Your Plans Will Happen If You Are Making Plans According To God’s Will

Hello and welcome to Social Media Ministries, my name is Spencer Coffman. Our purpose here is to use social media to share the Bible with as many people as possible. We want to share the scriptures, the word of God, to help people understand and interpret the scriptures in the Bible. We want to do that.

We want to live out the great commission by preaching the Gospel to all nations and we believe that the place to do that is online through social media so that we can hopefully reach the entire world. If you could help us with that by sharing any of our videos that would be awesome. Also hitting the like button on them would be a great help or even subscribing to our channels or podcasts etc just to help get our numbers up to boost us in the algorithm, that would be great. Enough about us.

Let’s talk about how you can improve your life by following what God wants you to do. Today we are talking about making plans. You gotta make plans, planning is a great part of life, it is a good part of knowing what is going to happen even if the plans don’t always happen exactly as planned.

Nothing ever really goes according to plan. There is always a change. There is always an adaptation. You have to be flexible, roll with the punches, and you can’t be so rigid that if something doesn’t go to plan you lose your mind. But it is really good to have plans.

You have got to be on the same page, communication is key. Why is this important? Well, we want to be like God. We were created in the image of God. We want to be like Jesus as much as possible. How do we do that? Well, we know that He is a planner. God has a plan for your life. How do we know that? It is in the Bible.

Let’s check it out, Jeremiah 29:11, a very very popular verse. You probably know it, it is one that a lot of people memorize. I am going to read it for you though. Just so I don’t give you a mixed-up translation or something like that from memory. ‘For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you plans to give you hope and a future.’

He has plans right there, Jeremiah 29:11. He has plans for you. If He has plans for your life that means you also need to be a planner. Like God, you got to have plans, but you don’t need to have your own plans for your life, you need to figure out what God’s plans are for your life and then incorporate them into your plans.

How do you do that? You need to know God’s will. How do you know God’s will? Talk to Him. Read the Bible. Get close to Him. Enter into that personal relationship through Jesus Christ. Invite Him to be the Lord and Savior of your life and start living for Him rather than for the world or for yourself. You are going to have plans in life, you gotta make plans and you must plan to carry them out. You can’t just be like, well let’s make this plan and then you know whatever it is, I am not in control. Well, you are in control but God is in control of everything as well.

If you make a plan, there is a joke something about how to get God to laugh, it is to tell Him your plans. Well if you make plans that are inconsistent with God’s plans, then yes your plans are not going to work. But if you make plans that are consistent with God’s plans, your plans are going to work very very well.

His plan will always trump your plan. Look at Jonah, God says go to Nineveh. Jonah says, no way, I am going this way, goes all the way in the opposite direction, ends up in a storm, thrown overboard, a big fish eats him, swims him all the way back, spits him out, and Jonah’s on his way to Nineveh.

God’s plan trumped Jonah’s plan, God’s plan will always prevail. If Jonah would have planned according to God and God said, go to Nineveh and Jonah said, all right let’s go, I will make plans and preparations to go to Nineveh. I will book my ticket, I will prepare for my journey, I will do this and this.

Jonah was making all those plans, but it was in accordance or it was consistent with God’s plan or would have been, so then away he went. It would have been a success. Instead, he chose to avoid God’s plan. Tried to do the opposite and it was a big disaster.

There is another thing about planning that is important, not only must you have plans that need to go with God’s plan but you also need to be aware that your plans may not be fulfilled. How do we know this?

Well, let’s go to James. James is one of my favorite books in the Bible, it is a great book. I just love how blunt and direct he is. He says, James 4 verses 14 through 15, ‘Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if it is the Lord’s will we will do this and live.’ We will live and do this or that if it is the Lord’s will. This is what we will do.

Other, worldly, religions incorporate this a lot into what they do. The Muslims in the Arab world, they say if God is willing after just about every sentence. Or if someone says something like, hey have a great day tomorrow or something, then they say if God wills it. In their own language, they say that of course and that is what they do. They say that all the time. They kind of recognize that. They know that everything has to happen according to God’s will.

Now it is a different debate whether their term Allah is just Arabic for God and it is the same God or if they are worshiping a different God, the bottom line is if they are not worshiping Jesus and they don’t believe in Jesus as their Lord and Savior that is the deal breaker. That is for another time, another day.

The point is that even other religions still follow some things that are in the Bible and take certain things, even if they miss the one core principle. It is a salvation issue. We need to be saved. As you go through life you have to recognize that you could die at any point in time. We never know.

How often do you hear of your friends or family or people you know, that this person died, they were in a freak car accident? Or so and so had an accident at work or this person slipped and fell and it just killed him. Or some baseball player hit a line drive and smoked a guy in the side of the head and he died or someone tried to catch a foul ball and he fell and died. All these weird things that happened in our world you could die at any time, none of those people thought that today I am going to have a freak accident and my life is going to be over.

That brings up a couple of very very important side points that I want to bring to you. We don’t know when we are going to die. We could die at any point in time. What does that mean? It means we need to have a plan, you need to have a plan.

What if you died today? Is your family taken care of? Are they good or would it be a nightmare for them to figure everything out? You need to have a plan. Get everything set up, get everything in place. Your trust, your will, all your stuff. Make sure everyone knows who gets what. The beneficiaries, all of that, you got to have a plan because you could die at any point in time. That is a side point that is very very important.

It is a good part of being a steward of everything that God gave us. We can’t take everything that God gave us and then not pass it on to our future generations. The Bible says that those who do not leave an inheritance for the children’s children have denied the faith and are worse than an unbeliever. Make sure that you have a plan for that because you could die at any time.

You will die sometime so make sure that plan is in place. You don’t know if it is tomorrow or 100 years from now. We obviously hope that it is a hundred years from now because it is better for other people for us to stay here and live. Of course, we want to die. We want to go to heaven but it is better for others if we stay here and continue to share Jesus, to share the Gospel, so keep doing that and keep living longer.

James isn’t telling you that you can’t make plans by saying you don’t know what could happen tomorrow, he is saying that you need to entertain the possibility and the idea that your plan could change and you can’t lose your mind if that happens. We need to plan in accordance with God’s plan because that is what James is telling us there, instead, we ought to say if God wills it we will do this or that.

Well, if we are connected with God on that deep personal level and the Holy Spirit is speaking to us and we are making plans based on what God is telling us, then we know that is what we are supposed to do. You always need to be seeking God and know your plans may change. Know that your plans may change. Why?

Well God could tell you, I need you to go on this mission trip and you can say, all right I am going to make plans to do that. You are saying, all right like James says, if God wills it I will go on this mission trip, God told me I am going to make plans. Now my plans are one and the same with God’s and I know that is what He is willing.

I booked my plane ticket, I packed, I got all my stuff in order, I took the time off of work, I made preparations for someone to look after my house, the mail, the pets, the plants, all of this and you have all of that in place. Then what happens? Well, something could happen, maybe a storm comes in and the plane is delayed or something goes wrong and it is not going according to plan. Don’t worry, God has you.

The plan will still happen, you just may be experiencing a little bit of turbulence in the plan. Why? Because the enemy prowls around like a roaring lion trying to devour us. He is going to try to stop the plans that we have made, that are in accordance with God’s plan.

Expect that if you start living your life doing exactly what God tells you to do, you are going to be attacked. The devil doesn’t want you to accomplish those plans. We are at war, we are at war. Every single day, not here on earth maybe but it is in a spiritual realm. We are at war.

You as a follower of Christ are constantly being attacked and the angels, Jesus, everybody, is looking after you, fighting off the demons and the demons sometimes get through. Then you gotta fight them off and you cannot get overwhelmed. Trust God, He has your back.

Only God knows what is gonna happen. God knows all this. If a demon comes through and makes the plane late or that does this or does this or delays your plans, God knows that that is going to happen and He has got a plan for that. You may not know what it is. You gotta be adaptable and always trust God.

Let’s go to Psalm 115 verse 3. It says, ‘Our God is in heaven. He does whatever pleases him.’ You may make plans and they may be in accordance with God’s plans and something could happen, God will continue to do what pleases Him and if you are doing what pleases God then you will succeed. Make sure that you know that you need to trust God to establish your plans.

Proverbs 16:3 says, ‘Commit to the LORD whatever you do and your plans will succeed.’ If you are in communication with Him your plans will succeed. There is another verse in Proverbs that says that we plan our course but the LORD determines our steps. God is determining your steps. He is leading you. The Holy Spirit is directing you where to go.

Or are you like Jonah and you are going the wrong direction? When God is saying, hey you need to be over here but you are over here, and you are trying to do this, God is pulling you back. Make it easy on yourself, go over here. Start following God.

How do you know what God wants you to do? I say it time and time again, read the Bible, pray to God, ask Him. If you are in the word, if you are reading this and you are understanding the scriptures and the Holy Spirit is interpreting it for you, you are being fed. This is bread. This is the bread of life.

You will not go hungry if you eat this bread. Don’t literally start chomping on it, but it is spiritual. Your spiritual self needs to be fed exactly like our mortal bodies need food, you gotta feed your spirit. The spirit is in you. How much you feed it determines how strong and how powerful it will be. You want to be like the disciples who were raising the dead and casting out demons and healing the sick and the lame. You have got to feed that spirit.

Feed it with scripture, praying to Jesus, to God, calling on Him, allowing Him to fill your life. Make sure that you are not feeding the wrong spirit. Remember we are a new creation, the old is gone. The new has come. As a Christian, we are in the new creation, if you start trying to feed that old self with sin, with worldly desires, chasing after fantasies, money, the lusts of the flesh, evil, you can definitely feed the wrong spirit. You do not want to invite demons into your life. Kill them. Get rid of them.

Become the new creation. Feed the Holy Spirit and allow it to work through you. Let your light shine and go out there and preach the Gospel. You don’t have to go out and preach it like this, you can simply live a life worthy of being a Christian and others will see that and you will be a great witness and testimony.

It is just like if you work for a certain company and that company says, hey we don’t want you pumping gas wearing your uniform, we don’t want you smoking cigarettes, we don’t want you going to the bar, we don’t want you doing anything in your uniform unless you are doing it for the company or on company time. Why? Because you are a representative of our company and we do not want others to get the interpretation that our employees are less than what we want them to be.

If you are smoking in your uniform, that is bad. If you are drinking in your uniform, that is bad. They tell you this and they say, no, you can’t do any of that stuff because we have a standard. That is exactly like this. As a Christian you are wearing the uniform of Christ, only His standard is off the charts. It is way up here. We will never achieve it, but we can try and the only way we can get close is if we seek Him and continue to know and understand what it is we need to do in order to get to that standard.

Read the Bible, seek God, make plans, make plans. Make plans that go with what God wants for your life and always be ready for an attack from the enemy and just know that God has it. God has got it under control. An attack comes, no big deal. It is part of life. Let’s go, God, you got this. We are still going forward with this plan because I know it is what you want and do it. Prevail, persevere, stay strong, and if any time you have trouble, you get weak, start reading the Bible. Pray more. Comment on any of these videos. Talk to someone. Make it happen. With God all things are possible.

Let’s pray. Father Yahweh, thank you so much for this time together. Thank you for leading our lives, for wanting to be in our lives, for that personal relationship that you give us the opportunity to have with you through Jesus Christ. Thank you so much for making a plan for our lives, plans to prosper us, plans not to harm us, plans to give us hope and a future.

Lord, I ask that each and every person out there would take those plans and grab on tightly. That they would hang on to that hope and that future and the prosperity that you promised for us. That their plans would be consistent with your plans for them and that that prosperity would come and that their lives would be so enriched and filled with the spirit. That they would be a light shining brightly around them. That they would be the salt of the earth. That they would be able to be a great representation of what it means to be a Christian. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Thanks again for your time today. If you have any questions or you need any guidance or help, feel free to comment below. In addition, there are people you could speak with, with your church or anywhere. If you need to find a church comment below. We can try to help you out with that depending on where you are. Basically, if you need any guidance feel free to comment below.

Also, start reading the Bible. If you haven’t yet, just open it up and start reading. Pray to God, He hears you, He listens to you and so, do that when making your plans, and your plans can succeed. God bless.