The Lutheran Hour
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"Planning Is Everything"
- Full Program MP3 TLH Message (Only) Pastor Zeigler Interview
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Text: Psalm 146:3-4
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Many years ago, some outspoken, up-and-coming Army officers complained. They complained about the irrelevant maps that they were forced to use in their training. The only maps the Army school had for their planning exercises at the time were old maps of northeastern France. There was no rhyme or reason behind why they used these maps other than that’s what they’d always used. So, these young officers identified a problem: “It is silly for the American Army to be training with maps of northeastern France, when the Army could easily acquire other maps.” And they proposed a solution: “Why not procure maps where the American Army just might fight a battle?”
As I said, this happened years ago—114 years ago, when the memory of the American Civil War was still fresh in their minds. So, when they updated their map collection, they got rid of all the maps of northeastern France and procured maps of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and other important Civil War sites. And they started workshopping all their plans with those more relevant maps.
Two years after the change, World War I started. And the American Army was deployed to fight … in northeastern France.
President Dwight Eisenhower, “Ike” as he was called, told that story to a group of military planners in 1957. Ike said the story illustrates something that he heard in the Army long ago, that “plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”i
Planning, as an activity, is vital. But the result of that planning, the plans themselves, those are useless, because, when you’re planning, especially when you’re planning for an emergency, you must start with this one thing: the very definition of “emergency” is that it is unexpected, which means—it’s not going to happen the way you were planning! To quote another bit of military wisdom: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Or, as Mike Tyson put it, “Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the mouth.”
And when you have to roll with the punches, when the emergency emerges, Ike said, “The first thing you do is to take all the plans off the top shelf and throw them out the window and start once more.”
Plans are worthless, but planning is vital because it keeps you engaged with the problem. Now, what’s the problem? Part of the problem is that there are forces beyond your control. Whether you’re making war plans or a business plan, disaster plans, or just what you’re gonna do for a summer vacation, there are forces of nature that frustrate your plans.
First, there’s human nature, the fact that other people’s plans clash with your plans. Second, there’s other-than-human nature—“fog and friction,” military planners call it. This includes bad weather, scarce resources, disease, decay, randomness, chaos, death, and road construction—they all conspire to foil our plans. As Yogi Berra once observed, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” And this makes our plans worth less than we’d like to admit. But if that’s true, why plan at all? Like Ike said, because it keeps you engaged with the problem.
On the surface, the problem appears to be that we humans haven’t yet found a way to control nature—neither our own nor the world’s. But from another perspective, the problem is not that there are forces of nature beyond our control. The problem is that we believe we can control them. The problem is not our plans, but the blind faith we put in our plans.
Ike must have been channeling some biblical wisdom, because this perspective comes directly out of a poem in the Bible, from the book of Psalms, Psalm 146. As one translation puts it, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save. When their breath departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.” The word translated as “princes,” is less about a job description or a royal position, and it’s more about a character trait. It describes someone who is willing and eager, a go-getter, someone with influence, ambition.ii
And whether you’re this type of person or you know someone who is, if you have the backing of a man-with-a-plan (or a woman-with-a-plan), that can feel solid; it can feel reliable. But the psalm-writer says it’s a mirage, because that powerful person is mortal just like you. He cannot save you. She cannot save you. The real problem for each of us is not that our plans come to nothing. The problem is that we trusted them in the first place.
Misplaced trust, that’s what Psalm 146 diagnoses as the problem. But it doesn’t stop there with the problem. The Psalm goes on to offer a solution: put your trust in the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of Jesus, the Messiah, the crucified and risen King. In other words: turn your plans into prayers, giving way to praise.
The plans themselves aren’t the problem. Go ahead, make plans. Planning is good. But then let your plans become prayers. Talk with God about your plans. Bring your plans to Him. And listen. Read the Bible—listen to God’s plans. And let this ongoing conversation with God bring you to praise Him.
Listen how the Psalm says it: “Praise the LORD, everyone! Praise the LORD, O my soul. I intend to praise the LORD all my life. Let me sing praises to my God as long as I live. Do not put your trust in princes, in the powerful, in the influential, in mortal man who cannot save. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth. On that very day, his plans come to nothing. Blessed is the one whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, in God, the Maker of heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them, in God, who keeps faith forever, in God, who does justice for the oppressed, in God, who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free. The LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down. The LORD loves the righteous. The LORD looks after the sojourner, the newcomer, and the orphan and the widow, He sustains, but the way of the wicked He frustrates. The LORD reigns, the LORD will be King forever and ever, your God, O Zion, from generation to generation, all of you, praise the LORD!”
The Psalm says that our problem is that we put faith in merely human plans. But then offers a solution—let your plans become prayers that lead you to praise. First, the psalm assumes that people make plans. Planning comes naturally to us. And planning has its benefits: The Bible’s book of Proverbs says, “The plans of the diligent lead to profit.” And, “Those who plan peace have joy.”
People make plans. It’s what we do. “Many are the plans in the mind of a man but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21). So, offer up your plans to God in prayer, and see what God does with them. But don’t let it be a one-way conversation. Listen to what God plans. Listen to the Bible and learn about God’s purpose, God’s goal.
The Psalm says that God plans to be King over all creation, to restore what He created. Our misplaced trust dragged the world into chaos. We thought we could be our own gods. Instead, we imprisoned ourselves and blinded ourselves. But God, in His love, is working out His plan to undo all this damage. God’s plan starts by speaking—speaking to us, giving us commands to follow and promises to hold onto. In word and deed, God shows us, again and again, that we can trust in Him. We can’t control the fog and friction of a fallen, chaotic world. But He can.
Ultimately, He proved it in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the King, God’s Word made human. Jesus spoke God’s Word and did God’s deeds when He came. But the powerful and the influential didn’t like what He had to say. So, they planned to discredit Him. They schemed to shame Him and humiliate Him and ruin Him forever by stretching Him out naked on a cross to crucify Him. But God turned their plans upside down when He raised Jesus from the dead.
And even the cross was part of God’s plan. Jesus hadn’t failed. He had stretched out His arms in love, put us right with God. And His resurrection is God’s power to restore the creation, to restore our trust in Him, and to offer a guide to live by. Before Jesus was betrayed and crucified, He prayed. He admitted to God, His Father, that He wished this part wasn’t part of the plan, that He was hoping there could be another way. “Abba, Father,” He prayed, “All things are possible for You. Take this cup of suffering away from Me. But not My will—Thy will be done.” Jesus offered up His plans to God and let praise emerge from His pain.
Years ago, an artist named Eleanor Dickinson produced a series of drawings she titled “Crucifixions.” She used bold colors on black velvet to depict various people in cruciform—cross-shaped postures. The people who modeled for Eleanor’s drawings weren’t professionals. They were people she knew personally, Christians who were suffering from chronic or terminal illnesses. By drawing them, she wanted to understand them more deeply, to feel what they were feeling as she told their story, visually depicting their pain and hope.iii
Later, Eleanor said that she noticed how the “bodily posture of crucifixion, with arms outstretched, was also the posture of praise and worship.”iv
She wasn’t trying to redefine their pain as something good on its own. No, even God’s Son prayed that this wasn’t part of the plan. But by noticing how they surrendered their plans to God and fell into the outstretched arms of Jesus, she could see praise emerging from their pain. They trusted that God’s plan didn’t end in suffering, but in resurrection and new creation.
The 150 psalms of the Bible also follow this pattern of praise emerging through pain. In the first parts of the Bible’s collection of psalms, you hear people whose plans have fallen apart, whose prayers for peace and profit haven’t been answered, yet. And you hear their frustration and desperation.
They’re crushed by forces of nature they can’t control—crushed by a cursed creation that threatens them on all sides, crushed by plans of wicked people out to get them, crushed by the wickedness inside them, their own hearts, by their depraved nature that they cannot conquer, or cure, or even begin to comprehend; and sometimes, worst of all, crushed by the God who seems slow to work His plan.
There are psalms for all those occasions—prayers for seasons of suffering, sorrow, for times of war and disaster, moments of complaint and lament. But as you keep reading, these pained prayers slowly give way to praise, just as death will give way to resurrection in Jesus. And when we get to the psalm for today, Psalm 146, from here to the end, it’s all praise—praise to God emerging by faith, if not yet by sight.
A friend of mine, Pastor Dave, remembers waiting. He was waiting at his church one Saturday afternoon for members to arrive for another event. Earlier that morning, the church had hosted a workshop on “planning your funeral.” As they say, you can hope for the best, but you should plan for the worst. The local funeral home that led the workshop had brought a stack of free calendars. And there were dozens of calendars left over (the workshop hadn’t been as well attended as they had planned). So, Pastor Dave thought he’d pass off these calendars on those coming to the afternoon event. He figured, who could refuse a free calendar, with the church year and the funeral home advertisement at the top of every page? Every morning when you wake up and look at it, you can be reminded of dying.
When the first person arrived that afternoon, Pastor Dave handed her a calendar and said, “We missed you this morning.” He meant it as a joke. He knew she hated the idea of planning your funeral. She didn’t see that he was joking and said, “Yes, Pastor, I just couldn’t do two events this Saturday.” He told her he was joking, but added, “What? You don’t like planning your funeral?”
“No, Pastor,” she said. But then she smiled, “To be honest, Pastor, I’d rather spend time planning my resurrection. When you have workshop on that—let me know.”
Planning our resurrection? Pastor Dave liked that. He thought, that’s sort of what we do here at church. We call it worship, but in a way, it is a workshop, planning our resurrection. God speaks, and we come to life, eternal life.v Then we practice turning our plans to prayers and let those prayers give way to praise.
Would you pray with me now? O Lord, You are my God; I will exalt You. I will praise Your Name because You have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure. Frustrate any and all plans that would lead us away from You, and bring to completion Your good plans that You have for us, plans for our welfare, not for evil, to give us a future, and hope in Jesus, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever. Amen.
i Dwight Eisenhower, “Remarks at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference,” November 14, 1957. Accessed on April 1, 2026 at https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-national-defense-executive-reserve-conference
ii See Derek Kidner, Psalms 73–150, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries: Vol 16, Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity (2008), 520.
iii http://eleanordickinsonart.com/artists-statement/
iv Eleanor Dickinson, quoted in Richard Viladesau, The Wisdom and Power of the Cross (New York: Oxford UP, (2020), 239.
v David R. Schmitt, “Holy Wonder: The Experience of Beauty and Creedal Contemplation,” Concordia Journal, Summer 2022, 26.Reflections for May 3, 2026
Title: Humble AmbitionMark Eischer: You’re listening to The Lutheran Hour. For FREE online resources, archived audio, our mobile app, and more, go to lutheranhour.org. Now back to our Speaker, Dr. Michael Zeigler.
Mike Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. Today I get to visit once more with Rev. Dr. Ryan Tinetti. He’s a regular guest preacher on the program, author of the book, The Quiet Ambition. Thanks for coming back to chat. Ryan.
Ryan Tinetti: Good to be back. Thanks.
Mike Zeigler: So Ryan, today’s message which we heard was on Psalm 146, great praise from the end of the book of Psalms. And it was this insight from verses three and four that really stayed with me. The Psalm says, “Don’t put your trust in princes,” or another translation might be “don’t put your trust in the ambitious or the go-getters.” It’s this word for volunteering to stepping forward. So don’t trust in them, or if you’re one of them, don’t trust in yourself. Because the psalmist says they’re going to die one day. And on that day, all your plans, all your ambitions are going to come to nothing. And it’s just a fact. So you’ve got this book titled The Quiet Ambition. You thought a lot about ambition. Why would you say it’s tempting for us to put our faith in the ambitious?
Ryan Tinetti: Sure. I think on the one hand, we need to recognize that there can be a good and God-pleasing place for ambition in the sense that when it’s oriented toward good goals. So, having drive, having a sense of I’m moving forward. The Scripture has a lot to say, especially in the book of Proverbs. Solomon will talk about, “Don’t be like the sluggard, the one that’s just laying around; instead, look to the ant. Inherently, we can see when there are folks who are driving ahead, who are getting things done. It’s natural for us to want to hitch our wagon to them because we’re actually going to go someplace rather than just stay stuck in the mud. So it’s natural, I think in this human world where so much is fleeting and where so much can feel as though it’s just stuck, to look to those people.
Mike Zeigler: So they might be able to get some stuff done temporarily in the interim, but we shouldn’t look to them to bring us home or to get us to final destination.
Ryan Tinetti: And part of it is we have to recognize the limitations of this mortal life. J.R. Tolkien, the great author of The Lord of the Rings, he talked about how history is one long defeat. But he didn’t say that in a despairing sense or even in a merely pessimistic sense, but it was a recognition that ultimately history is in God’s hands. And Tolkien was much more, having lived through, having fought in World War I, lived through World War II, he had a much more sobering mindset, a realization that actually we’re just trying to plug holes for a while until the Lord Jesus comes again and renews all things. It doesn’t mean that we don’t seek for the betterment of our neighbors and our communities. By all means we do, but we recognize we’re never going to be able to fix this creation. That’s God’s job, and He’s going to do it in His time. And I think that is a healthy perspective for us to adopt.
Mike Zeigler: You use this great phrase in your book, you call it the “anti-creed.” So say more about this anti-creed.
Ryan Tinetti: Yeah. So before we get emails about anti-creeds, wait, what are you talking about? Well, just a reminder. So a creed is a statement of, it’s a confession of faith.
Mike Zeigler: What I believe, what we believe.
Ryan Tinetti: This is what we believe. And this idea of the anti-creed, it came from a friend of mine, a fellow pastor named Greg Finke. And Greg pointed this out to me that John the Baptist. Okay. So John the Baptist has this moment in the Gospels where some people come to him and they say, “Now, are you the Christ? Are you the One that we’ve been looking for?” And it says that John confessed. “He did not deny, but he confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’” Right? He did not believe himself to be the Savior, to be the Messiah. And Greg calls that the “anti-creed.” And I find that to be a helpful antidote to overly exalted views of ourself or of other human beings, those that we would be tempted to put a trust in. Instead, we confess that there is one Messiah. So that’s where I find it to be a kind of freedom in that sort of anti-creed.
Mike Zeigler: Along with confessing that anti-creed, you offer some practical advice in the book. Could you just give us some suggestions on practical advice, how to do this?
Ryan Tinetti: Sure. So your sermon was on Psalm 146. I would start a couple of psalms before that. Psalm 139 has this great verse, “Search me and know my heart, O God, see if there be any grievous way in me.” And so I think a good starting point, in addition to confessing that anti-creed, is to confess our own ambitions, to ask God to search our hearts and to know, “What is in my heart? What do I want?” And what is good and God-pleasing in accord with Your will, and what is more of that selfish ambition?” To confess those and to receive God’s word of absolution, the grace that He has for us—I think that’s a good place to start.
Mike Zeigler: All right. So put it out there on the table. Some other practical steps—if I want to plan.
Ryan Tinetti: So a very practical thing that I’ve tried to do in my own life is to under-schedule. If you’re anything like me, you have that constant temptation to fill your calendar up to the brim. I think instead, if we were to look at our schedules and be deliberate about under-scheduling. Well, what can that look like? So if I think that this meeting or this task is going to take an hour, instead schedule an hour and a half for it. Planning is essential, but those plans, they might have to be thrown out the window. So it’s helpful to build in some extra time.
Mike Zeigler: Okay. So the things that I go about and do, what advice, what plan could I put in place there?
Ryan Tinetti: To keep in mind, in the midst of our work, in the midst of our labors, whether that be the work that you do for your daily bread or things around the house, to work and pray, to be praying alongside with it. Or as the old saying goes, “He who sings, prays twice.” To whistle while you work, right? To sing, to sing hymns of praise to God, to sing psalms and spiritual songs, as the Scripture says, can be another way that we sanctify our labor and remember that this labor’s not in vain.
Mike Zeigler: Turn your work into prayer and prayer into work and vice versa. We got to plan then. Thanks for joining us.
Ryan Tinetti: My pleasure. Thank you.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“At the Lamb’s High Feast” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.