“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.”
—Jeremiah 29:11
Today’s verse is a popular one in Christian culture. Most Christians cling to it in times when they need hope, citing it as a reason their future will be good and prosperous. This isn’t wrong; God wants us to have hope and anticipate our future. However, like many verses, this can easily be taken out of context.
It’s important to know where Jeremiah 29:11 comes from. It is part of a letter Jeremiah wrote to the Israelite exiles, whom Babylon had taken into captivity. Jeremiah wrote this letter to encourage His people, assuring them God knew
their plight and would bless them again. However, this would only happen after seventy years of captivity in Babylon, the consequence God had set for Israel’s unrepentant sinning.
Our lives sometimes work the same way. Not every difficult circumstance is a consequence of sin. In fact, most can be chalked up to the fact we live in a fallen world. Yet sometimes God allows difficult circumstances to go on longer than we would like so we can grow in Him, learning to love and trust Him more. We shouldn’t interpret Jeremiah 29:11 and similar verses as evidence that God always wants us to be happy, rich and without trouble.
Instead, we should interpret verses like today’s as what they are: evidence of God’s heart toward us. He does not want to harm His followers. He wants to bless us as much as possible, beyond what we can imagine. To obtain such blessings, we must draw close to Him and obey Him every day.
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