“I know the plans I have for you”

Every day we're reading or listening to part of the Bible together and sharing thoughts with you. Today it’s Bern Leckie:

What did I like about today’s passage?

I love where this passage goes, towards a well-known, much quoted reassurance about God’s plans for us. But I think there’s a lesson from its context. We don’t always understand God, hear him or each other correctly. I love that we can learn how to do this, though.

People’s reaction to Jeremiah’s prophecy in chapter 26 is a good example. He tells them what they must do to avoid discipline from God, but their hearing is selective – all they take in is the damnation, “this city will be desolate,” not that they can do something to avoid it. Just as they were about to sentence Jeremiah to death, who stepped in? Some elders had been paying attention, remembered and learned from history, so they could recognise the importance of repentance in the days of Hezekiah. That’s what Jeremiah is talking about! We know it because we have seen it. Others hadn’t seen repentance in action and Jeremiah’s words about it didn’t even register with them.

Maybe that was the problem for Hananiah and the other false prophets too. They had never seen and couldn’t imagine the fall of their nation. It has to carry on! Babylon has to be broken! It didn’t make sense to them that God would lead people into long term exile.

This is what only Jeremiah grasped: God’s plans might be so different from what we expect, so seemingly opposed to things we believe are fixed and unchangeable. But what is important is that they are God’s plans.

What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

God picked Jeremiah to deliver his prophecies because Jeremiah would hear and obey God, even if what he said seemed uncomfortable, unpopular, nonsense and wrong to people.

Yet we know that God loves us. When he has a plan to prosper us, it’s important that we discern this by growing closer to God and learning from what he is doing around us rather than only accepting what seems right to us based on our experience and ideas so far.

What am I going to do differently as a result?

This reminds me of a number of arguments in the church where some people are sure they know God’s will based on traditions, but others are pointing to things they think God is doing that might be surprising. I only want to be guided by God, and not opposition to God, in this sort of thing, but I do expect to “be transformed by the renewing of [my] mind” (Romans 12) as God’s kingdom changes me as well as the world. So, I want to grow my understanding of both who God is forever and what God is doing in fresh ways today.

Who am I going to share this with?

We have some interesting things to discuss in my family about the expression of love in various ways, and how we have seen God working through them.