"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear 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."
Jeremiah 29:11-14a
My plans aren't God's. I've been finding that out the hard way lately. I think we as Christians have this false notion that God will give us all the things that we think will make us happy because we're his children and he loves us. Which is true, but sometimes not in the way we want. God blesses me each and every day with an immeasurable amount of things that make me happy, and sometimes I don't even realize it. I just take it for granted.
It's easy to praise God when he brings about the plans that I have for myself. He blesses me so much by doing this that I've just come to expect it. But what happens when the plans I have don't match up with God's plans? Instead of viewing God as bigger, I view him as smaller. I think that if God is God and he wants to bless me, why didn't he follow my plans and make me happy? I think that my plans are better than his, and in doing this I make him "smaller."
God isn't small, though.
His sovereignty is something hard to grasp, and I don't think I'm ever really going to figure it out. Not in this life. The correct response to not getting what I planned is to step back and realize that God is so much bigger and greater than me. He has my best interests in mind, even if they're painful and it hurts. Even if it doesn't make me happy. But he doesn't want to make me happy because of my plans. How does saying, "Look at how God gave me what I planned for my life!" give him the maximum amount of glory? The subject of the praise is my plans. That's not what God wants. I exist to give him glory. He wants me to look at my life and say, "I could not have ever dreamed or imagined anything like this. My plans are so stupid and won't make me happy. God will. And his plans will. God is good to me, no matter what, and his plans are so much better than mine."
Life is like a play. God is the writer and director. We're just the actors. We don't decide what is said or done; the writer and director tells us what to do and we do it. And at the end of the show, it's God who gets the applause.
God knows what's best and I don't. I don't like to hear that. But Jeremiah says that God's plans are for my good, and they give me a hope and a future. God doesn't want to make me miserable. He gives me good gifts which make me happy. But he also takes them away, and I need to learn to be happy in that, too.
It's like the song says...he gives and takes away, but my heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name.
It all comes down to not living for myself. I belong to God now. He bought me at a price. And he's a good father. He knows what's best, and I don't. I don't find my fulfillment in getting what I planned; I find my fulfillment in Christ and throwing myself at the foot of the cross during all circumstances.
The second part of this passage is also really comforting. When God does what he plans, it will cause me to draw close to him. In the joy and in the pain. When I cry out, he will hear me. When my heart doesn't know where to go and I've hit my rock bottom, all I have to do is look up and I'll find my deliverance. God isn't far off and unknown. He's capable of being found. But he's also bigger and greater than we could ever imagine, and so are his plans. And this is what we can fall back on when our plans don't work out. The truth is, our plans probably won't make us happy and might even cause harm to us and the people around us. God's plans are so much better.
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