God Will Direct Your Steps
Proverbs 16:1 TPT
Go ahead and make all the plans you want, but it’s the Lord who will ultimately direct your steps.
What a powerful word from the Lord! We, as mere mortals, will fret and worry and toss and turn, yet Father God is telling us He will be the one who will ultimately direct our steps. I remember in the early days of our ministry as pastors, wanting desperately to go pastor a work that had invited us to come and be their pastors. It sounded good and the church looked good, yet God assuredly made us understand that we were not to become their pastors. My heart was broken. I felt we had failed somehow, that we probably were not good enough to pastor that church. All of these crazy ideas went through my mind, one right after the other.
As time went on, God opened some other doors which He led us to walk through. Some things happened with the first church that would have been very difficult to maneuver through. God knew ahead of time what was going to happen and redirected us to a better path. Proverbs 16 goes on to say that we are all in love with our own opinions, convinced they’re correct. We are legends in our own minds, thinking we know way more than we truly do. This is when we lean on our own understanding and not the Lord. Verse 2b tells us, “But the Lord is in the mist of us, testing and probing our every motive.” Do we make decisions based on our own opinions which can be filled with our willfulness or stubbornness? Remember, He can be testing and probing our motives to see if our trust is truly in Him or for our own self-will.
Verses 3-4 says, “Before you do anything, put your trust totally in God and not in yourself. Then every plan you make will succeed. The Lord works everything together to accomplish His purpose.” I know from experience, He will make our thoughts come into alignment with His thoughts and we can then move forward knowing we are in the center of His perfect will. When we choose to go on our own opinions and our own thinking, we are exalting ourselves above the heart of God and His way for us. Any time we exalt ourselves it is disgusting to the Lord. Move forward on your knees, your heart postured towards Him in surrendered worship and having the fear of God.
I want God’s plans for my life. I want and need His favor on me all the days of my life. I don’t want to slow down the purposes of God because of my lack of trust and faith in Him. I want to mature to the place where even in silence, I know He is in total control and I can trust Him. Sometimes I need to labor into the rest in order for God to be able to speak to me, to get quiet enough to be able to hear clearly what He will say. Verse 8b in our reading today says, “Within your heart you can make plans for your future, but the Lord chooses the steps you take to get there.” You can trust Him completely. He loves you so. Get quiet before Him. Trust His ways and His timing. Rest and relax in Him.
What about you? Are you frustrated? Are you able to hear Father’s voice or are you filled with your own thoughts, etc.? Quiet yourself before Him. He has much to say to you.
