One word closer to knowing His plans 

Many times in my life, I’ve come back to the promise in Jeremiah 29:11:

‘I know my plans for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’

This has been my favourite verse in the past. It helped me decide which path to take and which way to turn in so many of life’s decisions. I still have a picture frame with this verse in it. Many of us love this verse because it promises that God is good and wants to be good towards us.

But sometimes, as life plans do not work out as expected, we find less and less comfort in these words. Some days, this verse even seemed like a joke. It’s easy to believe that God has a good plan for your life when things are going well, but it’s a little tougher when the path is difficult.

And the path can be difficult. Uprooting life and moving many times to start over, to get away from broken history. Company layoffs and job losses. The sudden death of friends. 

We can go through times when it seemed as if God’s plans were not prospering us at all.

We can get confused because we cannot see a divine “plan” for life, much less that it is good. In fact, there are times when we can wonder what is going on. What is He trying to do? 

But the very same God of the harvest is also the God of the desert. Could it be possible that God has sometimes thwarted our plans in order to expand my shallow understanding of His love? Could God have allowed difficult circumstances so I could wrestle with who He really is? Maybe the messing up of our plans is exactly what we need. God will go to great lengths to squash a false gospel and repair a cracked foundation in our faith. He does this not out of anger but out of love. He knows we can miss Him completely if we misunderstand Him.

But He does not give up on us. Again and again, we hear Jeremiah 29:11 echo in my heart and head.

Open your Bible to this familiar verse and ask God to give you new eyes to see what you are about to read. We love God, but we have not sensed His presence. We can forget what He looks and sounds like. Life can be unrecognizable. We can be surprised to learn that the original word in Hebrew is machashabah; a more literal translation is “thoughts.” God knows the thoughts He has toward me, and His thoughts toward me are good.

This perspective changes everything! We can define plans as “an easy life” and “prosperity” here and now. We can put time, effort, and finances into knowing and pursuing those plans. We want plans without pain, suffering, or hardship.

The emphasis was on me, me knowing the plans, me understanding the plans, me implementing the plans. But God’s machashabah — His thoughts — towards me are so much more than anything I could have ever imagined on my own. His thoughts towards me are the real constant, despite whatever circumstances I am walking through. Instead of being so fixated on our plans for life, we can realise we need to be more interested in knowing God’s thoughts towards us.

My behaviour does not determine my identity. Instead, anyone who calls on God is welcomed into the family and named a beloved son or daughter (John 1:12). I am not an employee of God;

I am a child of God.

My relationship with God isn’t dependent on my performance. Instead, all our sins are forgiven and washed away in Jesus, who cancelled all our debt and nailed it to the cross (Colossians 2:13-14).

And I don’t have to try to make something happen. Instead, God is working in me to give me the desire and power to do what pleases Him (Philippians 2:13).