Proverbs 16:3
"Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established"
Commit is the word roll or we might say have God evaluate as well as make sure that He has approved and or has your permission to shut down these plans.
The idea seems to be that if you do not put your plans in the hands of or through the approval system of the Lord, then they will never really be solid; they will remain fluid and slippery.
Also, why would you want to work really hard on a set of plans for which God is not willing to open doors?
There is an interesting nuance in this verse that is often missed. He says that if you commit your works – the things that you already have done – to the Lord, honor Him out of them, glorify God through them, see God in the midst of them, then your plans for the future will be firm. But if you will not honor, commit, and glorify God with your present works, then your plans will remain slippery and inadequate.
There is backwardness in this concept. If you acknowledge God and give Him glory for what you have already done, then He will firm up and work with the plans that you have. It is the same idea as: In all your ways acknowledge the Lord and He will make your paths straight.
It must be clear that what you are doing and have done is for the Lord and to honor the Lord and in doing that He will make your plans firmed up. We don't know whether that means that He will make sure you add the little parts to the plan that will make them work or whether He will make sure that the things that need to happen to make the plans work will happen or He will adjust your plans to the ones that will work out like in Psalm 37:4: Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.
The word plan is a word that means thoughts about a particular direction and can also mean motive or purpose. There is the clear idea that God will bring out of the swirling mass of your thoughts, certain ones, and will firm them up when your present and completed works have been dedicated to the Lord. If this is not done, then the implication is that the swirling mass of your thoughts will remain a swirling mass of potential directions. It is the firming up of thoughts into actual reality that is being promised here.
We also need God to take the good thoughts and provide some fixity to those and let the bad ones or evil ones pass by. Why does one idea that we have come to reality and another remain a thought? Why do some ideas seem so good and yet they will not fly in the real world? God is saying, I will fix that problem if you will learn to commit your works to Me. To dedicate to Roll on to... to Honor Me with...
Oh God, I give you everything and dedicate it to you and for your service. I want you to bring out of my mind the thoughts and dreams that should come out and would succeed. I want you to pass over the thoughts that flow through my brain which are not for me to do and/or are not good ones.
Until tomorrow,
Gil Stieglitz