God's Plans for Us

A lot of us have memorized Jeremiah 29:11 about God having good plans for us. I came across and article by Joshua Harris about this verse in the context of the chapter it appears in. Here is part of Jeremiah 29:

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." [...] 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."

- Jeremiah 29:4-7, 10

The Israelites were in exile and they were baffled about why this has happened. Then Jeremiah brought word of God's plan: they would be in this strange land for 70 years and they should make lives for themselves there instead of putting all on hold until they return.

We, too, find ourselves in a strange land of sorts -- dealing with things we didn't expect to deal with at our age (or ever) and most of us expect, barring a miracle, that we will be dealing with these things for the rest of our lives, needing to adjust to a "new normal". But we, like they, have a promise from God:

"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."

- Jeremiah 29:11

Our lives mostly don't seem good now -- we don't like to think about how God's plan might involve discipline! From the article by Joshua Harris:

When we think of God doing us good, we don't often think of trial and difficulty. And yet what we learn from Jeremiah 29:1-14 is that God uses discipline for our good. Sometimes this discipline is God's loving response to sin that He wants us to turn from. Other times His discipline is like a coach who pushes an athlete to work harder so that he or she can perform at a higher level. In either case, God's discipline is redemptive—it is for our good.

God does have a purpose in His plans; Jeremiah 29 continues:

"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 29:12-14

Many of us have found that in our illnesses, we do seek God with an urgency or sense of desperation and deep need that we did not have before we were ill. And we do find Him. We have not yet been "brought back from captivity", but we have His promise; that this, too, will pass.