Dinner with Jesus - Week 7
October 26, 2008
Jesus, Do You Have A Plan For My Life?
Jeremiah 29:11-12

 I had lunch with a friend a few weeks ago and he was talking about a buddy of his who had just lost his job because of the economy. He had just broken up with girl that he had planned to marry. He was diagnosed with some health problems. Things are tough right now. And my friend said to me, “It just goes to show you that life isn’t all about money and stuff. But you don’t realize it until it’s gone.” I said, “You know, your buddy needs to know that God has a plan for his life and that when he gets on board with that plan, his life will have real meaning and purpose.” And my friend sat there pondering those words and said, “yeah, I guess your right.”  But it was almost as if he was saying, “But how to do you know that that plan is?”

REACTIONS TO GOD’S PLAN

Whenever I make the statement, “God has a plan for your life”, I get all kinds of reactions.

There are some people that say – “I don’t believe that God has a plan for me” – These people believe that God created the world, spun it into being, but He is not concerned with the individual lives of people. They would say, “Hey, there are 6.4 billion people in the world – you mean to tell me God knows each person and has a customized life for each one?”

Other people say  – “Man, if I’m experiencing God’s plan, then He’s a lousy planner because my life stinks right now! If it’s part of God’s plan that I loose 25% of my retirement in the stock market – or if it’s God’s plan that my wife left me – or if it’s God’s plan that I’m struggling with depression than I don’t want it!”

Some say – “I’d like to know God’s plan for my life, but I don’t even know where to begin! How would I ever discover God’s plan for my life?”

Now listen, one of these reactions may be you. You may be frustrated with your life and the direction it’s going. You may feel like life is spinning out of control, or like you are adrift in life with no clear direction. You may be a business man looking at the current economic climate and wondering how you are going to make ends meet. Or you may be a teenager wondering what job to pursue or who God wants you to marry. And the Bible says that while you may not be experiencing God’s plan for your life right now, you can discover it and find meaning and purpose in life. And I want to show you how to do that right now. Take your Bibles and open it up to Jeremiah chapter 29. I want to tell you a story about a man and God’s plan.

BAD TIMES, GOOD PLAN

Jeremiah lived in turbulent times. 

 – Assyrian army devastated the northern part of Israel, carried away it’s leaders. The lower part of Israel- called Judah was still in tact but under Assyrian occupation and paying high taxes and subject themselves to the Assyrian worship of foreign gods. Now during this time, Hezekiah was king in Judah. Godly man – chose to honor God a man named Manasseh became king in Judah. He lead to the people to trust God, tear down the godless places of worship – this devotion came at a high cost. Assyria didn’t take Jerusalem, but it devastated the country, turning into a wasteland. Soon Hezekiah’s son took over as king – Manasseh, he had a different approach. He stood against everything his father had stood for! He re-instated the Assyrian gods, pagan practices  - terrible practice of child sacrifices! It was one of the darkest, cruelest and worst times in Israel’s history.

But in that darkness, two men’s birth brought a dawn of hope. One was named Josiah. Josiah would soon become king of Israel and launch a national revival turning people’s hearts back to God. He discovered the scriptures during a remodeling project of the temple and he read it to the people and a great revival broke out. It was amazing. The pendulum was swinging back to the heart of God. The other man’s name was Jeremiah -  a prophet and preacher who would begin his ministry in worst of times and was preaching and leading in a time of turbulence and unrest. And with this man, Jeremiah, our story begins.

During the national revival under Josiah, Assyria didn’t intervene because it had other matters at hand. The edges of it’s kingdom were beginning to unravel and another world superpower was coming on the scene – Babylon. Before long the Babylonians defeated Assyria and the Egyptians and had most of the known world under their control. Their leader was a man named Nebuchadnezzar.

In fact, today, the old palace of Nebuchadnezzar is in Baghdad, Iraq. And it was said that Saddam Hussein’s palace was place next to the old palace of the ancient Babylonian king because Hussein had visions of rebuilding that Babylonian kingdom to it’s former glory!

While Babylon was looming on the horizon, things in Judah were getting worse. King Josiah had been replaced and the people were in a moral and spiritual free fall. They began reverting back to their pagan practices. The more Jeremiah preached against their sin and rebellion, the more they hated him for it. They tried to kill him. They threw him in a pit. They imprisoned him. They tried their best to silence him, but he continued to preach. Finally, Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Babylonians and their best and brightest people were carried off into captivity. And with them went all the hope that Israel had in God or in the future. If ever they wondered where was God or what God’s plan was, it was then!

But as Jeremiah watched his people being transported off to Babylon, to live in a foreign country and as he watched Jerusalem lay in rubble, he wrote a letter to the deported people.

“This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.” Jeremiah 29.1

And in the letter he told them to not resist their stay in Babylon, but to embrace it. To build homes, have children, to pray for God’s peace on the city. And he tells them why.

“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.” Jeremiah 29.10-13

Look at those words again. “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.”  When everything seems to be in chaos. When their world was crashing in. When they were overwhelmed with economic disaster, when their enemies had devastated them, when it seemed that God was unconcerned about them….God said through Jeremiah – “I know the plans I have for you.”

Maybe you have thought that God has forgotten you. Listen again to his words, “I know the plans I have for you”. As I have spending time just read and praying this week, I came across this verse in my daily reading. And as I meditated on those words – some things came to be about how to know God’s plan for your life.

The first thing you need to know is that God cares for you. God is for you, not against you. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans church “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (RM 8.31) Jeremiah wanted the people to know that God was for them. The people were thinking - “God has rejected us, He is against us” but they were wrong. God was for them. Now let’s go back to that conversation I had with my friend over lunch. What his buddy needs to know and what you need to know is that God cares for you. God is concerned with the details of your life. Jesus said that the Father in heaven knows the hair on your head, when you rise and when you go to bed at night. He is intimately acquainted with everything about you! He knows your inner thoughts, dreams, worries, fears. He also knows your potential, your gifts and talents and the impact you can make in the lives of others. God know you because he created you. And He is for you. You may be thinking that God is against you. That God is punishing you because of problems that you are facing in your life, but the Bible says that God loves you with an undying love!

The second thing you need to know is that God has a plan for you. Most of us have a plan for our lives! We know what we want to do, what we want to accomplish, the kind of life we want to live. Many times we never stop to think that God has a plan for our lives. The Bible says, “It is God who directs the lives of his creatures, everyone’s life is in his power.” (Job 12.10 TEV). God has a plan for you. He created you for a specific purpose to accomplish specific things in this life. The Bible says, “For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2.10)That means that God has something planed for you to do! What a thought! God had a plan for the Israelites. God knew exactly what he was doing with them. He knew that they would be in captivity for 70 years, then He was going to bring them back to their land. He knew He would empower them to rebuild Jerusalem again. It was a good plan. It wasn’t a plan to harm them, but to prosper them. To help them. To give them an eternal hope and a future. God had a plan all along. But they couldn’t see it. They couldn’t see it because of all the trouble they were facing.  

Now listen, God has a plan for your too. He has a blueprint for your life. He has things for you to accomplish. His plan is a good plan. It’s not a plan designed to hurt you, discourage you. It’s a plan for eternal hope and a solid future. Jesus called it “abundant living”! But you might not be able to see it, because all you can see are problems.  

You might ask, “Why does God allow problems in my life? Why doesn’t he just put his plan in motion?”

The Israelites felt that God had abandoned them, that God had forgotten them. But in their trouble they realized that it was the other way around – they had forgotten God, they had abandoned him. For generations they had gone their own way. They had worshipped pagan gods, they had lived their own lives in moral and spiritual rebellion against God. And suddenly when all they were living for was stripped away, they realized that what they really needed was God in their life.

Let me ask you a personal question. Could it be that God has allowed some troubles in your life in order to cause you to look to Him and cry out to him. Sometimes it takes loosing the things we love to put God first in our lives and begin to realize that He is the most important things in our lives!

While you may be facing hard times now, God’s plan’s are always for the good in your life – to prosper you not to harm you, to give you a hope and future.

God’s plan is easier to find than you think.

Finding God’s plan begins with seeking God’s face. “Seek me” “find me” “seek me with all your heart”. Circle those phrases. These people had to come to a place where they would seek after God more than anything else in life.

God’s plan isn’t reveal all at once, a big book dropping from the sky. No, God’s plan is reveal one day at a time as you are walking in a personal relationship with Him.

When you are in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, then as you are reading his Word daily, seeking him in prayer, as you are building healthy relationships with other believers and seeking their godly counsel and you ask God to

You can waste your life living for yourself, trying to make your plan work. Or you can optimize your life by living out the plan God has for your life!