Want to Be Wise?

January always brings a bit of a struggle for me.  The spiritual side of me wants to spend copious quantities of time in prayer and the Scriptures, searching for God’s direction, asking Him to guide and help me focus on His priorities for my life and my children’s lives as we tackle our last school semester of the year.

But the spiritual side has to wrestle with the “practical” side that wants to jump in with two feet and DO something.

I want to  PLAN everything myself,  make school bigger and better, add this over here and that over there, as well as insert another activity or three in an already busy schedule.

Do you do that, too?

In other words, instead of seeking what God wants to do in and through my life, our family, our homeschool – I tend to want to make MY plans and just ask God to bless them.  How wise is that to act as if I know best?

I constantly have to remind myself that it isn’t about me, and rather than making ten New Year’s Resolutions, finding the perfect planner, or setting my personal and professional goals on my own, it would be a more profitable use of my time to seek more of HIS input first.  After all, He has the big picture!  He is already working in my life and that of our family, and it is my place to join Him in what He is doing rather than setting off in another direction.

Listen to advice and accept instruction,
and in the end you will be wise.

Many are the plans in a man’s heart,
but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.

Proverbs 19:20-21

How puny my plans must be compared with the Maker of the Universe’s!

Here are some other verses I am praying over as I seek to know His plans for our family for the coming year:

I cry out to God Most High, to God, who fulfills {his purpose} for me. Psalm 57:2

The plans of the diligent surely lead to advantage, but everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty.  Proverbs 21:5

But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. Exodus 9:16

But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of His heart through all generations. Psalm 33:11

Commit your works to the LORD and your plans will be established.  Proverbs 16:3

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.  Ephesians 3:19-21

Am I the only one who struggles with this?  What do you do to keep yourself on the wise path?

 

God’s blessings on your New Year!