Contentment, Planning, Purpose
I like to plan things…to a fault.
It’s definitely a strength. I’m always looking ahead, planning for the next step, setting and working towards goals, thinking long term.
It’s also a weakness. I struggle to live in the moment. I feel stressed when plans fall through (which happens more than I like to admit). If I’m not constantly working towards goals, I feel purposeless. I fail at contentment constantly.
James 4:13–15 reads,
“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
My best laid plans are fleeting, just as mist is here one moment and gone the next. It’s not wrong to make plans, it’s good. But my plans can’t supersede my desire for God’s will to be done, and my plans can’t destroy my contentment. The phrase “if the Lord wills,” convicts me of not only my lack of trust in God, but also my lack of contentment for his will.
I am going to strive for contentment and joy at where God has placed me in this moment. Planning for the future is wise, but yearning for the next thing steals my joy of what God has given me in the present. I will find my purpose in God’s will, instead of my own goals.
