When we leave God out of our plans, we’re inviting all sorts of chaos into our lives, not to mention regret and loss. In this message, Dr. Stanley warns us against going our own way without a thought to what God thinks about our choices. God’s plans are the best plans, so why not partner with Him?

Listening to him waiting upon him is a vital, vital, vital part of life.
And he is more than willing to
give you direction. Trust in the lord with all your heart, lean not to your own understanding.
In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight.
Next on in touch, planning without God.
Do you often wonder why your plans don’t work out?
You’ve done your best. You thought you thought of everything.
You’ve laid it all out, and somehow it didn’t work. Why did it work?
I’ll tell you 1 reason it didn’t work.
I’ll tell you a reason that
it doesn’t work for most people. That is because you leave God out.
You plan according to your knowledge and your understanding and your resources and what you want to accomplish in life where you wanna go and yet you leave God out of the planning.
Think about this. Half foolish that is. God is omniscient. He knows everything. Omnipotent has all power.
And think about the fact that he is willing to give you guidance and direction he’s willing to show you when, where, and how.
He has all that’s necessary to provide everything you need to walk in the center of his will.
To leave god out of your planning is foolishness.
When he is a god who loves you, cares for you, will provide for you, undergird you, protect you, and you leave him out.
And yet, that’s exactly what many people do. They just leave God out of their life.
So the question is, why do we do that?
I want you to turn to a passage of scripture that I doubt if you’ve probably read more than once.
And when you read it, you thought, well, there’s nothing in there for me.
There’s a lot in there for you, so
I want you to turn if you will to the eleventh chapter of Genesis.
And, this is a passage that most people just look at and read over quickly and keep going.
The scripture says now, the whole earth used the same language and the same words.
It came about as they journeyed east and they found a plain in the land of Shainar and settled there.
They said to
1 another. Come let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly, and they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.
They said, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach the heaven and let us make for ourselves a name.
Otherwise, we’ll be scattered abroad over the face of the earth, whole earth.
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built.
The Lord said behold, there are 1 people.
And they all have the same language, and this is what they began to do.
And now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.
Come let us go down and there confuse their language so that they will not understand 1 another speech.
So the lord scattered them abroad from over the whole face of the earth, and they stopped building the city.
Therefore, its name was called Bevel, like Bevelon.
Because there, the lord confused the language of the whole earth and from there, the lord scattered them from abroad over the face of the earth.
Now, if you go back to, the ninth chapter.
And, the flood has come. The flood’s gone now.
And God is saying something to his people that now that that’s done, he said to them, they were to separate and replenish the whole earth.
That that that was god’s command. They had to replenish the
whole earth. In fact, that’s god’s command from the very beginning.
As as for you be fruitful and multiply populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it, that was god’s command.
And so the flood has come and gone, and so Noah had 3 sons, shem ham and Jeeth.
And so all of these people in chapter 11 are descendants of Noah’s 3 sons.
And he lived 350 years after the, flood. So these are the descendants.
There’s a lot of them, 350 years.
And, So they make a decision here, a decision that is not the decision of almighty God because god said to them, I want you to replenish the earth.
Scattered abroad, cover the earth. And so they come
to the conclusion now 350 years later. We don’t wanna do that.
What we wanna do is we wanna all get together.
And, we wanna build a temple here or a house or a city, probably all 3 so that, we’ll all be able to stick together and and have 1 language.
And when god made it very clear, they were to scatter to the uttermost parts of the area.
So they decided not to do that. And so god says, I’m gonna have to break that up.
So this whole, chapter here is really about
the people of god deciding to do something other than god said do and to make their own plans.
So let me
ask you a question.
Where does planning fit in your life? Do you plan daily for excellent activities.
Do you make plans in your life considering almighty god?
You say that Jesus Christ is your savior and your lord.
If he’s your savior and your lord, all of our planning ought to take into consideration What does he think?
What’s his will? What’s his choice? What’s his plan for my life?
Because you and I can’t come up with a plan equal to his plan because he knows our weaknesses, our frailness.
He knows what’s the best for us to have with the way I ought not to have So he knows all the intricacies of it.
And yet, we take off and do our own planning, get ourselves in trouble, and wonder why things don’t work out.
If god is in your plan, it’s gonna work out because He’s the plan maker, and he has all power to make all the plans work out perfectly.
But most people don’t plan with god in mind. So ask yourself the question.
Do you make plans for your life without considering god at all?
Do you make plans, for example, about you’re gonna buy a house?
Do you ask him about it? You’re gonna buy automobile? Do you ask him about that?
You’re going to get married.
Do you ask him about that?
We could just go down the list of all the things that we do that oftentimes people don’t ask God about.
If we don’t seek god’s guidance and direction in our planet, we lose.
Make wrong decisions, make them before it.
In other words, sometimes, what we plan is the will of god, but the timing is not the will of god.
God is interested in what we do in our lives and how we plan.
In other words, just think He’s interested in everything you are now interested in.
And he has there’s now there’s some the many choices are not life and death.
But the choices we make. And we make choices and get in the habit of making choices doing certain things.
Well, before you get in the habit, you should ask God now, lord, what’s your willingness?
What’s your purpose in this?
In the business world, people say, well, this is just the way it is. No.
That god has a will in every single aspect of our life.
And here, they said, here’s what we’re going to do.
So let’s think for just a moment about the consequences of just leaving god out.
Number 1 is this. You can’t claim god’s promise of provision and protection. You leave him out.
You do not have the right to claim his provision and his protection.
And how many times have people said to me? Well, I sort of I, they’ll watch this.
I sort of prayed about it.
What that means is I made up my mind and told God what I think ought to be right. No.
And and 1 of the consequences You cannot claim god’s presence and his power and provision when you don’t ask him when you when you don’t ask him to give you the plan.
Which is a serious consequence. The second 1 is this.
You can’t honestly ask for his blessing if you don’t ask him whether to make this plan or not.
And many people, they’ll pray and tell god what they’re going to do and ask for his blessing.
Well, is it the will of god? Is it his purpose, it is his plan for your life?
If I don’t ask him for guidance and direction,
I don’t have the right to ask him to bless it.
And people make wrong decisions that sometimes are very expensive decisions, emotionally, merrily, financially, educationally, you name it.
And so the tower of Babylon is a good
example of planning without god. They said, here’s what we’re going to do, and here’s how we’re going to do it.
Absolutely opposite from what god said.
I think about how many parents today are in debt, deeply in debt because their son or daughter said, here’s where I wanna go to college.
I know it’s gonna cost, but I’ll get out and I’ll pay you back.
And their parents are deeply in debt for thousands of dollars because it costs thousands and thousands of dollars per semester for them to go to that particular school.
Not asking, Lord, is it your will, or is it your way?
And parents need to have the wisdom to say, well, I want you to go to college.
I want you to get an education.
I want you to do your best in life, but you’re asking us to go in debt.
And I don’t think that’s the will of god.
You need to think about some other place you can go than either get a scholarship or where you can work and pay your way through.
And many parents today are paying off college debts that they should not have to.
God is interested in every decision you and I make. Think about this.
You are a holy son or daughter of the living god. You are.
You are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. You are a treasure of god. He saved you.
Wrote your name in the lamb’s book of life. You belong to him.
He’s made a commitment to you to guide you and lead you and make your provision for you, whatever that is.
Not always make you happy, but make provision for you.
Now, you’ve gotta ask him, lord, what’s your next step?
So without planning, something else happens, the absence of god limits the possibilities of whatever we do.
Whatever we do in life, if we don’t ask him for his direction and guidance, we set limit on what we can do.
We’ll make decisions that may not be right or wrong, but there could be better and far more profitable if we had asked him, lord, what would you have us to do?
So decision making is a vital part of our life,
and we make them every day.
And some days, decisions make decisions are made by people that affect them in 1 hour the rest of their life.
So the Holy Spirit living within you is a very, very important aspect of your life.
He’s there to give you guidance and direction see that you have the provision to do the will of god, not something you just think up to do.
So the absence of god limits the possibilities of what you do It’s an indication of pride. Listen.
You say, well, I’m not a prideful person. You get up in the day. You take off.
You do your thing all day long. And you come home in at night and she said, thank you, father.
Well, did you ask him about it to start with?
Listen, when you and I make plans without god, we are a expressing personal pride.
I don’t need him today. This is a this is a just a normal day.
It’s raining, but it’s just a normal day. And so I don’t need to ask him. Yes, you do.
We need to ask god every day to give us direction for our life and show us how to make decisions that seem to be very insignificant, but they’re not insignificant.
You’re a child of god as a plan for your life. As a will for your life, decisions aren’t insignificant.
It’s spotlessness, prayerlessness, We get in a hurry.
We we don’t we don’t somebody says, well, oh, god isn’t interested in everything.
We’ll name what he’s not interested in.
Well, he’s not interested in whether I wear a brown shoes or black
shoes? Well, probably not because he already knows you don’t have a 2 pair
and it doesn’t make any difference. So that that’s not an issue.
But he is interested listen to this. He is interested in you looking your best.
Being your best, look your best, be your best, do your best because you represent him.
It doesn’t mean that you compare yourself with somebody else.
But you want to do your best, be your best, look your best because you represent the son of god.
And so in every aspect of our life, makes a difference. And so when I ignore that,
I’ll I’ll pay the price. For example, if
we don’t seek his guidance and direction, we’ll choose the lesser than.
In other words, you may choose much less than god would have for you because from your perspective, you can’t afford this or this, that and the other.
And sometimes, god’s worked out something already in your behalf that you don’t know about.
And he’s waiting for you to trust him.
And he’s he’s waiting for you to wait upon him and to seek his guidance before he opens the door.
And so sometimes we think, well, you know, lord, I’ve tried and tried, uh-uh, if god doesn’t give you a go ahead, I’m telling you, And I’ve lived long enough to know if you disobey god, you pay the consequences.
And sometimes you just have to wait.
And and I could I could tell you some other examples.
And, 1 was that I wrecked my car and, I waited for
a while. And, well, the second day, this lady hit me from behind.
The second day, my kids wanted to know what I
was gonna do about a car because each 1 of them had 1 in my wife, had 1 in who was who I had to have 1 to whose car was
I gonna take? That was that problem. And so
I waited several months and then 1
of my deacons, let me have 1 of his cars.
And so 1 day I was driving down the street with
a fellow, wanting me to go to a meeting. I said, okay. He asked me a question.
He said, when are you gonna buy your car? I said, I don’t know.
I’ve been waiting for god to show me.
And he said, well, what kind would you buy if you were gonna buy 1?
God knows this is the truth.
I didn’t even think I said, well, if I could just make it yours, I’d have 1 like this, which was the best.
3 days later, I got a check-in the mail to buy that car.
So I had all kind of choices to do most anything except obey god.
And sometimes time is the biggest enemy because we don’t get it when we want it.
We think, well, god, you’ve just forgotten. No, he has. Not gonna
give you, several examples, but I’m just saying,
asking for god’s direction is the key to your life, to what you have, where you go, what you do, what you accomplish, whatever it might be.
So when you and I disobey god, we get ahead of him, Not only does it cost us, but think about this.
It’s gonna result in confusion. Here’s what happens.
When you do when you make the wrong decision, You there’s confusion for the simple reason.
You have to start thinking about what did I do wrong? Well, what is that a hitter?
Oh, well, who did I listen to? What made me do this? Likewise there’s going to be conflict.
When you make a decision without asking for god’s direction, there’s going to be conflict in your heart.
But what can we watch this? Because the Holy Spirit is going to give you an uneasy feeling.
He’s going to give you a sense of of inadequacy and the sense of of question of doubt.
There’s gonna be natural conflict in your heart when you do the wrong thing.
And we do the wrong thing by getting ahead of god. What’s the will of god?
What’s his plan? Likewise, it can prove costly.
And I can think of things in my life, and so can you, that have cost us probably because we didn’t do the right thing, or we didn’t do it at the right time.
And we didn’t do
it the right way. God gives us direction.
The time the place and the how and with whom if if that’s necessary.
And likewise, there’s gonna be loss in some part.
When you don’t obey god, you don’t follow his leadership
and guidance. It costs you something.
It could be emotional, it could be physically, it could be in your own physical body, whatever it might be.
Likewise, there’s gonna be regret. When you don’t wait for him, and you do it on your timetable, there’s gonna be regret.
Because listen, god chooses the best.
He chooses the right, the best timing, the best way you name it. They couldn’t wait.
They were gonna do it their way. Well, God let them do it that way. And there was deep regret.
Likewise, there’s gonna be pain. There are lots of decisions we step ahead of god on.
There’s there’s pain. Sometimes it’s physical pain, but the worst kind
of pain is emotional pain, if either. Think about this. If I’d have done this.
If I’d awaited, if he, if she, if that.
And so the result of disobeying god stepping ahead of him is always gonna be if either.
And sometimes it’s a disaster.
Because people don’t wait upon the lord and seek his direction They make decisions that disastrous, disastrous financially, emotionally, you name it.
Listening to god is
a major, major, major principle in the whole Christian life, listening to him and waiting upon him.
I do not know of a more valuable lesson to learn
than to listen to god and obey him. Period.
And there’s this whole story of, all the languages and all the chaos that resulted, the tower of Babylon, a lot of stuff, but the basic lesson is
they didn’t listen to god. Then wait for him. And so god can fuse the whole thing.
And I think there are a lot of people living in confusion today.
In their daily life because they haven’t listened to god back here at decisions and they’re confused today or frustrated or discouraged because I don’t know what happened.
Well, just stop and ask god, lord, did I make a wrong decision? Have I stepped ahead?
Then I ask you to forgive me.
I generally repent of that things may not ever be like I’d like for them
to be, but I can start today doing what
you want me to do in in light of the circumstances. It’s not listen.
It’s never too late to listen to god.
It may be too late in order to enjoy all the blessings that god had in mind, but it’s not too late to listen to him.
Because 1 of these days, we all gonna die. And we’re gonna face him. It’s better.
Listen, it’s better to die and face him having listened to him 6 months than to die, have not listened to him at all.
So the whole theme of that chapter is all about listening to god, doing what he says rather than what man says.
And so what happened? God stopped the project? He shut the thing down totally. Shut it down.
He changed their plan. So let me ask you this question.
Where is god in your planning today for your life at your age or whatever’s going on?
What’s your plan? Well, are you asking god to give you a plan?
You said, well, I I don’t think my life’s and I don’t know when you go about no.
No. No.
That’s not the question. God has a plan for every single 1 of us.
Now, the interesting thing is that sometimes people wanna tell us what the plan is.
And they wanna tell us how to operate.
You always listen to god before you listen to somebody else.
And after you listen to somebody else, you still listen to god. Lord, what’s your plan?
What’s your plan about whether I buy this, whether I sell that, No, whether I go this way, in other words,
this much should be my friend, not my friend. And what, in other words, what’s your plan?
And listen, god is willing to answer that question
about anything and everything you ask him about. So I would simply ask you a question.
In all of your planning, you and your husband, you and your wife, or your children or your parents?
Do you ask god to give you direction for your plan?
Where you go when you go, who you go with, you name it. It’s all important.
And I pray that you’ll not forget that. I want us to stand and have a prayer together.
Alright? Father, we thank you that you have a will for a life.
You said you did. Thank you that you’re living within every single 1 of us who has trusted Christ as our savior.
Thank you that you care about. All the things that we care about.
You care about some things that we don’t even think about. You love us unconditionally.
You want the best for us. You’ve given us your best in Christ.
All of us face decisions today and every day.
I pray the Holy Spirit who indwells all of us who believe us.
Will make us sensitive to his presence.
And help us to realize that every decision is important to you.
And grant us this morning the wisdom to make wise decisions, having listened to you for your guidance.
And, father, I pray for somebody here who is unsaved, that they might recognize this morning their sinfulness that they do not have your assistance, your help, your guidance, or about anything, that if they’re willing to confess their sinfulness, surrender their life to you, and you will begin at that moment to give them guidance for their life.
And, lord, I pray for that person standing here who’s thinking, well, 1 of these days.
Remind them lord that they have no assurance. Of another day.
But that today and every day, you will give us guidance because you love us.
And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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