In our day to day lives, as we look at the world we live in, it is impossible to tell how God is working on a large scale. This wasn’t always the case.
In the Old Testament, God made his large scale plan clear many times:
- He moved millions of His people out of Egypt
- He led them personally around the wilderness
- He made Israel the greatest nation on Earth
- He moved Israel into exile
- He brought them home from exile
But then, He was silent. Not altogether silent, but silent on a large scale. And certainly silent compared to what He had been in the past.
Just when it seemed that silence would go on forever, Jesus was born into the world of men.
Through Jesus, more powerfully than ever before, God said his peace and He made His peace with all who would put their faith in Jesus. Then, on the large scale, He went silent again.
I say all of that to ask the question: How does God operate today? How do we see Him?
We see Him in the details. We see Him most frequently through the simple words and actions of His people. His people, who live in hope of His coming back. His people, who live in fear, not of His wrath, but of the lost facing His wrath.
There is a popular verse within a not so popular passage in Jeremiah:
Jeremiah 29:11 – 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.
I encourage you to not read this verse without also reading the ten verses that come before it and the three verses that come after it. If you read the whole thing, here’s what you’ll see God saying to Israel who have been taken captive to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar:
- Get comfortable – you’re not going anywhere
- Make your lives in the godless nation of Babylon
- Do not fail to continue to live – keep having children
- Children represent – a future hope
- Do what you can to make Babylon a better place
- Pray for the future of that godless place
- Don’t listen to the prophets and diviners in your midst
- My voice still comes from my prophet in Jerusalem
- IN 70 YEARS, I’LL TAKE ACTION
- I have great plans for you (as a nation) – your grandchildren will be blessed – I’ll listen to them – but not you
- I have given a consequence for your disobedience and you will live out the consequence – your grandkids won’t
Why share this? How is this encouraging? I share this so that we might gain perspective. God works on a much, much larger scale than we can ever imagine.
Maybe God will take action in my lifetime on a large scale and maybe He won’t. Maybe it will be in the lifetime of my grandchildren or their grandchildren. But just like Israel, we’re to live in the hopeful expectation of the future promises of the Lord.
Jeremiah 29:11 gets personally misapplied a lot today. It sells a lot of signs, t-shirts and coffee mugs. It wasn’t meant to be what people make it out to mean today. It was written to a nation of God’s people.
Don’t get me wrong, it still applies today. God’s people are a people living in exile today. There is no physical nation of God’s people today. Someday, He will bring his people out of exile. He will bring all who belong to Him together from every place on earth they are scattered.
It may not happen in my lifetime, but I’m encouraged because I know it WILL happen. Be encouraged church! God is living and moving in the world! How is He living and moving in you?
Much love!
Wes LeFlore (918) 607-8489 or huskerwes1@gmail.com
