Planning and Discovery – Us and God

Goal-setting is always incomplete as an objective until it reaches goal-achievement.

This is our two-handed premise: that for every left hand there needs to be a right. For planning to work on meeting a goal, there must be along the way, too, discovery — it augments the plan.

Planning is our responsibility. The revelation of discovery is God’s. Where planning is fully vested, meeting the needs of the task, discovery is sure to occur.

But the planning effort must be the precursor.

We All Have Dreams, Hopes, Ambitions - Goals

It’s a fact for every human being on the planet.

Whether people admit it or not, or do anything about it or not, is another matter entirely.

These dreams, hopes and ambitions exist for a reason, just as they were placed there for a reason. They exist for the same reason we wonder about the creation of the universe — they inspire curiosity.

Curiosity is a goad to bigger and better things. It’s an instinct that’s inbuilt.

If we’ll consent to this instinct — and it’s no good if we don’t — then plans can be designed to reach these goals of ours. Along the way, after that step-of-faith to go beyond where we’re presently at, God is meeting us!

Discovery – the Process of God’s Sponsorship via Intercession

For all the planning and actual execution of our plans there’s the fact of the blessings to come — not just the achievement of the goal itself, but the discoveries we’ll make along that way.

The value of these is often underestimated, but God always gives us more in this way than we’ll initially settle for.

This is tantamount to the physical journey along a pathway where we experience, sensually, the unremitting blessings that feed enriched thought and enhanced decision-making.

It’s as if God’s saying, “You’ll settle for this-or-that outcome; but I’ve got so much more for you... if only you’ll jump from your safe cocoon now.”

Obviously, planning is the vital precursor to “jumping,” but we get the idea.

Two Cooperative Roles – Goal-Setting and Goal-Achievement

We cannot achieve our goals without God’s help. The role of the Lord is to provide the path, the motive and the means to achieve the goal; ours is to cooperate via planning and obedience along the way.

If we’ll do out bit, God will do his.

Even when we fail time and again in the total achievement of our goals — and again and again it will tend to occur — God’s grace is making it possible for today to be the first part of the successful journey.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.