Last week, we started thinking about how we want to use this month to strategically build for the coming year.

I was sitting in my den during quiet time with the Lord when I came across Psalm 16:3

Commit your actions to the Lord and your plans will succeed.

Palms 16:3 NLT

I’m going to be real. The first thought I had was, “Man, I can’t do a Bible study from a sentence.

Welp, three pages of notes later and I had to share what I learned in that time:

1. God asks for our actions, not our plans.
2. Giving our actions requires consistent surrender.
3. Don’t confuse co-sign for surrender.

God asks for our actions, not our plans.

The English teacher in me thinks the wording of this verse is powerful. In this verse, we’re not told to give our plans over to God, but our actions. Our plan is the how we’ll do something, but our actions are the what we’ll do. God is more concerned with our what than our how.

Our plans are fleeting and fragile. Even the best of them are flawed and need constant refinement. I wonder if God asks for our actions instead because that is what is required to execute whatever plans God has for our life. It’s the we way choose to the use the minutes in our day, the habits we choose to maintain, and the discipline we leverage when motivation fails us that determine the success of our plans. It’s in the strength of our actions that God can trust the execution of His plans for our life.

It seems like such a logical place to start. That the lover of our souls would want to deal first with our what instead of our how.

He wants to start with the inside and work His way out. Meanwhile, I want to start with how it’s going to look to everyone watching. Even though people aren’t even worried about me.

Giving our actions requires consistent surrender.

Giving requires us to be constantly in tune to His voice and ourselves. It means being intentional with our thoughts, resources, and patterns.

As I reflect on the plans I’ve taken to God in prayer, very few of them actually require change from me. They require change in my circumstance. Asking everything around you to change requires little growth from you.

Changing the things about you that are getting in the way of what you’ve been purposed to do requires all of you.

Above all, Jesus cares for the condition of your heart.

Don’t confuse co-sign for surrender.

I was reading a blog post from a dope woman named Julia of the Good Girl Diaries where she talks about wanting to hear from God about the plans of her life, until those plans didn’t match up with her own.

She then goes from praying for God’s will over her life to God blessing her will for her life. She says she kept asking God to co-sign her choices.

The moment I read that it hit me hard and it explained why it is possible to “ask” for God’s will over my life and then get bent out of shape when He doesn’t use my plan.

I’m not surrendering. I’m asking for a co-sign.

Knowing that don’t qualify on my own (not because I am unworthy, but because it isn’t for me in the first place) I try to turn God into a genie.

I take the creator of my soul, and relegate Him to butler status.

And then, I have the nerve to get mad at Him when it doesn’t work out for me.

…and your plans will succeed

See, now we can get to the fun stuff. After sacrificing our actions to the Lord, we’re promised successful plans.

Notice though, that success comes after surrender. As much as we want it to be the other way around, we can’t ask for God’s provision on our terms.

So think about the areas of your life where you’re asking for a co-sign and hand over the reigns, girl. You don’t want those problems anyway.

There’s magic in our musings and surrender,
Nicole