Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and he will establish your plans (Proverbs 16:3 NIV)
There is a paradox that confronts in our planning. We come up against it whether we realize it or not. We can’t escape the tension that stands between human agency and God’s sovereignty and power. There is no getting around it. We can’t wiggle past it.
On the one hand, God has given to us the rights and privilege as human beings - as his human beings purchased and won for him by the blood of his Son - of deciding what we will do with the time that he has given us. We have the privilege of committing ourselves to this or to that. We have the agency to give ourselves to this or that cause. God has given us this freedom and this privilege. We are not puppets moving whenever and wherever he pulls the strings. We get to decide what we will do and how we will do it.
On the other hand, our God is absolutely sovereign and mighty. He is the one who told the waters where to stop. He is the one who set the mountains in their places. He is the one who opens up his hand to satisfy the desires of every living thing. As Paul once said, “He has determined the times set for us and the exact places where we should live. In him we live and move and have our being (cf. Acts 17:24-28). All of our days were ordained for us and written in his book before even one of them came to be (cf. Psalm 139:16). He is absolutely sovereign.
These two things seem to be absolutely opposed to each other. Either we are free to do as we please, or God is sovereign and our lives are determined by fate. It is not an either/or proposition, but rather a both/and. The tension must remain. To try to remove the tension leads us either to an arrogant pride that claims “I am the master of my fate, I am the Captain of my soul” or it drives us to a deep despair that nothing we do matters in the end anyway, God is going to do what God is going to do. The tension must be maintained.
So, what is left for us? Trust. The Teacher says it like this: “Commit to the LORD whatever you do.” This word that the NIV has translated “commit” carries with it the idea of casting our doing, our working, our planning, our effort on the Lord like you would put your weight on a leg. It carries the idea of placing all of the weight on chair and sitting back in it. It’s trust. It’s putting all of the weight of our doing and planning on God knowing that he will not give out beneath us.
So, we do our work; we write out our plans. We decide with the Spirit’s help and prayer what we will do and how we will do it. But the outcome and the results of that working and planning, that is God’s work. He will do what he will do with our best efforts. And that is a good thing.
Prayer: Lord, take my work, my planning, and my thinking - my best ones and my sinful ones, and use them for your eternally good purposes. You only do good things. Amen.