Jeremiah 29:11 God has a Plan for me.

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.’” I used to approach this verse as a security blanket. It sounds like God promised us prosperity and health. God has a plan for me that is good, so clearly this suffering I’m going through will end soon and then my flourishing will begin! But that is not at all what God was promising to the Israelites, and it’s not what he’s promising us, either. The Israelites were in exile, a punishment from God as result of their disobedience. The prophet Jeremiah confronted the false prophet, Hananiah, who had boldly proclaimed that God was going to free Israel from Babylon in two years. Jeremiah gave them this directive from God, "Seek the peace and the prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” (29:7)  God’s plan was for them to stay right where they were, and to help prosper the nation that enslaved them! The heart of the verse is “not that we would escape our lot, but that we would learn to thrive” in the midst of it. Let's cling to it for the right reason: not in the false hope that God will take away our suffering, but in the true, gospel confidence that he will give us hope in the midst of it.