#560 – How to Plan Without Striving
The Sister Circle Podcast
Chrystal Evans Hurst
4.9 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are you making the most of your life? Maybe you have good goals, but the pressure to achieve has caused you to sacrifice your peace and fold under the pressure.
In this episode, I share important principles for partnering with God and releasing the pressure attached to productivity. There’s more waiting for you on the other side of surrender. If you’re tired of trying to make things happen on your own, this one’s for you.
Highlights from Today’s Episode
- Building healthy habits
- Aligning with God
- Planning with purpose
Related Resources
- Ready to live beyond the limits of your to-do list? Listen to my chat with Kendra Adachi on A New Approach to Productivity.
- Check out this conversation with Jennifer Dukes Lee on The Balancing Act: God and Goals.
- Prepare your heart and mind for the year ahead with the Write It Down guide and the free Dream Builders Workshop.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi there. Thanks for listening to the Sister Circle podcast. |
| 0:07.1 | My name is Crystal Evanshurst, and I'm your host. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the podcast that's designed to help you live your life well and to make it a life you love. Listen, you get to choose. |
| 0:26.6 | There is a difference between planning your life and partnering with God to live your life well. |
| 0:36.0 | And once you understand the difference, everything changes. |
| 0:39.6 | We live in a society that is all about productivity and goals and rhythms and routines and the |
| 0:45.9 | future and your habits. And none of those things are bad. But they are not healthy if those things |
| 0:52.2 | are separate from, you're partnering with God. There's only one life |
| 0:57.8 | that you have. And the stuff that you do partnered with God is the stuff that actually |
| 1:03.6 | moves the needle, not just in your life, but also in the life of the people that you touch, |
| 1:10.0 | in your legacy, in the things that will make a |
| 1:13.3 | difference long after you're gone. Psalm 127 says, unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it |
| 1:21.1 | labor in vain. Planning, thinking, dreaming without God, it's only going to lead to pressure. Planning with God, |
| 1:30.9 | inviting him into the process leads to peace. In Matthew 11, 28 through 30, the Bible says, |
| 1:36.7 | walk with me, work with me, learn from me. And this is the message, paraphrase, learn the |
| 1:41.9 | unforced rhythms of grace. So it's not that Jesus doesn't |
| 1:46.6 | invite us to build. It's not that he is anti-purpose. It's not like he's anti-goal. Jesus said |
| 1:52.3 | himself, I'm only going to do the stuff that my father wants me to do because he lived until he was 33. |
| 1:58.3 | He died young. He only was in public ministry for three years. |
| 2:01.8 | So he had three years, you know what I'm saying, to like change the world, to impact 12 people, to make a dent that we're still talking about today when we read the Bible and when we are trying to grow in our faith. |
| 2:12.4 | So it's not anti-building. It's just choosing the rhythm with which you do it. So how do you know that you're |
| 2:19.3 | choosing the rhythm? Well, Proverbs 163 says that you want to commit your work to the Lord, |
| 2:26.0 | and then your plans will be established. So you have to take what you're thinking. You know what I'm |
... |
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