Thursday, October 27, 2011

Plans for You

Jeremiah 29: 11
"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."

Jeremiah 29:12-14
"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. I will be found by you." declares the Lord....


God has plans for our life and those plans give us hope.  To live out God's plans means we have to call on him, we have to seek him.  When we call on him, he hears us, when we seek him, we will find him.  He is waiting for us to reach for him so that he can fulfill the plans he has for us.  Plans to prosper us-not to harm us. 
The choices we make affect whether we receive the full blessing of God's plan.  When we choose not to follow his instructions we are not seeking him and therefore his PERFECT plan for our life will not be received in our life.  When we follow after sin, when we make that choice...we are not living God's design for our life. God is our creator-he knows how we think, act and respond--he knows more about us than we know about ourselves.  Do you think he has good plans for us, Do you think he has given us boundaries and instructions for a reason?  Think about instruction manuals for cars or warning labels on hairdryers--the creators of those items know those things inside and out--they know how they operate in design with the plan they had for them.  They know what happens when they are operated against that plan--the warnings and instructions are there to help you get the best results, to keep you from getting harmed.
God has a design and plan for your life and that plan is not to harm you--the instructions and boundaries, the warnings and cautions that he has given us are there so that we can get the best results in our lives, so that we can live out God's best plan for our life--so that we will not get harmed.  Call to God and he will answer you, seek God and you will find him, follow his instructions and you will reap the benefits, follow his plan and he will prosper you.

(Thank you Debbie Lamm Bray for starting the hairdryer analogy!!)