A delicate balance

Standout Verse - Proverbs 16:1
We can make our own plans, but the LORD gives the right answer.

How often do we hear it said, “It’s all in God’s hands,” or “I’m simply trusting / leaving it to God”? And how often is that an excuse to not plan and to avoid work? An excuse to avoid working out a vision preferring to believe that directions will simply fall from the sky into our laps? It avoids us getting it wrong and gives us someone else to blame when solutions do not suddenly appear. This laziness is bad enough, but then we occasionally use verses such as this one to justify our actions. We ask, “If God will give us the answer, why make plans?” We claim a false scriptural mandate to ease our consciences. But when we do this we manipulate meaning so that we can discover what we always hoped to find.
You see, there is nothing in this verse that tells us that God will give us a plan. There is nothing here to say that if we put ourselves onto a holy-autopilot things will just happen as they were always meant to. There is no “Commit a task fully to the Lord and no effort will be required from you”. What there is is an expression of a delicate balance. We are to work and we are to listen.
We are to make plans. More than one. It is not for us to construct a scheme and then inform God that this is how He is to act; nor are we to shoehorn him into our plot. We are to make plans, using our imagination to create a spread of different ways forward and then look to God to discern which (in any so far) fits His will. We plan and then God answers.

So where is this delicate balance? It is in a partnership between our efforts and God’s control.

Lord, give me more creativity that I may better see the paths that lie ahead; give me also more stillness that I may better hear which path you call me from. Then together, may we plant my feet on the right way.