Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV) 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.
In life we do not need to know everything as much as we would like to know everything. The biggest part of a Christian’s walk is the matter of faith. Hebrews 11:1 (KJV) Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
A little difficult to understand at first glance but here is another translation in Hebrews 11:1 (TLB) what is faith? It is the confident assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it up ahead. A little clearer?
It does not work for us to want to choose Jesus and yet we are faltering in our faith. It just does not work that way. We will undergo different challenges that will cause us to see beyond our circumstances, the challenges will cause us to have the necessary faith to see beyond and into future happenings, in other words at some point our faith will allow our truth to come forth. We are told in very simple language that without faith we cannot please God. So we need to know in our hearts that no matter what we feel or see that God has a special plan for our lives. While we live here in this temporary zone God has a plan, but his ultimate plan for our lives is to join him in the place he has prepared for us. Understanding this promise and plan requires faith.
When we recieve an answer to something we have prayed about in earnest, what kind of feeling does it gives us – doesn’t it make us feel hopeful that God is looking out for us and he is real? That is a part of God’s plan in our lives, he wants us to be able to use this touch and declare his goodness so others will come to know him. He wants us to live demonstrating that hope to others – because there are too many hopeless people around. People who have been overtaken by the enemy and are unable to see their way through the murkiness of this dark world. God wants us to give this hope to others and bring them into the light.
His plans of prospering us will become evident when we have faith and do what is required in our lives to satisfy our needs here on earth. Too many times we turn to God for things that we can do for ourselves and all we need to do is step out in faith knowing that God has our back. It is not good to know that we are made in God’s image and live a life of defeat. That is nowhere in God’s plan for our lives. How can we be made in God’s image and cannot pay our bills. How can we be credible and live an authentic Christian life if we have to hide from bill collectors. That is not in God’s plan of prospering his people. It comes back to the matter of faith.
Faith and action makes a perfect combination – it is not enough to sit back and have faith that will move a mountain if you are not going to start chipping away at parts of the mountain yourself. We know God is capable of giving us all we need but if we simply muster up all the faith in the world without lifting a finger, do we believe that we will be rewarded? We are all required to do something and believe in faith that what we are doing will yield the required result as long as its God’s will for our lives. We also need to understand that while exercising our faith we should also move in complete assurance that God has our back and he will close the doors that need to be closed and open wide those that need to be opened and more so believe that the ones that are opened wide will cause us to prosper beyond our wildest dreams.
We have to believe God when he makes a promise towards us and we have to know with unmistakable faith that all things are coming together for our good just the way God intended it. We have to speak that truth in our lives that God has a great plan for us, a plan that will prosper us and not harm us, one that gives us hope and an awesome future. We have to speak these words over our lives so when the enemy tries to implant lies in our minds we can counteract them with our knowledge of God’s plans for us.
So many times when we assess our lives and nothing seems to be happening, perhaps we should examine our selves and see if we truly believe God’s plans towards us. There is nothing wrong with us asking God what is happening in our life, why we are not seeing a manifestation of his goodness. Before we ask that question we should first ensure we are living in a manner that opens us up to the things we desire; it calls for self examination. If God’s promises are not evident in our lives we may be harboring something in our midst that goes contrary to his promises. We might be placing other gods before him. When we think about other gods, we need to understand that a god is anything we give more attention to than our true God. Our gods today are the cable television that we are affixed to, or our gadgets, the computer- the cellular phones – magazines that focus on our bodies and the ideal life – the music that we listen to and the many more un-Godly distractions that have infiltrated themselves in the midst of our lives most times unknown to us. The Bible clearly tells us that anything that removes the focus from God is a god. Philippians 3:19 (TLB) their future is eternal loss, for their god is their appetite: they are proud of what they should be ashamed of; and all they think about is this life here on earth.
We have to be careful how we operate in the physical if we are expecting spiritual and supernatural manifestations to become evident in our lives. The good life God has planned for us is not one-sided. It calls for proactivity on our part. We cannot want to accommodate the things of the world and still expect God to be at work in our lives. It does not work that way, God cannot be all that he wants to be for us in a space that is filled with the wrong outlook on life.
