“For I know
the plans I have for you, says the Lord,
Plans for
welfare and not for evil,
To give you a
future and a hope
Then you will
call upon Me
And I will
listen to you
And you will
seek Me and find Me
When you
search for Me with all of your heart”
Jeremiah 29:12
These verses in Jeremiah was part of a
letter sent from Jeremiah the prophet to Jerusalem after all the people had
been taken from Jerusalem to Babylon. Imagine we are living happily here in
Hamilton, New Zealand with our nice jobs, our lovely blue sky and white clouds,
our beautiful Waikato River, our birds and trees and the peace and quiet we
enjoy.
Then, imagine that suddenly a foreign
country invade us and forces us to leave our homes to live in a foreign land. The food is different (no more Pavlova), the
language is different, the culture is different. You might think this is a curse or
satan.
Or imagine you are the ones left behind
and all the people that you need in your life have been taken and you are left
here wondering what to do. You feel abandoned. Won’t you feel sad or maybe you will feel
angry? Maybe you will think, this is
satan.
Yet, in Jeremiah 29:4, it says, “I have
set into exile”. This was God’s
plan. Sometimes, we think the difficult
things in our life have been brought by satan.
Let’s not give him so much honor.
God has a plan for our lives and He knows what He is doing, even when we
cross difficult times.
In verse 6, God encourages the people to
increase and to multiply and not to decrease.
As Christians we need to increase and not decrease. If we used to pray daily, don’t decrease to
once per month. If we used to meet every
Wednesday, don’t decrease to monthly. If
we used to use our gifts or practise them, don’t give up, keep using them and
don’t decrease.
In verses 8-9, God warns the people to
not listen to the prophets, for they were not sent by God. We have to be careful to know in whose name
the prophecy comes. People can say all
sorts of things over us but we need discernment to know if it is God or not.
“For I know that plans I have for you”. If you feel like you have been put in a
strange foreign place or you feel like you have been abandoned or you feel that
last year was a hard year for you, don’t worry because God has a plan and He
knows them.
“Know”: Do you know your plans for this
year? Do you know God’s plan for you in for this year? Would you like to know God’s plan for
you? We can pray to know it and for it
to be accomplished.
“Plan”: “a detailed proposal for doing
or achieving something”. What do you
want to achieve this year? How will you achieve
it? For example, I want to use my gifts
for God. What are they? One of my gifts is teaching so how will I use
that gift? Wednesday night meeting bring
a message which means I have to read my Bible and take notes and meditate on
it. In order to use my gift of teaching,
I need to read my Bible every day. My
plan is to teach and my detailed proposal for achieving it is to read my Bible
every morning at 6:30am and to meditate, take notes and pray over it so I can
be prepared with a message to bring on Wednesdays.
“Welfare”: “the state of doing well”. God wants us to do well this year. This is His plan for us to do well in our
walk with Him, our spiritual growth, to increase and not decrease. In what areas do you want to do well? In what areas do you know have decreased and
now you want to bring them back to how they used to be?
“Not for evil”: God’s plan is for us to
do well in His eyes. God wants us to
live according to the Word of God and to obey Him and serve Him and not to
serve evil. I remember when I was a
young Christian asking Michelle, how do I know if I serve God or something
else? Michelle replied, “Ask yourself,
does this glorify God? If yes, do
it. If not, it doesn’t come from God”.
God’s plan is for us to NOT do evil or
to follow satan or his demons or to fall into temptation. In all we choose, ask ourselves, is this
going to glorify God, satan or myself?
God wants to give us a “future”. A future on this earth but also a future in
heaven. What plans are we doing this
year for our future? For example, if I want
to be a lecturer in law one day, I will need to plan for how to achieve that. That could mean taking time out to teach at
the Community Law Centre for free, becoming an expert by reading text books,
the latest law and new cases and by researching.
I want to hear God say, “faithful
servant”. Therefore, I need to be
faithful to God, church, Christians. For
example, be committed to this church and its members, to the Wednesday night
program, encouraging others even when I don’t have a role by simply being
there.
“A hope”: God wants to give us a
hope. What do you hope in? I hope in the fact that one day I will enter
the Kingdom of God. Look first at the
Kingdom of God and all else will fall into place. Let’s not put our hope in money, getting a
better job, people, pastors, prophets but in God.
Now we are going to call upon Jesus and
He will listen.
Now we are going to seek Him and we will
find him.
Let’s search God with all our hearts and
find him.
By Hayley Boud
