Plans and Obedience

There are 2 scriptures that seem to be coming up over and over again in my life for the past month.

Jeremiah 29:11 “ ^“For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. ”

And Romans 8:28 “ We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God:…”

Both of these speak to the plans God has for us and the walk we have with him, but allow me to elaborate on something.  First Jeremiah.

The message doesn’t end at the end of that verse. The next verses say, “You will call to Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you”—this is the Lord’s declaration...” (Jeremiah 29:12-14:a)  You see, it’s all well and good that God has a plan, because he does.  I firmly believe that nothing touches us that hasn’t first passed through his hands, and what passes will serve to [ultimately] make me more like Jesus.  The caveat is that no one points out are the few verses AFTER 11.  God has plans for us, but we will call to him and pray to him, he will listen to us.  We need to seek him, he will allow us to find him when we seek him with all our hearts.  Based on this: Yes, God has plans for us, but we must call out to him, we must seek him to capitalize on those plans.  “…—“and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and places where I banished you”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “I will restore you to the place I deported you from.”  (Jer 29:14b)  Do you see it?  Did you catch that?  He’s basically saying that he will do the work, he will restore everything, but Jeremiah is prophesying that “we” will call to the Lord, come and pray to him, seek him with all our hearts… then he will restore us to our place he planned for us. 

No one likes to talk about context because it’s hard.  It asks you to look deeper.  This verse is so quoted, Believer, you had better understand it’s not just a “touchy-feely” concept.  God aims to work out his plan in and through us [and believe me, it’s hardly ever our plan], but based on where Israel was when this was prophesied and what Jeremiah says – we better be praying, seeking and searching… calling out to God… for him to work out his plan.  Otherwise, we are lost.  God doesn’t need GPS, we do.  Understand the difference.

Next Romans… this one is a little simpler because it’s all one verse.  Everyone says the first part…”All things work together for the good of those who love God…”  Great!  But there are qualifications about this.  “…those who are called according to His purpose. ”  The REST of the story.  In the verses preceeding 28, those would be vs 26-27:

“ In the same way the Spirit also joins to help in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with unspoken groanings. And He who searches the hearts knows the Spirit’s mind-set, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

In these verses, Paul writes that the Spirit (that’d be the Holy Spirit) intercedes for us {catch it} according to the will of God.  And then “All things work together…”  So, the Spirit intercedes on our behalf to the Father, according to God’s will, and God, in his unwavering mercy, works all things out for those he loves and are called according to his purpose.”.  Wait.  “Called according to his purpose?”   So, not only does he love you, Believer, he is working all things out since you are called, you are elected, you were courted and wooed before time began for such a time as this.  For the right time to be just for you.  For God to reveal himself through you TODAY.  Perhaps you should stop believing in accidents… there aren’t any and verse 29 confirms that.  “For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. ^”  That means, Believer, that God knew what it would take to draw you near to himself and he went the extra mile, he is conforming us to Jesus.  What better a model than that? 

The first 5 minutes

Everyone is looking for their own personal 5 minutes of fame. I really think it’s part of the never ending search for significance that has become even more prevalent in the information age.  We all want to be seen as a human being, a person, an individual with feelings, thoughts, emotions, aspirations and a soul.  None of us are different in that respect, we all search for our purpose and if we’ve found it, then we seek to live it daily because in our minds: fulfilling that purpose means we have significance.

Can I submit that we are all significant to the Lord?  We are individually dear to his heart, we each hold a special place.  We are each the work of his hands and best of all, Christ died for each of us – not just one people group or one culture or one country or however people decide to segregate themselves, but the Bible says “Christ died for all” (2 Cor 5:14) and all in my mind means ALL.

And we search despite this.  We seek purpose.  Christ says in Matthew’s gospel that if we seek the Lord first, everything else will fall into place.  (Matt 6:33).  This begs the question: do we trust God enough to put everything else in place for us?  Do we seek him first and let him take care of the details, the tomorrows – or do we seek him with our plans and expect him to bless that which may not be his best for us?  That’s the real question.  Nearly everything in our Christian walk comes back to that 5 letter word: T.R.U.S.T..

Can we trust him with our 5 minutes of fame?  I just dabbed my toe into live social media today on Periscope, it was literally 6 minutes of nothing written down and I was mortified that I felt like I was blithering incoherently.  I feel like this is something the Lord wants me to do – did you just see how critical I was of that?  Do you know how many people have said they were blessed by my blithering?  (me neither, but hopefully there were a few…) That’s not my department, that’s strictly the Lord’s.  Completely.  I trust him to lead, guide and direct my life and the lives of my children – even if they stray (the Bible says they will come back – I’m trusting that too).

I admit I have searched for meaning in my life.  I keep looking to understand all that has happened in the last 20 years to no avail.  I have come to the stark conclusion that I just will not understand everything, but one thing I do know is that I don’t have to understand.  I just need to keep walking.