I know the plans I have for you…

This morning, my pastor started a new sermon series. We’re discussing what it truly means to live the gospel, not just in our words but in everything we do. Something he said this morning is still heavy on my mind:

When we pick up with the Israelites in this story, they’ve come a long way. Israel had come from Egypt, through the wilderness, and into the Promised Land. They had settled the land, had a time of judges, and then had a period of kings. Eventually, the kingdom split in half, and would never reunite. The Babylonians entered the scene, and came in to destroy the Israelites. When we pick up in the book of Jeremiah, we see that Jeremiah was writing to the Israelites who had been carried into exile. They couldn’t understand what was happening to them. Everything they held dear to them had been destroyed. They believed God’s promise that they were his people, but exile pointed to a question growing deep in their hearts.. This isn’t how it was supposed to turn out. This God that we serve… Is he still real? Is he still powerful? Is he still in control? 

It was into the chaos and painful reality of their shattered and broken dreams that Jeremiah spoke these words….

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Yes, this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the LORD.

This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.” (Jeremiah 29:4-14)

Jeremiah told the Israelites that God said: I know the plans I have for you. God doesn’t say: I know the plans YOU have for you. Jeremiah is telling the Israelites, this isn’t going to work out the way you planned that it would. This life isn’t about your preoccupation with your own little lives. This is about God’s story. God is whispering… “I know the plans I have for you. They are plans to give you HOPE and a FUTURE. They are better than your plans for you.”

God loves interrupting our plans. Just look at the bible… Moses, Esther, Joseph, Abraham, Noah, Mary, the disciples. God interrupted all of their plans. Life itself is not about our plans for our lives. It’s about God’s plan, his huge kingdom bringing plan for the world. We don’t have to play a part in that plan, but we get to play a part in that plan. I pray I become a woman who is truly excited that my plans for my life are not the plans that God has for my life… that I would understand in the core of my being that this is not my story… that I get to play a role in a much larger story… that I would not waste the life God has given me… that I would not mourn the loss of things that I have selfishly wanted, but instead rejoice that God is working out something more beautiful than I can imagine… that I would walk in the joy of knowing that all of this is pointing to something bigger than me… and that my enthusiasm for this crazy upside-down kingdom life would be contagious to those around me who are searching for something more.