God's
Good Plan Bible
verses: Jeremiah 29: 11-13 11 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. 12 Then you will call on me and come and
pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when
you seek me with all your heart. Human rights
activist Martin Luther King, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, wrote: “The
ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience,
but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” The true self
of God’s man will manifest in hard times than in prosperous and comfortable
times.
Icebergs
reveal only a small portion of the surface, but we know that there is an
enormously large area hidden under it.
I bless you to discover in God's way the spiritual potential that is unseen inside
of us and to walk with the Lord and experience wonderful workings of faith.
Today I will
share with you about the prophet Jeremiah following Isaiah from last week. Jeremiah was a prophet, a contemporary
of Isaiah. However, Jeremiah was called to be a prophet of God 60 years after
Isaiah's death. Jeremiah's work as a prophet was never easy. He had to endure
hardships so much that he was called as the “weeping prophet.”
God does not
give up His people and delivers His message of hope through Jeremiah. Last
week’s Bible verses were about a prophecy about the future, this week’s verses specifically
mention what the future will look like with that prophecy. I want to
summarize some of God's words in today’s text.
The first
thing to remember is that God restores peace and faith in difficult and dark
situations. We must remember that His plan is in helping God's people. Let’s look
at verse 11 again. 11 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.
Our lives
are like this. We are sometimes exhausted and collapsed and therefore no longer
see hope, but rather spend time in the dark. There are times when doubts and fears come to you thinking
God is not with us. But while God can bring His people through suffering, He
always has a wonderful plan for our lives at the end.
Do you experience
problems and difficulties in your lives? We are all weak humans, so we can fall
and get exhausted. But
trust that God is intervening in all our present circumstances. God will give
us peace and faith, not fear and doubt. Secondly,
once we restore God’s peace and faith, He begins the next step to cleanse our
spirit and show us the true hope and a future that God planed for us. The second half of verse 11 says: “plans to give you hope and a future.”
I bless you
to have faith that God can clean and renew our lives instantly in His way. When we encounter difficulties in our
lives of faith, we should remember that God is not trying to give us hardships.
We should have a faith in His plan to make our lives purer and more complete,
to give us growth and maturity, and to give us hope for the future. I bless
you in the name of the Lord to build a community of faith that encourages and
protects each other, and that looks to the future with hope. Finally,
God seeks people of prayer in His guidance. When we cry out to God with all our
heart and pray earnestly, He provides for our needs in encouragement and
blessing through His works for the good.
Let's look
again at verses 12-13. 12 Then you will call on me and come and
pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
God seeks
people of prayer and restores encouragement and blessings to the community
through them. If there
is a breakdown or difficulty in our lives, if we are exhausted from the busy
and demanding reality, I bless you to remember that your love for prayer to God
must be restored first before it is to be transformed into hope for the future.
I bless you to be a community of faith that believes and acts in God's goodness,
and that the prayer of encouragement, forgiveness, and love is restored
standing firmly in beliefs that God will provide fairly and abundantly.
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