I KNOW THE PLANS I HAVE FOR YOU
Jeremiah 29:10-13 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.
At this time Jeremiah was still in Jerusalem and was sending a letter of encouragement to those in exile. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have had family and friends killed in the siege, and then to be taken to a foreign country to live among people that didn’t ask for you to be there or want you there. I would think that it would be easy to give up and want to die, but for most Hebrews even that wasn't an option. Their freedom was at least temporally taken from them, and all familiar surroundings and way of life was gone. Even the language must have been different, so they had to as quickly as possible learn the language where they were sent. All normally was vanished from their life.
Now Jeremiah was telling them that the Lord Almighty wanted them to make the best of a bad situation. They were to build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produced. They were to marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for their sons and give their daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. They were to increase in number and not decrease. They were to seek the peace and prosperity of the city that the Lord had sent them to. Then he added that they were to pray for the city that they were in, because if it prospered then, they would prosper too.
I am sure that they were thinking how can I pray for someone that has done such terrible things to my country, my friends, family and myself? For some of the Hebrews I am sure they only wanted to cause trouble, and try to escape back to their Promised Land. Instead of praying that God would bless their captors, they wanted to kill them. But this was not God’s command. The reason for it was that it wasn’t the Babylonians that had really brought this all about. It was the Lord, the very God that the Hebrews had forsaken to worship idols. This made it even worse as they must have thought, “Why should we listen to the Lord after what he did to us?” For many of the Hebrews the Lord was as much their enemy as the Babylonians. But the Lord wasn’t their enemy any more than a loving father that had to discipline his beloved child. The only reason God had to punish the Hebrews was that they refused to repent of turning to worship idols, and return to him. Ezekiel 18:23 says, “Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?’”
In everyone's life there will be sorrows, misfortune and certainly death that will cause a person to doubt God’s integrity and love for them. Many times prayers will not be answered the way the person wanted, and there will be times when God will correct or punish us in hopes we will turn from our sinfulness and do what is right. It will be at these times when we have to decide if we want to continue our relationship with the Lord. And like many marriages the quickest means is divorce. As the Bride of Christ we can divorce ourselves from Jesus. It is all a matter of the heart. We simply harden our heart toward Jesus and that settles it! What we must remember is that God does not hate us! God loves us! Sometimes he has to love us so much that he will risk our love for him by punishing us. For every person God has plans to bless us, and bring eternal joy and happiness with him. What we must remember is there is freedom in creation. If we are not seeking God’s protection and help from the Lord, then he will not force it upon us.
Last week I heard a person on the radio telling how her son after many years of going to church, has now become an atheist. I was easy to hear the brokenness of her heart. She said that she and her husband just couldn’t understand why he had given up on the Lord. I think that chances are in some ways he felt that God had terribly let him down or as several denominations teach that God is in absolute control. I am sure in his thinking as in many others believe that God brings the bad as well as the good in their life, and if this is the case who wants to believe in a God that does. So for him and many others the answer is simple, and that is just not to believe in him. After all in their thinking what does it matter anyway. Bad things are still going to happen either way if there is a God or not! The sad thing to all of this is that not only is there a God, but he loves us more than we can understand. He wants to bless us, but he cannot if we are in rebellion to him. If he did, we would never turn from our sinfulness. We can be just like the many that were exiled to Babylon, and refuse correction and turn to another god. What that young man and many others needs to remember is that real love is willing to risk losing love if it means helping the ones that they love. This is what some call tough love. I think it is Godly love.
Are you struggling with your relationship with God? Well, remember that the bottom line is God loves you infinitely more than you love him, and he wants only to bless you. Maybe what you need to do is crawl up onto his lap, and let him put his arms around you while he heals your heart with his wonderful love for you!
Prayer: Lord, correction is never easy. Please help us to always remember how much you love us in spite of what we may be going through. You certainly proved your love for us on Calvary’s cross!
