June 2020 — pg. 27
I cannot imagine anything being more
stressful for you than being hurled into
the middle of a difficult situation without a
plan — unless, of course, a plan had been
devised for that difficult situation ahead of
time, but you neglected to prepare yourself
for that difficult situation in advance.
Often, when God’s people find themselves
in difficult situations, it is not because God
has abandoned them there without a plan.
Instead, they may feel abandoned in those
situations because they have not followed
the instructions given by God, which were
intended to help them in the day of the
difficult situation.
God does indeed have a comprehensive
plan for us. We can find His plan in the
book of Jeremiah. There the prophet says,
“‘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”
(Jeremiah 29:11).
The term plans pictures a series of steps to
be carried out or goals to be accomplished.
God’s plans are comprehensive, they are
wide-ranging, and His plans are complete.
These plans are to be carried out in concert.
Furthermore, God spelled His plans out in
three ways. In this article, we will explore
God’s short-term plan, His intermediate
plan, and His long-term plan for us.
God’s Short-Term Plan
God’s short-term plan is His present,
or immediate plan for us. The term plan
can also be defined as a pattern. A pattern
is something intended to be a guide for
making something else.
For example, Cheryl and Angela were
friends of mine from high school. The sisters
were seamstresses who regularly brought
dress patterns to school. The girls would
flock around them to choose just the right
pattern for the upcoming occasion. Cheryl
and Angela would take the girls shopping
for the appropriate material. Before we
knew it, Cheryl and Angela had brought to
reality the dress that only existed as an idea
or pattern.
The Ark that Noah labored to build over
a span of 120 years was based on a pattern,
which God showed him, of an indestructible
shelter that had the ability to float on water
and was designed not only to endure a flood,
but to protect Noah and his family during
the time of the deluge that God warned
would destroy the earth.
In the same way, the close-knit unit
that God told Israel to build during the
time the nation was captive in Babylon, in
Jeremiah’s day, was a pattern. In this case,
the nuclear family was to serve as a model
of God’s heavenly family. In Jeremiah
29:5–6, we learn God’s instruction for this
pattern or short-term plan: “Build houses
and live in them; and plant gardens and
eat their produce. Take wives and become
the fathers of sons and daughters and take
wives for your sons and give your daughters
to husbands, that they may bear sons and
daughters; and multiply there and do not
decrease.”
The primary reason for God’s expectation
of these slaves to follow this pattern is the
same reason He expected Israel to follow
the strict dietary laws in Leviticus 11. Israel
is called to obey God because they owed
Him their allegiance. God had rescued the
people from bondage to slavery in Egypt,
and now He stood in authority over them.
Because He is holy, they must be holy too.
Holiness is not moral purity alone. Holiness
is the state of being “set apart.” These dietary
laws, just as the building up of the family
unit during slavery, did just that. They set
God’s people apart as different from the
nations around them.
Imagine how revolutionary the words
of Jesus were: “But the things that proceed
out of the mouth come from the heart, and
those defile the man. For out of the heart
come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.
These are the things which defile the man”
(Matthew 15:18–20). The contaminant was
not outside a person’s body; it was lodged
deep within the heart. We would each need
a heart transformation.
“When God’s
people find
themselves
in difficult
situations, it
is not because
God has
abandoned
them there
without a
plan.”