The often quoted saying, "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door" paraphrases Ralph Waldo Emerson’s actual words, which were, "If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find people beating a path to his door".  But if a person has a better anything, it will begin with a plan.  And it’s often the failure of one plan that leads to the success of another if one is persistent and doesn’t give up.  When asked about what it takes to learn from experience, Mark Twain said, “Good decisions come from experience; experience comes from making bad decisions.”  It makes one wonder about the importance of listening to the wisdom of those who have come before — gaining knowledge from their bad decisions which led to the wisdom of their good decisions.

         Perhaps Job was thinking about his relationship with God and the dangers and benefits of following or not following God’s plan.  I’m sure — as Job was — that there is some wisdom to be gleaned from the harvested fields of other’s people’s poor decisions.  And I’m certain that the wisdom gained often points to a future filled with hope when people chose God’s plans over the often failed and futile plans of their own.  If we examine the past, we, too, may find that following God’s plans often led to a more intimate relationship with God.  And out of those observations, understanding and the knowledge gained would lead us to make better decisions, which might lead to a more intimate relationship with God.

• What have you discovered about the intimacy of Your relationship with God when you’ve made a bad decision?
• How have those bad decisions informed your faith, changed your willingness to submit to God’s plan and drawn you into a closer relationship with God?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Loving God, teach me to trust the wisdom of following Your plan and growing closer to You from those who have gone before and learned the hard lessons of being exiled from You.

         When we allow ourselves to ponder all the things God has done for us, it can lead us into utter amazement.  I’m certain that when I consider what God has done, my mind always Goes to the big things.  My mind always goes to those grand things that seem to have moved the earth off of its axis.  And yet it's not often that I consider the small ways in which God has acted in my life.  There are times, I'm sure, when God did things that were unnoticeable to me.  There are times when God did things that were so small, yet they affected the bigger, more important things in my life.  And I'm confident that these were all a part of God's plan.

         Sometimes, God allowed me to fail so that I would know that God was always there to help me.  Sometimes God would push me forward so that I would always know that God was behind me.  Sometimes God would lift me up when I was in my deepest despair.  And sometimes, God would humble me so that I would know that I was getting above myself and not giving God the credit for my success.  But in all of these things, I'm always amazed at what God is doing.  I'm always amazed at what God has done.  And I'm always considering the things that God has yet to do that I can't even begin to imagine are possible for me.  And yet, I know that in all of these things they are a part of God's plans for me.  And in all of these things I know that it is God's desire to draw me closer to him.  I've come to realize that what God really wants from me — from all of us — is to fulfill our hopes so that we will give praise and honor and glory to God.  But it's also so that as we give praise and honor and glory to God, we will come to recognize that God's relationship with us has become a more intimate one.  It's become one in which we've come to know that we can depend on God and perhaps — even more importantly — that in God's daily relationship with us, we have drawn so close to God that our mouths would be filled with praise for all God has done and is doing.  I believe that is God's divine hope and I believe that it is our human hope that in everything we commit ourselves to fulfilling God's plans for us and in fulfilling God's plans for us God fills our deepest hopes with success.

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Gracious God, let my mouth always be filled with praise and thanksgiving as I recognize Your plans fulfilling all of my hopes in a more intimate relationship with You.

         Poet Robert Burns once wrote, “the best laid plans of mice and men aft go awry."  It's a well‑known idiom, originating from his poem, “To a Mouse”.  The phrase means that even the most carefully made plans can fail as unexpected problems or outside forces can disrupt them, leading to disappointment or hardship instead of the intended joy of fulfillment.  The statement also suggest a certain level of independence that we claim as humans.  We want to make our own plans.  We want to carry them out according to our schedule.  We want to see them blossom and grow according to our desires.  And in many ways, we become frustrated when others make our plans for us or encourage us to buy into their plans instead of the ones we have created for ourselves.  And sometimes, we see those plans as an affront to our goals and those things we desire.  However, after our plans have failed and we find ourselves up the proverbial ‘creek without a paddle’, we began to look for a better plan whether of our own creation or those from other outside forces.  We began to hope for a better plan with a different outcome.

         Enter God whose thoughts and ways are higher than our thoughts and ways.  And when God enters in and offers God’s plan for our future, there seems to be a different plan that is guaranteed to bring a decidedly different outcome that is assured us.  When God enters into the challenges of our life’s situation and offers God’s plan, we can live with the certainty that God’s plan for us will be carried out without fail and that the outcome of God's plans for us are as secure as the promise that God makes to us.  God's plans eliminate all of the pitfalls and all of the surrounding problems that would interfere with any outcome that we could have expected.  And with God's plan, we can be assured that all of the benefits of following God's divine plan are filled with hope.  They are filled with a hope that secures our present but also a hope that secures and fulfills our future.  And the hopes that we are guaranteed are the hopes that are above human desire but align with God’s divine plan and future for us.  And the outcome of those plans—God's plans—will always be better for us than anything we could have hoped for or imagined.  They will always lead us into a deeper more intimate relationship with God where we know our prayers are heard and that God is close to us every step of our lives.

• What do you believe God’s plans for your hopes your future are?
• Why do you believe those are important to God?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Loving God, give me the faith to trust and believe that Your plans for my future are filled with glorious hope leading to a deeper, more intimate relationship with You.