Follow In Full
“I know the plans I have for you[.]” (Jeremiah 29:11)
This verse is often cited (out of context) to encourage modern Christians of the good plans God has for them. But so often, God’s good plans for us aren’t what we expect at all.
Imagine what God might have said to Paul if He’d laid out His good plans for him.
I know the plans I have for you. Prison. Persecution. Rejection by your own people. Serving people you would have previously disdained.
Those plans hardly seem good or prosperous! Yet Paul testifies otherwise in Ephesians 3:1-13.
Referring to himself as Christ’s prisoner, Paul writes to the Gentiles, people he would have looked down on when he was a Pharisee. He writes to encourage them in Christ with the unexpected testimony that his hard life, marked by suffering, is a gift of God’s grace.
Giving up his plans to follow God’s to the full was worth it to Paul...