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Faith planning

Win Wachsmann

What is God’s plan for our church? Our home? Our school? Our personal life? Usually, when we examine our lives, our goals, our desires or a task before us, the first question is “How?” The first question we need to answer, however, is “Why?” Howard Hendricks of Dallas Theological Seminary says, “More failures in the church arise because of an ambiguity of purpose than for any other reason.”


A right purpose grows out of a clear understanding of what God wants done. Until you and I are committed to doing God’s work, until the will of God is central to our lives and until we are seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, we will inevitably drift and get tied into a wrong purpose.

What then is our purpose in life? What is God’s plan? The Bible tells us that God’s plan is twofold.

First, God’s plan is redemptive in nature. Humanity was initially created in a right relationship with God. When humanity fell, God began what is known as His redemptive purpose. That purpose can be traced throughout the Old and New Testaments.

Second, not only was God’s plan redemptive, it was also worldwide in scope. “Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight” – God wants every person to come into a right relationship with Him. In the Old Testament, He used the nation of Israel to accomplish His plan. Since Jesus’ resurrection, He uses you and me, the church of Jesus Christ, to accomplish His plan. God wants you, your home and your church to grow more than you do. It is God’s will that His children grow and that His lost children be found.

Our purpose in life is to help in carrying out God’s great plan. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 4 tells us that when we do the things God has prepared us to do, the body of Christ will be built up.

How can we know for certain that what we are planning is indeed the will of God? This is a crucial question. We must know in order to be able to withstand the assaults of Satan that are sure to come in order to thwart us.

Projection planning

Often, when we go through a planning process, we look at our past experiences, our present circumstances and our present resources. Then we project into the future. This is sometimes known as linear planning, projection planning or planning by objective. This type of planning has two difficulties. The first is its source. The sources of projection planning are our past experiences, our present circumstances and our present resources. The source is we humans, with all our frailty, rather than God and His greatness.

The second problem with projection planning is that we are looking at our circumstances. God wants us to rise above our circumstances; He doesn’t want us to be controlled by them. Isaiah 40:31 promises, “Those who hope in the Lord . . . will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Similarly, the apostle Paul talks about, “forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead” (Philippians 3:13).

What happens when we use the projection planning model? We focus on our circumstances and our resources. Our eyes are looking downward and backward. That focus is wrong. I believe that planning in this way, the way it’s often done in our lives, our homes and our churches, will not receive the blessing of God.

Faith planning

God wants us to have a different model of planning, a model based on faith. We need to integrate faith into the planning process because “everything that does not come from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23).

Faith has as its object God. Place your faith in your money, and it will soon run out. Place your faith in other people, and they will soon disappoint you. But Hebrews 2:2 says, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”

The basis of faith planning is having a clear vision of Jesus and of what He wants. Getting that vision begins with prayer. It begins by saying, “Lord, will You show me what You’d really like me to do? What would my life, my home, my school or my church be like if we lived up to Your expectations?” He is far more willing to show us what He wants than we are willing to listen. Our problem is that we’ve had our focus so much downward and backward that we are unable to look upward.

When we ask God to reveal His plan to us, He will. When we ask God what our home, school or church would be like five years from now if we lived up to His expectations, God will give us a vision.

A vision is a mental picture of a future event that will become a reality. That’s all that it is. It’s not some kind of New Age mysticism.

Moreover, God gives us visions, not nightmares. God’s visions are good, and help us make progress.

Look at the Old Testament story of Joseph. God could have told Joseph that soon his brothers would throw him into a pit and then sell him as a slave to the Midianites. God could have told him that he would become a slave in Egypt, be thrown into prison and eventually become Pharaoh’s right-hand man. That wouldn’t have been a vision. That would have been a nightmare.

But God gave Joseph good dreams. He told Joseph that his family would look up to him. He gave him a vision of the possibilities, not the problems along the way. That’s what Joseph held on to during those many years in prison. He believed that the dream God had given him would come to pass. With every faith plan, there will be problems. But God doesn’t want us to focus on the problems. He wants us to focus on the vision.

The Old Testament prophet Habakkuk asked God to show him what was going to happen. In Habakkuk 2:2, God responded and said, “Write down the revelation, and make it plain.” Why? So that those who read it would know which way to go.

Then God added, “The revelation waits an appointed time. . . . Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come.” God not only gave Habakkuk a vision, but He also guaranteed that it would become a reality.

Faith planning characteristics

Faith planning focuses on the possibilities, not the problems. Nehemiah concentrated on rebuilding the wall. He believed that as God’s instrument, he was to carry out God’s plan. Nehemiah didn’t ignore the problems; he worked around them and concentrated on the goal. Faith planning is realizing that we need to trust God to do more with our resources than we can do. David didn’t have unlimited resources when he came against Goliath. He trusted God to do more with his stone than David could ever do. Faith planning is not seeing how it can happen, but believing God that it will happen. We often want to see how everything will work out. Yet, if God gave us the whole plan and all the resources right at the beginning, what would we put our trust in? We’d probably put our trust in the plan and the resources. The important thing about faith planning is not our ability to see, but our ability to believe and the ability of our God.

A righteous man was living among sinners. Their wickedness was great. One day, God came to Noah and said, “I want you to build an ark. It’s going to rain, and I will destroy humankind.” Noah had never seen rain, had never built a huge boat and had never collected all animals in one place. But he believed God. That’s faith planning.

Faith planning is believing that when God says it, He’s already guaranteed success because of who Jesus is. Our goals, if they are based on God’s purpose and His vision for us, will become a reality.

If we go through a projection planning model and end up with some goals and objectives, and if God has not been intimately involved in the process all along, He cannot add His blessing to our plan. In contrast, if, through prayer, through the study of the Scriptures and through understanding our opportunities, we have received a vision from God and based our goals on that vision, we will have the certainty that we are doing what God wants done. And if God wants it done, He will supply all the resources necessary to get it done.

Faith planning means that we are to find out what God wants done and begin to do it – in our home, in our church, in our school and in our personal life.

Win Wachsmann is a member of Mountain Park Community Church in Abbotsford, B.C., and Director of Development for Valley Christian School.

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Last modified May 4, 2000.

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