God's Plan? Or Ours?

Then they said to Jeremiah, "May the LORD be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act according to all the word with which the LORD your God sends you to us.  Whether it is good or bad, we will obey the voice of the LORD our God to whom we are sending you, that it may be well with us when we obey the voice of the LORD our God." (Jeremiah 42:5-6)

"The LORD has said to you, O remnant of Judah, 'Do not go to Egypt.'  Know for a certainty that I [Jeremiah] have warned you this day" (Jeremiah 42:19)

Azariah the son of Hoshaiah and Johanan the son of Kareah and all the insolent men said to Jeremiah, "You are telling a lie.  The LORD our God did not send you to say, 'Do not go to Egypt to live there,'" . . . And they came into the land of Egypt, for they did not obey the voice of the LORD. (Jeremiah 43:2, 7a)

In my devotions recently, I have been reading through the book of Jeremiah.  In chapters 42 and 43, the leaders of the remnant that was left in Judah came to Jeremiah and asked what the Lord wanted them to do.  They swore that they would do whatever God told them to do "whether it is good or bad."  However, as the passages goes on to show, they had already made up their mind what they were going to do.  These leaders wanted an excuse to do what they already wanted to do; they wanted God to agree with their plan.

It is easy to judge these leaders, but don't we often do the same?  We ask God what His plan is, all the while hoping that He will agree to the plan we've already decided.  We offer God our plan, so that He can okay it.  We look for the excuse to do what we've already decided we want to do.  But too often if God does not okay our plan, if His plan is different from ours, we reject His plan and follow our own anyway.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone.  But what will it take for us to abandon our own plan in order to follow God's higher plan?  Why do we even form our own plans, when His plan is already perfect?  What will it take for us to pray "Lord, show me your plan for my life" without secretly adding "and let it agree with mine"?