Jeremiah 29:10 – 14 has always been an inspiring passage for me — a passage that caused me to pause and reevaluate how I was viewing my life at that moment.  I remember one time in particular when I was driving back to work after a radiation treatment for lymphoma.  I was feeling down; it was my second time being diagnosed with lymphoma, the third cancer diagnosis overall.  The radiation treatments left me feeling fatigued.  Actually I was emotionally drained as well as physically drained.  

Driving back to work I passed by a strip mall along the highway.  A jewelry store had an electronic sign that flashed advertisements for their store.  I had seen it many times before, but this time the sign was stuck on one particular message: Jer 29:11.  It caught my attention because I was familiar with the passage.  Also, the sign didn’t change like it usually did.  It was stuck on Jer 29:11.

I’m glad the sign was stuck, because I was stuck too － in a mental and emotional rut.  Physically I wasn’t feeling well, so the “rut” was deeper.  After each radiation treatment, I would sit in the parking lot for a while just to clear my head and regain my strength.  And while I sat, I tried to think about the future, but all I saw was uncertainty.  Dreams that were clear only a month ago, were now just a blur.  My dreams and hopes were stolen by the uncertainty of cancer.

But then I saw the sign…stuck on a message for me…God had a plan for me…a good one too.  A plan that had a future and a hope.  Thank God for broken signs. 🙂

In life events will happen that can easily throw us in a rut…a “not-so-friendly” phone call from your doctor, the passing of a loved one, the loss of your savings, the “pink slip” from work, bad news about one of your kids.  Crystal clear dreams we had for our future, in a day, can become blurred at best and disappear at worst.  And with the disappearance of our dreams, darkness gives way to discouragement.  

But thank God there is a God who provides hope even in our darkest hour.  This study is about the “Re-Builder” of dreams…the One who can take what seems broken and construct an even better future.  He can do abundantly above all that we can think or ask.  We just have to do three things as part of our “action plan”: trust, listen and obey.

Scriptures Used In This Lesson

Jeremiah 29:10 – 14

Psalms 23:4

Isaiah 55:8 – 13

Romans 8:28 – 30

2 Corinthians 1:3 – 11

There Is A Plan

I’ve heard the phrase, “God has a plan for your life” for years.  It sounded good and comforting, but what does it really mean?  In my mind, I imagined God giving me the things I wanted, something that involved an easy, comfortable and pleasurable life.  No struggles…just a relaxing time on the beach, so to speak, with everything going my way.  That plan was about me and me alone.  But the primary person in God’s plan for your life is God Himself…His vision, His purpose, His glory.  Its not that we don’t benefit from His plan, but He is the primary focus in some way.  We, and many times others, receive benefits from God implementing His plan in our lives which glorifies His name.  

God has a couple of “ultimate goals” for His plans.  First, God’s ultimate goal is to glorify His name, i.e., to reveal Himself in new and deeper ways, to demonstrate His power, love, faithfulness, peace, righteousness, justice and other attributes of His character.  To declare to His children (you) and the unbelieving world that He is the one true God and that He is real.  And He does this by working in our lives.

With that said, we have to realize that God’s plan for our lives doesn’t always involve “living on the beach” in ease, comfort and pleasure.  Sometimes He is glorified the most as we are sustained through and delivered from hard times and difficulties. In Psalm 23, David speaks of his “walk through the valley of the shadow of death”.  He didn’t run around the valley, but walked through it.  “Valley living” as well as “beach living” are often parts of God’s plan.  Just as there are seasons in the weather, there are “valley” and “beach” seasons in our lives.

His plan for our lives often develops over weeks, months and years, thus sometimes making it hard to see what’s really going on.  Read Isaiah 55:8 – 9.  God’s ways are so far above our ways that often times we can’t see what He’s doing.  We can’t see the plan developing.  All we see is our current circumstance.  But that’s where faith comes in.  We have to trust His word and His character and His intention for us. (Trust, the first step in our action plan).  I heard a minister say one time, “If you can’t see His hand, trust His heart.”  This is why knowing God on a personal level is so important.  Its a lot easier to trust someone you know and with whom you’ve had a relationship, as opposed to someone you’ve only seen from a distance.

Now we come to the second major goal of God’s plan for our lives.  Read Romans 8:28 – 30.  Verse 29 states that we are being “conformed to the image of His Son”.  To be “conformed” means that we are being made similar to Jesus; that we are gradually being changed to show similar behavior and character traits because we share the same essential nature, the Holy Spirit.  

Back when I was young, it was common for parents to warn their children who were about the go out in public somewhere without them: “Now don’t go out there and ‘act a fool’ (misbehave).  Remember, you represent our family.”  The idea being that the child represented the entire family to the world.  The world would come to know and understand what the family was all about through the behavior of the children.  We are the children of God.  If God wants to reveal Himself to the world through us, we need to be “conformed” to the image of Christ, who is the exact expression of God’s nature. (Hebrews 1:3).  God wants us to be “conformed” and not to “act a fool”.

So the two major goals in God’s plan for out lives: Glorify His name and change us to be more like Christ over time.  Now, more about His plan.

In football, good coaches develop a game plan for each and every game.  They evaluate the strengths and weakness of the players and develop a strategy to win.  Two major keys to successful plays are: 1) individual players listening to the play called by the coach, and 2) players obeying specific instructions based on the play that’s been called.  (Listening and obeying, the 2^nd and 3^rd part of our action plan).  Timing is critical.  When a running play is called, the running back needs to be in the right position at the right time in order for the play to work as designed.  Other members of his team are performing tasks that are designed to make him successful.  He may not see everything they are doing, but if he focuses on his tasks at the appropriate time, the play has the greatest chance of succeeding.  He has to trust that the coach has designed all things to allow him to be successful in his task.

So it is with us.  We may not see everything God is doing “behind the scenes”, but we have to trust that He is working all things out for our good (Romans 8:28 – 30).  Our “number” has been called; we get the ball.  Our job is to listen to His instructions and obey, i.e., do what needs to be done at the specific time, how it needs to be done, and trust that the “coach” has our best interest in mind.

Back to football: In practice, the coach has the team run plays over and over again. He wants to transform them from a group of undisciplined individuals into a well organized, effective team.  The coach even has the team run conditioning drills as part of the “transformation process”.  Hardly anyone likes the conditioning drills because they are hard, exhausting, sometimes painful…but they are necessary.  The successful execution of a play will depend on players being focused on listening and obeying the coach, as opposed to how tired they are.  They need to be “play focused” instead of “self focused”.  So the “painful” parts of practice play a key role in the overall success of the team.  

God’s “transformation” process in our lives which “conforms” us to the image of Christ, sometimes involves painful experiences; sometimes seasons that are hard and exhausting.  But they are opportunities to become more “Christ focused” instead of “self focused”.  Read 2 Corinthians 1:3 – 11.

This passage is a classic from Paul.  Verses 3 – 4 provide insight to our “transformation process”.  As God comforts us through difficult times, we gain the ability to help others who are going through similar experiences.  Have you ever been down and out about a situation, thinking your world is about to fall apart, when all of a sudden you receive that one phone call, text, or email from a friend who says, “I know where you are.  I’ve been there.  I made it, so you can make it.”.  How valuable was that?  How precious was that word of encouragement given at the right time, in the right way?  Now you have the opportunity to provide the same word of encouragement to someone else.  The opportunity may come five years from now, but because God comforted you through someone else, He can now comfort others through you.

Verses 8 – 11 are also important. Paul states that their experiences in Asia were so severe that they “despaired of life itself”.  But this was done, or allowed to happen so that they would not trust in themselves but in God.  They were to be “God focused” instead of “self focused”.

Finally, the coach’s game plan involves specific plays with specific players for specific situations.  If an individual play doesn’t get the desired results, it doesn’t mean that the entire game plan is bad; it just means that adjustments have to be made.  A team doesn’t stop playing the game because of a bad play; they keep going; they keep playing the game because the overall goal is to be ahead in the score at the end of the 4^th quarter.

So it is with us.  God’s game plan for our lives is designed for our overall victory in life and His glory.  He knows that there will be “bad plays” in our lives.  And even times where the other team cheats.  There may be times when we want to throw out the red challenge flag on God and say, “We don’t like that outcome!  We want it changed…immediately!”  But God is not only a good coach, He is the designer of the game.  If we trust Him through all the good plays and bad, and stick with His “game plan”, we will experience victory for ourselves and others in the end.