In the Bible we have the account of a king of Judah who went before the Lord with more that just requests. This king was Jotham. Of him we are told,

Jotham became mighty, because he prepared his ways before the LORD his God.

2 Chronicles 27:6 - NKJV

Jotham prepared his ways before the Lord. What a difference that made to his life. It would have been one thing if he'd just prepared his ways. It was totally something else that he prepared them before the Lord.

Preparing your ways before the Lord calls for you to leave the work space and enter the worship place. This is what the verse above about Jotham is indicating that he did. He took his ways to the Lord in order to prepare them before the Lord.

If you are to prepare your ways before the Lord you will have to do as Jotham did. You will have to "enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise" and by faith "go boldly to the throne of grace." In His presence you will need to lay out your proposed ways before Him and see what He has to say about them. Psa.100:5, Heb.4:16.

My recommendation is that you start your day in God's presence preparing your ways before Him.

I am so glad that this is a habit I have developed over the years. It has made such a difference to our lives. My wife and I start our day in the Lord's presence. We follow the scriptural admonitions about committing our ways and works to the Lord. We wait on the Lord for His comments and counsel.

It is exciting to me that in God's Word one of the Holy Spirit's admonitions declares,

Roll your works upon the Lord [commit and trust them wholly to Him; He will cause your thoughts to become agreeable to His will, and] so shall your plans be established and succeed.

Prov.16:3 - Amplified Bible

The verse from Proverbs above is the translation provided by the Amplified Bible.

It brings out the promise attached to rolling - that is, to commit or cast - your works on the Lord. The promise declared is that your plans will be established and succeed.

It also explains how that comes about. It comes about because as you commit your works wholly to the Lord your thoughts about them get influenced or directed by the Lord. They thus become agreeable to His will, lining up with what He knows is best.

The condition requiring to be fulfilled for this to happen is that you commit and trust your works wholly to the Lord. In order to do this you have to come before Him with prayer and praise.

Committing things to the Lord is a faith principle. Without grasping how to apply this principle you can't properly operate in faith in your daily life. At the same time in order to commit things to the Lord you have to have faith. You have to have faith that the Lord is willing and able to pick up what you commit to Him.

Throughout the Bible the prophets and apostles present to us this principle of committing things to the Lord. Every time we hear it we get a fresh or new insight into it and each time the principle is presented to us it not only takes the form of an exhortation but it also gives us a promise.

There are five keys instances of these exhortation-promise in scripture. One of them I have already presented to you above. I will now present to you the other four with the aim that you might from them grasp the principle of committing things to the Lord.

Peter the apostle exhorts us to commit our cares to the Lord. He writes,

(Be) casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

1 Peter 5:7 - NKJV

Notice how Peter makes use of the strong word "casting" to convey the action word "commit". The sense of "to cast" is "to throw over on to". This emphasises the spiritual decisiveness and action required.

Scripture - and in the variety of English translations - blesses us with a range of words to describe the act of committing things to the Lord. We can learn a lot from this varied use of words.

Another example, is how the Amplified Bible conveys "commit to" with the words "roll upon" in Proverbs 16:3. This emphasises a letting go of what we held on to so that it can travel away from us into the arms of God.

The big problem I see among Christians isn't that they fail to do this. It is the way they pick their cares back up when they leave the place of prayer. Entering the place of prayer they give their cares to God, leaving the place of prayer they pick them back up to take home with them.

Is this what you do? If it is, it is almost certainly because you are not exercising control over your mind. You move away from the place of prayer and see the circumstances that surrounded the care you have just committed to the Lord. Those circumstances are still there, usually unchanged. Your mind registers that and starts mulling over them. It starts figuring out what to do about those circumstances or, worse yet, figuring out what the consequences of those continuing circumstances might end up being. Let your mind go with this and you'll soon be worrying over your cares and carrying them again.

What should you do when this happens? The moment you mind starts this tell it to stop. You have to speak to yourself and say, "Stop that right now. I have committed that care with its circumstances to the Lord. The Lord is now caring for it and He is going to sort it out in good time." Insist your mind hears this and becomes quiet about that matter.

This does not mean you then do nothing but it does mean you proceed with stillness of heart and mind.

Remember what I shared with you as we looked at what Jotham did. He prepared his ways before the Lord and in doing so received input from the Lord on those ways. This changed his approach to those ways.

Jotham heard from God in his heart and went with that leading. He took what he'd thought to do to the Lord and let the Lord speak into his thoughts about his ways. He then left the place of prayer confident in what he'd heard, ready to act upon it and ready for the Lord to prosper his ways in His good time.

The Psalmist calls us to committing and then trusting. He writes,

Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring [it] to pass.

Psalm 37:5 - NKJV

Once you've committed something or someone to the Lord you've then got to walk on in life trusting Him to handle it. In a sense, your faith walk on an issue begins from the moment you commit it to the Lord in prayer.

If you are going to reach the destination of that faith walk you have got to keep journeying in faith - trusting - that the Lord, on your behalf, is at work in regard to that issue you've committed to Him.

The Psalmist also encourages us in the midst of the stress and strains of this life to commit our load of labour or leadership to God. He writes,

Cast your burden on the LORD, And He shall sustain you.

Psalm 55:22 - NKJV

Look at the wonderful outcome the Psalmist tells we can expect from casting our burden on the Lord. He says the Lord will sustain us. This word "sustain" indicates there will be a maintaining, upholding and strengthening of us by the Lord.

This promise to sustain me as I cast my burden on Him says to me that my heavy load will feel lighter. Where I was tired and weary I will find the Lord providing me with strength and wherewithal.

This is the experience of the saints of God who live out the faith principle of committing things to the Lord and journey in life trusting God to bring to pass (or to keep or to mend) what they have committed to Him.

The apostle Paul journeyed in his ministry in that way. He wrote,

I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.

2 Timothy 1:12 - NKJV

Hear the confidence Paul has about what will happen because he committed things (and people) to the Lord. Paul operated in ministry this way. He didn't attempt to carry everything and uphold everything.

Paul did what he could and then committed what he'd done - or the ones to whom he'd ministered - to the Lord for Him to keep, nurture and bring through to maturity. In all confidence he left them with the Lord. See also Acts 20:32.

If you want to reach faith destinations in your life become well practiced and proficient in the faith principle of committing things to the Lord.

Committing things into God's hands has to be part of your Christian lifestyle. It will one of the things which distinguishes you from those around you. Those around you will be fretting or shaken but you will be resting in your God. As things come up you cast the care of them on God. By the requests you make to God you let Him take charge. In this way you can continue to do what you know you can do while you are confident in God to do the rest. 1 Pet.5:7, Psa.112:6-8.