How to plan your future

There is positive power in speaking out in agreement with God’s will in order to see our plans and purposes fulfilled. With the right motives in our hearts, this will have a strong influence on our fruitfulness in the year ahead and beyond.

Please don’t think I’m plugging prosperity gospel here, or ‘name-it-and-claim-it’ philosophy, where the motive has all too often been about what ‘I’ can get.

Spoken blessing transforms lives

Four years ago I was greatly impacted by the proverb¹: “By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted, but by the mouth of the wicked the city is destroyed.’” It struck me that, as well as blessing people (the ‘city’) by our actions and resources, but we can also bless them ‘by the mouth’, speaking life over communities and individuals.

When the heart motive behind our plans, goals and declarations involves ‘the city being exalted’ – other people’s lives being enriched and enhanced – then that is something that I believe God will bless.

Here are four ways in which we can speak out fruitfulness by faith – all of course from our connection with God:

1 Radiant word

I’d describe as a radiant word scripture that’s highlighted to you by the Holy Spirit for guidance, encouragement or breakthrough in a particular area or situation (the above proverb is a personal example). God will give us these words as we partner with him on our planning and goal-setting. And they can form the basis of declarations.

Several years ago my family gathered together to pray with me during a financial pinch point in my business. During the prayer time, my then teenage daughter ‘saw’ in her mind’s eye ‘DEUTERONOMY 28:8’. It’s a scripture about the promise of provision – one which she did not know from memory and would not have known how to spell!

That same day, unbeknown to her, I had picked up a small piece of paper from my bedroom floor. On it was that very same scripture, which I’d noted down months previously. It must have fallen out of a book. Around that time, a family friend had also just contacted my wife with the same scripture, saying she felt it was for us from God!

Since then, as well as thanking God for that threefold encouragement, I have also sometimes personalised this word by declaring: “The Lord is sending a blessing on my barns and everything I put my hand to.” And He has – which in turn has allowed me to bless others financially in the process.

2 Reply

“A man makes plans in his heart, but the reply of the tongue comes from the Lord.”² In part 2, I mentioned how, while we make plans in our heart, God gives the ‘answer of the tongue’ (Proverbs 16:1). As well as ‘radiating’ particular words of scripture for us, God communicates in other ways.

These ‘answers of the tongue’ can take the form of helping us formulate and articulate our plans, finding the right words to say as we share or implement them, as well as declaring the plan out loud as an affirmation.

If, say, one of your plans is to write a book or start a group, a declaration might be: “I will write my first book/start a connection group this year, which will lead people to a deeper relationship with Christ, help set them free from the past, and discover and live out their God-given purposes.”

3 Release

In  New Testament accounts of healings and other miracles, Jesus and others in each case released God’s will for the people affected, very often by speaking out. Peter said to a crippled beggar, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”³

As believers, we carry that same potential to speak out transformation in the name of Jesus today. Jesus once spoke to a crippled woman who was bent double, saying, “Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.”⁴

That wasn’t just for the Holy Land 2000 years ago, or maybe, at stretch, in the front line of an African mission. An elderly woman with the very same condition had her back straightened a few weeks ago in Glasgow Central Station when a young leader at my home church released healing to her in Jesus’ name! The main point here is that the power comes from Jesus, not us, and we can release it by faith.

4 Removal

Another weapon in our spoken armoury taught by Jesus is to command the removal of obstacles or problems. He tells us, “Whoever says to the mountain (i.e. problem) ‘be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and…believes he will have those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.”⁵

I have seen this exercise of divine authority work in all kinds of situations ranging from the removal of severe infirmity and pain to the lifting of unhelpful blockages to progress in practical areas.

As we prepare for 2015, time spent not only writing down our goals and plans but also speaking them out as declarations, will influence the fruit that we bear in the times ahead. And, as Christ’s ambassadors, we can speak life throughout the year into people and places, expecting kingdom transformation and a shift of climate in our communities.

¹ Proverbs 11:11

² Proverbs 16:11

³ Acts 3:1-16

⁴ Luke 13:12

⁵ Mark 11:23