Plans!

“Let the godly sing for joy…the Lords plans stand firm forever; his intentions can never be shaken.” (Psalm 33:1 & 11)

Food For Thought: No matter what you have gone through in the past, or are going through today; no matter what you will face tomorrow, or this week nor next month; no matter how uncertain you are about the distant future, you can be sure of this:

You have cause for great joy.

Why? Because the Lord has some great plans for you! The prophet Jeremiah said it so eloquently and beautifully when he passed on these words from God himself to his people,

“I know the plans I have for you; plans to bless you and to prosper you, to give you a hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

Now remember, Jeremiah wrote those encouraging words in some pretty dire times in the history of Judah. Things were worse than bad. Judah’s kings had led the people into evil. The priesthood was rotten to the core. The majority of the prophets were proclaiming that everything was going to be okay when things were not. Judah’s enemies were breathing down her neck—Egypt on the one side and Babylon on the other were racing to see which would crush God’s people. Things didn’t look so hot when Jeremiah brought that message from the Lord to this nation on the brink of disaster.

And things may not look so hot for you right now. You may feel you are on the brink of disaster. But even if your circumstances are crummy right now, with no end in sight, you can still rejoice because the plans of the Lord for your life are still on track. They are immutable. They cannot be shaken, weakened, or altered by one degree by the things you are going through.

“The Lord’s plans for you stand firm forever.”

So rejoice. Of course, pray, obey and do your best to live a God-honoring life—that’s your part. But while you’re at it, rejoice—everything’s going to be okay for you today, this week, and for the rest of your life. In fact, it’s going to be better than okay, because the Lord’s plans for you are far more than just okay. The Apostle Paul put it best when he described them this way in I Corinthians 2:9,

“No eye has seen, ear has heard, mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”

God has you in his hands. He’s got your life under control. He knows the plans he has for you, and they good are beyond your wildest imagination. Since that’s the case, why not do as the Psalmist advised,

Good people, cheer God!
Right-living people sound best when praising.
Use guitars to reinforce your Hallelujahs!
Play his praise on a grand piano!
Invent your own new song to him;
give him a trumpet fanfare.
For God’s Word is solid to the core;
everything he makes is sound inside and out.
He loves it when everything fits,
when his world is in plumb-line true.
(Psalm 33:1-5)

Prayer: Oh Lord, in you do I put my confidence. You are my hope, you are my future, and you are good. So today I rejoice; I rejoice in your goodness, in your loving-kindness and in your immutable promises of blessing.

One More Thing… “In our sad condition our only consolation is the expectancy of another life.” —Martin Luther