August 14

Man Proposes, God Disposes

Whenever you feel that you are making a decision, then it is yours, not God’s. If it just comes about, and is not something that you particularly decide, then it is God’s decision. If you decide to do something and fail at achieving it, then that failure is also God’s decision. We don’t achieve all that we decide to attempt. That’s why we say, “Man proposes; God disposes.”

Sometimes people seem to be achieving what they want. Probably those things are in agreement with God, and that’s why those people are achieving them. But still, if a person thinks that he or she did something and achieved it, then that person is putting the ego there. So the individual should decide, “Am I planning out of my own ego, or are things just happening?”

If you just allow them to happen, or if you feel, “God gave me the idea to plan this,” or if it gets fulfilled and you say, “It’s God’s plan, God made use of me. Let God be happy, let the glory go to God,” then you don’t get very excited about it and you don’t look for the glory for yourself. When you don’t look for that, you don’t get disappointed. You just feel happy by having been a nice instrument in the hands of God. That way is safer, because if it doesn’t happen as you planned, you don’t get disappointed. You just feel, “Probably that was God’s Will.”