God’s Plans

Jeremiah 29:11 is a familiar scripture, quoted often by those who are hanging on to a word of encouragement and hope. It is no doubt that it is a wonderful promise. The problem with taking one scripture and hanging all your hopes and dreams on it, is that if you take it out of context you might miss out on a very important criteria.

Such is the case with Jeremiah 29:11 – if you look at the verse just before it, vs. 10 you see that it really seems they go together:

“This is God’s Word on the subject: “As soon as Babylon’s seventy years are up and not a day before, I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.”Jeremiah 29:10-11

When you read these two verses it is easy to see that they go together – so if vs 11 is going to happen, it looks as if vs 10 has to happen first! God is speaking to the children about a specific time period of Babylonian captivity. I believe that as we put a handle on this very powerful verse, it is essential that we also recognize that everything vs. 11 says about God knowing what He’s doing, and more than that has our future all planned out, says also in vs. 10 that we are going to have wait our period of captivity out – because God is going to move in His time and “not a day before.”

Being one that likes the fast track- this is not the best news to me, but after forty years of walking with the Lord, I know that it is true!
God has a set time, place, and season for His every event in our lives. When we learn this, we cease from our labor, and we begin to rest in Him! We begin to know that during the time of our waiting, this is not wasted time – it is a season where we can learn valuable lessons and develop character that would not come, without going through it.

God’s plans surpass ours, God’s wisdom surpasses our – and it’s for sure, God’s blessings, when they manifest – surpass anything we can hope for or even imagine.

God Bless You,
Maria