Jeremiah 29: 11
“For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.”
God had a plan for us from the beginning. Before He created us He made a plan for our success and well-being. I intend to use this week’s devotions to show the plan He had for us and how it has unfolded with time.
It really begins before the Garden of Eden when He conceived us and the earth. He made us an ideal place to live, learn and grow. That was only the beginning, of course, but all through time He had a plan for our welfare, a plan that was not for calamity. By His own admission, it was a plan designed to give us a future and to bathe us in hope continually. Never were we to feel hopeless, mired down in tragedy and misfortune. His plan was for perfect peace, “Shalom” in the Hebrew, which is the all encompassing fullness of everything being as it should be. Shalom is rendered welfare in the New American Standard because the word peace doesn’t incorporate the fullness of meaning, and in fact, paragraphs of text cannot fully convey the complete provision, health, wellness and blessing which is included in the word “Shalom”.
It is a pinnacle word for us though, one which is at the very peak of expression because it describes the plan God had for us. His plan was for a perfect environment provisioned with everything we need and want. More than anything, His plan had us walking hand in hand with Him daily so that we would never have a want in our hearts. We should have never experienced one moment of loneliness, isolation or one unfulfilled second. His plan met all of our physical, emotional and spiritual needs and desires. His plan for us was heaven, heaven here on earth, a safe place where we could bask in His radiance and skip around like hinds on the heights.
The plan became corrupted, but stay tuned as we venture forward, looking deeper into God’s plan for us. Through this brief, but exciting journey, you will come to know, in your heart, where your life with Him is meant to reside today.