhetoric that pays so much more attention to self-improvement and self-growth than it does to loving the lost or sharing the love of Jesus. 

We get absorbed in God’s plan for MY life, MY family, MY career, goals, ministry, desires, and wants; we don’t even consider if that is what GOD wants. Can you ask the Lord what He wants without adding “for me” into the equation? Honestly, it took me a while to even grasp that idea! 

What DOES God want? Well, let’s see… 

Jesus left the disciples with a few specific commands: 

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”– John 13:34

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” – Matthew‬ ‭22‬:‭36‬-‭40‬ ‭NIV‬‬

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” – Matthew 28:19-20 ESV

Notice that none of these commands was a command to seek out the best plan for their personal lives. 

American Christianity has become so focused on self-love. Self-healing. Self-discovery. Self-self-self. 

It is nearly impossible to love others if you don’t love yourself. We DO need Jesus to heal our hearts and set us free. When we are saved, baptized, and filled with the Holy Spirit, we experience His redemptive work within our hearts and immediately have something to offer to someone else!  

But Christians want to take it and keep it and make it their own personal experience and journey. They want healing and attention, they want to feel important and knowledgeable, and they desire to receive from the Lord all they can: a special calling, an anointing, a purpose, but it is often stopped short there. But what begins as a command to share the love of Christ with the lost can quickly become just another self-help religion.  

At SOME point, we need to turn that focus away from ourselves and onto those Jesus has called us to love. 

Jesus, what is YOUR plan? And how can I join? No matter what, it is to reach the unreached with His love. However the Lord is doing that, that needs to be MY plan: to join HIM.

There will always be things I need to do better, improve, change, and repent of. That’s life. No one escapes the flesh; we will all deal with those things until we are called to Heaven. We cannot allow that to be the reason we don’t join in God’s plan.  

One of my favorite Bible verses is 2 Corinthians 12:9–10: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 

Meaning God will use me at my worst, at my weakest, in the most humiliating and messy moments of my life. He can and will use me. And when I feel weak, I am out of the way, and He can be my strength. That is when things are accomplished. Not when all of my goals have been met, or my healing journey is well on its way.  

I want to be less focused on MY life, my agenda, my routines, my career, my needs, and my family and tune in to the needs of others, the lost, those who still need Jesus. I don’t want their lives to be an interruption; I want them to be my focus. 

In 2024, my main goal is to put myself on that precious Old Rugged Cross and die to my plans, my life, and my SELF.

This year, I want to ask the RIGHT question.  

Lord, what is YOUR PLAN?