I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. They are plans for peace and not disaster, plans to give you a future filled with hope.
God is love (I John 4:16), and He loves us. Each one of us.
God has made each of us for His purposes. He has gifted each of us with different talents, desires, bents, so that everything will get done (I Corinthians 12:4-11). I may be good at one talent, you are good at another, and someone else is good at something else. So we are to help one another to accomplish what is good for all of us (12:7).
God has planned out all of Time, from the beginning to the end. And He has told us about it in His Word. It amazes me that He told Daniel the course of the Nations of the World from his own time all the way to the End of Time (Daniel 11 and 12).
And He has included in His Grand Plan of the Ages all the individual plans for our lives, each one of us. What He has planned for us is good, and will bring peace and hope to each of us.
It's when people don't follow His plan for them that sorrows and troubles and disasters defeat them.
When we know God and His ways, and are following them in our lives, and experience sorrows and troubles, and turn to Him; then He shows us the way out of these disasters, and we need not worry or be afraid because we trust Him (I Corinthians 10:13 says there will be "a way to escape").
When His Love lives in us, we will not need to be afraid of anything, because His Love is perfect, and perfect Love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and God put all the punishment we each deserve on Jesus. So the person who lives in fear doesn't have God's perfect Love, because they don't know Him (I John 4:18).
We can love Him because He has loved us first (I John 4:19). When we accept His Love by letting Jesus take our death on the Cross, then we will love others with this unconditional Love that He loves us with, and we will accept other people. If you think that you love God, but you discriminate against someone else, then you are living a lie--you can't reject someone He loves, who you can see, and at the same time love Him Who you can't see (4:20). That shows that you really don't know Him.
God is not willing that anyone should perish, but that all of us would come to repentance (II Peter 3:9), to turn around our thinking patterns to realize we deserve death, and let Jesus take our place, as a Substitute, as the Lamb of God. Jesus fulfilled that first Sacrifice God wanted the Levites to teach the people, in the First Chapter of Leviticus, the personal sacrifice.
Each individual was to bring his own personal animal to the priest, put his hand on its head identifying with it, and let the priest slaughter it, dying in the person's place. Then it was sacrificed on the altar and its blood sprinkled on the sides of the altar to cover the person's sins (Leviticus 1).
Jesus, as the Lamb of God, is our Personal Sacrifice, that we would admit that we deserve death and let Jesus die for us. Then His blood sprinkled on the sides of His altar, the Cross, doesn't just cover, but washes away all our sinfulness.
He died individually for each one of us to save us.
So if you have never done this, if you haven't come to the conclusion that you deserve death, then ask God for saving faith.
Jesus said that no one could come to Him unless God the Father draws them to Him (John 6:44). So if you ask the Father for this saving faith to believe that Jesus died in your place, He will answer that prayer.
Then He will pour His unconditional Love upon and into You, giving you His own Holy Spirit to make your human spirit alive, giving you a whole new life.
I had thought that I was one of many that Jesus died for, until He showed me Jesus on the Cross, and I knew He took my place there, because I deserved it. And His Love overwhelmed me that day, and I've never been the same.
And I have been able to see that the Plan He has for me is good, and I have great hope for my future here, as well as my Eternal future. And His peace fills my mind and heart, even in the midst of troubles and sorrows, because I trust Him to be God and to do everything He has said He would do in my life and in this World.
And when Jesus returns, I look forward to seeing Him face-to-face because I will be resurrected like Him, and He will reward me for doing the things He did through me.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
