Wisdom for Life: A Committed Will

Proverbs 16:1-3

Last week we learned from Proverbs that, “A cheerful heart is good medicine.” This saying helps center our thoughts and emotions, reminding us that there is so much in life to be joyful about, and that true joy means not only delighting ourselves but sharing with others. And yet, a sunny disposition can only get us so far, and our emotions are subject to change in a moment. We want a life of happiness and joy, but it won’t come only through a positive attitude. In order to “live long and prosper,” Proverbs teaches us we must commit our plans to God. If last week was about our heart—our emotions—this week is about our mind, our will.

The root of the Hebrew word for commit means to roll. To commit our plans to God is to roll them over to God, for God’s input, shaping, and approval, which might be thought of as a divine tennis match.

Your opening serve is not only the plan you make to win the point, but your choice to lob it in, use a slice or top spin, aim down the line, or in the corner. Once the ball is in God’s court, the Lord’s shot determines your next move. God can slow down the point by taking pace off, send it to the far corner—thus completely changing the point—or blow it past you, saying, Thispoint, this plan needs to end; it’s time to start over.

To roll our plans over to God is to admit that ultimately we don’t have control of our destiny. “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” — Proverbs 19:21 (NIV).

All of us have made plans which have failed, which have gone astray. This can be frustrating and debilitating, but there is a path that does not wallow in defeat and dismay—one which allows your will to remain resolute.

If we hold onto our plans ourselves and don’t give them over to God, and they fail, we have nowhere else to turn. But if we have committed them to God, we trust that, if they fail, God is working with them and that a good future will come.

In this way, failure is not a step back but a step forward into your new future. But it requires trust in God: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

This quote provides a tremendous amount of comfort, but don’t be fooled by it—it doesn’t promise that things will be easy. It can take a long time and many hard knocks to finally get there. In fact, there’s a whole book devoted to how frustrating life can be.

Ecclesiastes is the Biblical counterpoint to the faith of endless positivity. That author asserts the exact opposite of Proverbs, voicing his frustration with the world and God’s lack of action in a rather stark statement:“In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: the righteous perishing in their righteousness, and the wicked living long in their wickedness.”

Ecclesiastes deals with the truth of our emotions, which are healthy to acknowledge, but we can’t let anxious thoughts deter our will.

Proverbs 29:11 tells us, “A fool expresses all his emotions, but a wise person controls them.” The control function comes from our will. Unlike our emotions, our mind’s function is to keep our overall well-being in mind, to keep our life goals ever before us, and to do what we know is right even when we don’t feel like it.

When I meet with couples in pre-marital counseling, I always ask them to define love. Often, they will talk about how they feel about someone. And the answers are almost always meaningful. But there is a part they all leave out—the will. Love is not just how we feel about someone; it is a decision we make, and it is right in the vows: “I promise before God and these witnesses, to be your loving and faithful husband, in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live.”

Love is a decision to do what is good and right for another when our natural inclination of self-gratification might lead us to do otherwise.

Love is not only what we do for another because we feel positive emotions toward them. Otherwise, there would be no point to the vows. The vows are the act of committing to God that we will care for them even if we don’t feel the magic during certain times in life.

In a marriage, when the initial rapturous romance fades, that’s when the work begins. That’s when it gets hard. And, to tell the truth, that is when true, deep love grows.

So too in faith. It is only when tested that its true power is revealed. That is the challenge for our wills: Do we have the courage to place our plans in God’s hands? Because that’s the promise—God will prosper our future if we roll it over.

But oh, it can be a long time coming!

To begin to make sense of the tension between Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, we turn to Genesis and the story of Joseph. He confronted this exact problem. After being enslaved by his brothers, he rose to a place of prominence in Potiphar’s household.

Obviously, Joseph’s plan for his own life was a life of freedom after suffering the horror of slavery. But his freedom was threatened. Potiphar’s wife wanted to have an affair. Joseph refused her advances, for in committing his plans to the Lord he knew he could not betray Potiphar. Upon being spurned, she presented false testimony, and Joseph was thrown into prison.

What would you have done if you were faced with Joseph’s terrible choice—go to prison for who knows how long, or submit to a relationship you knew was a betrayal?

Joseph certainly knew the pain expressed in Ecclesiastes. But the failure of his personal plan did not turn him aside from being a moral person.

This kind of faithful and committed will is what God uses to turn our personal plans into something much greater.

In a book published in 1905, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry addresses this problem:

“We cannot understand the moral Universe. The arc is a long one, and our eyes reach but a little way; we cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; but we can divine it by conscience, and we surely know that it bends toward justice. Justice will not fail, though wickedness appears strong, and has on its side the armies and thrones of power, the riches and the glory of the world, and though poor men crouch down in despair. Justice will not fail and perish out from the world of men, nor will what is really wrong and contrary to God’s real law of justice continually endure.”

When we cannot see justice, we can quickly despair, and in this case Proverbs has a simple but powerful instruction: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart.”

Not just trust, but trust with everything you have. Have the courage to do what is right no matter what, and the Lord’s justice will circle back—either in this life or the next.

For Joseph, it circled back in this one. As you know, he eventually became second only to Pharaoh in all of Egypt. And as he is reunited with his brothers, he speaks some of the most heartening, tender, powerful words in all the Bible: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”

Joseph’s homeland suffered a severe drought, but as Pharaoh’s right-hand man he had the means to liberate them from starvation.

This is how God’s plans and ours intertwine for the ultimate justice and prospering of all. A committed will is a powerful force for the Lord’s work on this earth, and it is critical to moving through tests and trials to find a future that you and God can both find joy in.