One of my favorite activities is scheduling my day. Every evening while I’m at college, I grab a dry erase marker and scribble out a plan for the next day. Because of my schedule-oriented personality, I know my friends’ birthdays, times of events, and even other people’s schedules!
In our culture, we place a lot of emphasis on our calendars—whether they’re on our walls, our desks, or our phones. We don’t always evaluate our priorities and decide what should take precedence in our lives. Instead, we rush from one activity to the next. But we don’t often think about how God wants us to spend our time. Perhaps this is because we believe these two major lies about our schedules:
Lie #1: My schedule is a representation of my value.
When someone me asks how I’m doing, I usually say, “I’m busy!” Sometimes, that’s truer than others. Honestly, I sometimes say that I’m busy even when I’m not. We may fall into the trap of claiming to be busy because our culture tells us that we need to be busy. We observe people who are constantly rushing around and assume that they’re really busy. But does their busyness mean anything?
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10 ESV)
God didn’t randomly select the work that He wants us to complete. He prepared it. Because we’re the workmanship of God and because He has given us a distinct purpose, we are valuable.
We tend to equate busyness with importance because of our schedule-obsessed culture. The more things we have to do, the more important we are, right? But that’s simply not true. Our worth isn’t dependent on our changing schedules. Some weeks will be busier than others—but that doesn’t mean that we’re less important during less busy weeks! Our purpose and our worth come from something (rather, Someone) who never changes—and whose purpose for us never changes.
Truth #1: We can find value by fulfilling God’s plans for our lives, not by filling up our schedules.
Lie #2: If I can control my schedule, my life will turn out how I want.
Deep in my personality and DNA, I’m a planner and scheduler. Unfortunately, my passion for planning and scheduling often leads me to try to control my future. But to be honest, I can’t guarantee that those upcoming activities will happen. None of us truly knows what the future holds.
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16 ESV)
We have no idea what God has in store for the future. It could include everything that we’ve written on our calendars—or nothing that we’ve written on our calendars. Honestly, the future will probably be very different than we currently expect. I’ve heard very few people say, “My life turned out exactly how I planned it would.”
But that’s okay. It’s actually good because only God knows what’s next. We can plan, schedule, and set high expectations—but our plans may not come to pass.
Truth #2: The less we try to control our schedules, the less disappointed we’ll be when our lives don’t look the way we think they should look.
Closing Thoughts
I love Benjamin Franklin’s commonly quoted statement, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” It’s important to organize our time well and set personal goals, but it’s also important to recognize (and eliminate) our obsession with planning. Ultimately, our schedules don’t give us worth—and they can change in a moment. Instead of trusting our changing plans, let’s learn to trust our unchanging Savior.
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