Are you a person who carefully plans out each day? Or does your day just happen? For most of us, it is hard to go through a day without a plan of action—and it is even more difficult to think of living your life that way. It is one thing to fritter away an afternoon because you haven’t given it any forethought, but it’s tragic to fritter away your whole life. God, our creator, is a planner. He planned the blueprint of the universe, the circuit of the stars, the history of redemption, and the course of world history. And He has a plan for my life and yours.
Think of the heroes of the Bible. The Lord mapped out their lives in advance. He gave them skills, gifts, and circumstances that corresponded to His will for them. He had a plan. It’s no accident that Moses was fished out of the Nile River, raised in Pharaoh’s palace, and exiled to the desert for forty years. God customized those events to prepare him for his mission.
Before You Were Born
In chapter 1 of his book, Jeremiah describes his call to ministry: “Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations’” (Jeremiah 1:4-5).
Jeremiah was a young and inexperienced priest. Upon hearing God’s call, his first reaction was, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth” (Jeremiah 1:6).
But God didn’t want excuses. And though he was later beaten, ridiculed, rejected, and thrown into a muddy cistern, God used Jeremiah in a great way. His prophecies became the basis for the rebirth of Israel, and his writings still speak to us today.
Before you were born, God designed a plan for you that fits into His will. He wants to use you to do big things, though they may not always seem big at the time. Jeremiah questioned whether he was accomplishing anything for God, but little is much when God is in it.
I believe the Lord can do the same with us.
In his book, Who Cares About Love, Dr. Win Arn, one of America’s foremost experts on church growth, tells of his second grade Sunday school teacher. One day she had her pupils form a circle by holding hands. One boy was left out and sat in the corner. In another part of the room, a Bible sat on the table. This teacher asked the students how God’s love could get into their circle. After discussing it, the entire circle of boys shuffled over to the table, and one of the boys touched the Bible. The teacher explained that God’s love could now flow from one boy to the other.
But what of the boy in the corner? He was left out and seemed near tears. The boys opened their circle and began stretching over to the boy in the corner. Finally they were close, and the boy shouted, “You reached me!”
Dr. Arn never forgot the lesson or how it felt. He learned that God’s love flows through people, from one person to the next, and that it’s capable of reaching those outside our “circle.”
I Know the Plans
Another verse reinforces this lesson: “I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV).
When your life is centered in Jesus Christ, His plans for you, plans for your welfare and peace, plans to prosper and use you, will give Him the glory.
Call to Me
One last verse takes this a step further: “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3).
We discover God’s plans for us when we live on our knees, trusting God to do exceedingly abundantly—beyond all we can imagine.
Don’t be afraid of God’s Master Plan for your life. And once you’ve discovered God’s Big Plan, stick with it—and give Him the glory.
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Dr. Jeremiah is the founder and host of Turning Point for God and senior pastor of
Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, California.
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