| ““For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord” |
| —Jeremiah 29:11a |
“Uh-oh!” I can hear someone say. “I surely hope he’s not going to write about how following Jesus will bring prosperity into my life. How seeking to know God through His written Word and by living in the footsteps of Jesus is going to bring blessing upon blessing into my life. I can’t stand all that ‘Prosperity Gospel’ nonsense.”
It’s amazing to me how we can become so focused on a few bad apples in the world of televised church services and big tent evangelistic crusades of the past that we fail to see the truth that God’s written Word actually declares. For example, dear questioning one, explain to me how you intend to interpret the Prophet Jeremiah’s words, as recorded in Jeremiah 29:11:
“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.”
And so, you respond:
Wait! Let me take a stab at it. First of all, this passage recorded by the prophet only applied to the very specific situation in which Jeremiah found himself, as he tried to deal with in his day. He was writing a letter to those Israelites in exile. His letter was intended to encourage them and to give them hope. He wanted to lift their spirits, so that they would continue to hold fast to their faith and trust God for their future.
Okay. That’s fair—to a point. But, here’s my response to that particular interpretation:
We live as exiles from heaven in a very troubled world. In some ways, we are under a more intensive, if more subtle, attack than those long ago Israelites. We have been carried off by a culture that increasingly hates God and the people of God. This foreign culture wants to kill us, or at the very least, silence us. It wants to pursue every kind of sin without anyone calling a halt to the foolishness. Whether it is the political scene, or the everyday work-a-day world, sin prevails. Dishonesty is common. Lies abound. People disregard the feelings of others. They have surrendered to the Enemy.
I acknowledge that I need to hear a word of encouragement. I need a word of hope. I need to know that God is still on the throne. I need to feel the warmth of His Presence within me by the in-dwelling of His precious Holy Spirit. I need to know that my ever-deepening faith remains the right pathway.
So, like it or not—my dear one who so greatly loathes the so-called “Prosperity Gospel”—I am going to appropriate Jeremiah’s words and cling to them in the ever-darkening age. I am going to purposefully choose to believe that God does have plans for me and plans for you—plans to prosper both of us and not to harm us, plans to give us hope and a future.
I know that trusting Jesus does not mean that we will suddenly wake up surrounded by riches. We will not drive a new car or live in a new home. We will not have an end to our health problems or see our predicted short remaining years lengthened far into the next century.
But, I will recognize that every breath I take, every beat of my heart is already a precious gift from God. I will accept that the career he has given me—though it came to a sudden end nearly twenty years ago—was also His gift to me.
I will recognize that, even though doctors told me I would be long dead by now, I am still alive and that fact is an indication that God still has a plan for me. I will recognize that God has prospered me and accept the reality that His love pervades everything that has come into my life for lo these 75 years.
As we begin a new day, let us recognize that while some may have bent the intention of God’s message with regard to what “prosperity” actually means, because God has chosen us to belong to Himself as His dearly loved children, we—of all people—are most assuredly experiencing His genuine prosperity.
Based on a blog originally posted on Wednesday, January 18, 2017
