Page 5 - On The Path January 31

God’s plans fail to meet our expectations
Many quote the promise, “For 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.” The simplicity and hope conveyed in Jeremiah 29:11 belies the reality behind it.
The promise offers spiritual comfort. In context it denies creature comfort.
The message came to the massive num- ber of Hebrews taken by the Babylonians following the fall of Jerusalem. The Babylonians dragged thousands across the wilderness to a foreign country to serve as slaves.
God knew where they were. He addressed their situation through Jeremiah. Before giving the promise, He tells the Hebrews to settle down, make homes in Babylon, marry, plant gardens, get comfortable, they were going to be there for the next 70 years.
Not five, 45 or 65 years. No, for 70 years their children and grandchildren would live in the cruelest of all nations. After seven decades God promised he would bring them back to the Promised Land. Until then, His plan included them settling down in their worst enemy’s homeland.
God’s plans, God’s path for us does not lead straight into all that we might hope and pray to have.
God’s plans usually include difficulties, personally unpredictable circumstances and unforeseeable events.
Three men in the Bible, all chosen early in life to be a leader, exemplify this truth with their lives – Joseph, Moses and David.
The entire family heard all the details of Joseph’s teenage dreams predicting they would bow down to him. They listened with disbelief, jealousy and annoyance.
Gray hair is a crown of glory;
it is gained in a righteous life.
Proverbs 16:31
and prison could Joseph confidently say that. In ret- rospect, he could see God’s plan. God’s plan insured Jacob’s family would survive a massive, lengthy famine. The plan just had a couple hitches – to accom- plish it, Joseph walked to Egypt with a steel collar
Before he went to the head of the pack, Joseph landed in the pit, in slavery and in prison. Decades later, when his brother came to beg mercy for selling him into slavery, he said, “God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you on the earth.” Gen. 45:7-8.
Only with faith that carried him through 20 years of slavery
and buried the Egyptian. He thought no one knew.
Others let him know they did know. Moses ran for his life. The former member of the royal family spent the next 40 years in the desert tending sheep.
Moses thought God had placed him in a position to rescue the Israelis. God had, but God’s plan first included taking him from the palace to the sheep pen. Forty years later, at God’s command, Moses reluctantly returned to Egypt to demand Pharaoh let his people go. Through the blessing of God’s plan, Moses had to drag a resistant, reluctant, whining group of slaves to freedom.
With the family watching, Samuel anointed teenage David as the next king of Israel. The next day David went back to watching sheep. David did not go straight to the throne. He gained notoriety for slaying the giant Goliath and King Saul even gave David his armor.
The honor did not last. God’s plan
for David included years of camping in the hills around his home country. The nation’s outcasts joined him. Captured by the Philistines he faked mental illness. All his men’s goods and families were cap- tured when they left to fight elsewhere. They fought another battle to get them back.
For years, David hid from the murder- ous, jealous rage of King Saul. Even after he became king of part of Israel, David had to wait another seven years before he ruled the entire country. God’s plan for David included eternal kingship and the promised Messiah from his descendants. And yet, God refused to let David build the first temple in His honor. That was
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around his neck. He served as a slave. He sat in jail for years so he could interpret the dreams of Pharaoh’s butler. He waited a couple more years for the butler to tell Pharaoh about the dream interpreter. Only after all that did he begin to see those long ago promises of leadership fulfilled.
God had a plan for Moses. God pro- tected Moses as a baby and transported him into the household of the man who wanted him destroyed as an infant. Moses became a family member in his enemy’s household. As an adult, realizing his roots and position of authority as a member of the ruling family, Moses wanted to change the circumstances for his people. He took matters into his own hands. Coming on an Egyptian whipping a Hebrew, he killed
• HUDSON •
Always do your best. What you plant
now, you will
harvest later.
El Dorado NEWS-TIMES – Sunday, January 31, 2016 – 5
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