When Our Plans Are Torn Apart

by Chris Simmons

Job is recorded as saying in Job 17:11, “My days are past, my plans are torn apart, even the wishes of my heart.” I don’t know the plans Job had for his life and the lives of his family but I’m confident it didn’t include the loss of his livestock, the death of his servants, (1:14-17), the death of his own children (1:18-19), and finally being afflicted with “sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (2:7). Whatever his “plans” and “wishes” (“desires” ESV) may have been, Job realized they were now “torn apart.”

Sometimes we feel that all of our plans have just completely fallen apart because they haven’t worked out the way we envisioned. Perhaps we face health concerns we didn’t anticipate. Perhaps loved ones we planned to be with all our lives are taken from us without warning. The book of Job is much about him wrestling with why his “plans are torn apart” and why God would allow such. Job’s friends assumed his fate had befallen him because of his wickedness or unrighteousness (4:7; 8:4; 18:5). A study of the book of Job teaches that Job’s plans were torn apart, not because of sin in his life (1:8), but as an opportunity to prove his faithfulness. The book of Job also teaches that unwavering commitment to God during such difficult times will ultimately be rewarded.

David said in Psalms 33:10-11, “The Lord nullifies the counsel of the nations; He frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart from generation to generation.” We have to acknowledge that sometimes our plans are indeed frustrated by God, not only when we turn from His paths and His plans, but even when we are seeking His will. In contrast with man’s plans which get frustrated are God’s which always endure.

When our lives don’t go the way we thought, and we perhaps feel like Job that they’ve been “torn apart,” where do we turn for help and how can we endure such disruptions to our life? How can we help our plans to succeed and keep them from being torn apart? To begin with, we need to understand that we don’t have all the answers. Job, and his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu, all felt they had the truth and did not need the input of anyone else. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 15:22, “Without consultation, plans are frustrated, but with many counselors they succeed.” The key point of that verse is that plans that start within our own minds and have no outside input are doomed to fail. The question is, who are our counselors and whose perspective are we going to value? Ultimately, beginning in chapter 38, God offered His consultation and Job finally realized that he needed to listen to Him (beginning in chapter 40). We must remember Proverbs 14:12 that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but it’s end is the way of death.” We can’t be stubborn and hard-headed and ever think our ideas and plans are unreprovable by God! We can’t begin to think we are the masters of our future without regard for our Creator. That is the point of James 4:13-17 where James speaks of the “arrogance” of man who assumes his plans are set and can’t be “torn apart.”

Solomon wrote in Proverbs 16:1-3, “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the Lord weighs the motives. Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established.” There are three critical pieces in the discussion of our plans found in this text:

First, we have the plans of a man’s heart. The conclusion of this study is not that we shouldn’t make plans. We are foolish and wrong to think (as some do) that God mystically imparts plans into our hearts and minds. Plans are healthy in that they represent choices we must make (Joshua 24:14-15; I Kings 18:21). We need the humility though to realize that our plans may not be what’s best in God’s sight. We need the soberness to be aware that the “motives” of our plans may be suspect. Why? Because we are always tempted to develop self-serving plans to address our fleshly wants and desires. James wrote of such people in James 4:3 noting, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” As we make our choices and establish our plans, we need to ask, are they fleshly focused or spiritually focused (Colossians 3:1-2)? Are we making plans that will ensure that God will go with us in all our plans? Moses noted in Exodus 33:15-16 regarding his plans, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here.” Moses understood that his plans had to include God! Do we?

Second, there is the “answer … from the Lord”. God has and will answer. The Hebrew word for “answer” means a reply which is either “favorable or unfavorable” (Strong). His answer to our plans may not be what we want to hear but He will answer! God will weigh our motives (I Corinthians 4:5) and we need to trust His response is what’s truly best for us. Great patience and endurance are needed as we wait for His response. Job ultimately displayed that patience (James 5:11) as he looked to “the outcome of the Lord’s dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and merciful.” Paul understood the need to respect the answer from the Lord (“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness”) when he expressed in II Corinthians 12:9-10, “Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” Will we accept the Lord’s answer to our plans in the same way?

Third, and perhaps most importantly, there is our response to the Lord’s answer. Regardless of God’s response, we must “commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established.” To “commit” our “works” is to take all we are, all we do, all we hope for, and present it to God. The Hebrew word for “commit” means to “roll, roll away … roll together” (Brown-Driver-Briggs). So, we take our works, our life, and roll it together and humbly present it to God as a “living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1). It means we commit our lives to God’s answer and trust His way regardless of His answer. Psalms 37:5, “Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it.” Again, in Psalms 22:8, “Commit yourself to the Lord; let Him deliver him; let Him rescue him, because He delights in him.” If we truly commit, our plans will be “established” which means to be erected, set up, stabilized, and indicates firmness and success.

There are so many biblical examples of people who committed themselves to God even after their plans had been torn apart. We could go back to Abraham whose plans were torn apart when he was told in Genesis 12:1ff to “go forth from his country” and his family and go “to the land which I will show you.” There were Joseph’s plans (Genesis 37 and 39) that were torn apart when he was sold into Egyptian bondage and later falsely imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. There were Moses’ plans as a member of Pharaoh’s household which were torn apart when he chose to “endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:25). There were Daniel’s plans which were torn apart when they were carried into Babylonian captivity and yet he remained committed to God’s paths (Daniel 1:8). There were Paul’s plans which torn apart (Philippians 3:4-10) yet he committed to “press on toward the goal” (verses 12-14). In fact, you can look to all the examples of faith in Hebrews 11 and throughout the rest of the scriptures and see example after example of men and women who committed their lives to God even when their plans had been torn apart.

When our plans have been “torn apart”, like Job, we begin to feel our best days are behind us when we lose sight of what lies ahead of us. We need to always see that the best is yet to come and fully trust God’s answer to the plans we commit to Him.