Pray or Plan?

"One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles..." Luke 6:12-13

Lou Gerstner was chairman and CEO of IBM when I was working for an IBM business partner in the early '90s. I read where he attended mass every morning, without fail, before heading to work. I thought about that as I read the passage above. I wonder if Mr. Gerstner was looking for guidance on who to promote, what plans to implement, decisions that needed to be made.

I always admire when leaders do not hold back their faith. Sometimes you just know they are Christians by the way they act, the way they treat others, the way they lead. But you will not find discrimination against non-Christians in these organizations. No, God instructs us "...in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you..." (Matthew 7:12).

So we come back to the question I pose in the title, should we pray or plan in our daily lives, whether for business or personal guidance? I believe we must do both, but the order in which we do them is the important key. If we plan and then pray to God to help us make that plan successful, we are not asking God to guide us to His will, but rather asking Him to confirm that we know what we are doing. Instead we should always pray to God for guidance, asking for His plan for us and our lives. Only then should we plan for how to implement what God is leading us to.

But I must admit, it is hard to always discern what is God's plan and what is the plan being injected by the devil. We are human beings, and therefore sinful by nature. And the devil has ways of disguising his evil with the words of the Bible, justifying by taking words of the Scripture out of context. So how do we combat this and see more clearly God's plan for us? The answer is to continuously pray, continuously read and learn the Bible, learn how to combat the devil by exposing his lies with God's truth from the Bible as Jesus did when being tempted by the devil in the desert. With every temptation the devil put in front of Jesus, masked with scripture taken out of context, Jesus combated by quoting God's true word.

I also find that sometimes it helps to ask one who has spent many more hours devoted solely to learning the Word in order to preach. Talk to your priest, minister or pastor if you are having trouble discerning answers to prayer. They surely will show you where to look in order to be in a better position to hear God's answers.

May God Bless your Thursday!