“I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord our God. We pack all sorts of pieces of our lives into this often misused and abused Word of the Lord. We rightly assure one another, “God has
a
plan for your life.” But that does not sound quite the same as “God has plans for your life.” Either way, God has a name for the plan(s): Jesus.
We heard early on of plan Jesus. “A woman will bear a child who will crush the deceiver’s head.” Yet even before the beginning “God chose us in Christ Jesus to be holy and blameless before the God and Father of our Lord” (Ephesians 1:3-4). Big plans indeed, God chose us to participate in Plan Jesus!
We did not choose God to participate in the plans we make for ourselves. We do not need to justify stage 4 cancer or graduating with a 4.0 as part of God’s plan for me. Those pieces fit neatly and sometimes not so neatly into the package wherein God causes all things to work for the good of those participating in Plan Jesus (Romans 8:28-30).
Sometimes, like Moses and Miriam, Jephtha’s daughter and King Josiah, Queen Esther and Mother Mary, and Peter and Saul, God may ask us to play a particular part in Plan Jesus (thus “plans”) but it is always, only Plan Jesus. There is no other Plan given in heaven and on earth by whom we might be saved. Only in Jesus do we experience welfare even in the midst of calamity.
Jesus is God’s plan for your life, my life, and our life together. Now maybe you have your own plans and you’re even inclined to include Jesus. When Peter suggested as much saying Jesus could not die after confessing Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus told Peter, “Get behind me Satan for you are not setting your mind on God’s interest’s but man’s” (Mark 8:33). Jeremiah had a Word from the Lord for those intent on following their own plans (even when we magnanimously include God): “Behold, I am fashioning calamity against you and devising a plan against you” (18:11).
God, however, is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Even the plan against us is designed to get us to turn back to Plan Jesus, the plans God has for us. The Holy Spirit works hard through the Word of the Lord to open the eyes of our hearts to see the riches of God’s plans for us in Christ. Yet too often we apparently don’t think Plan Jesus is enough as we want God to make our lives something more than what they simply, yet profoundly are in Christ: holy, righteous, satisfied, content, joy-filled, and peace-full.
On the cross Jesus said he completed God’s plan, “It is finished.” Now God will bring to completion the work started in us, conforming us to the very image of Jesus, so that in the day we see Jesus face to face, we will be like Jesus: completely sated with God’s love in all our body, all our mind, all our heart, all our soul. Now that sounds like a plan – God’s plans – who could ask for anything more?
Rev. Dr. David Brockhoff
Holy Trinity – Masaryktown, FL
