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Alignment!

Many of us cherish Jeremiah 29:11 - “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.”

It’s so encouraging to know that God has plans for us.  I would also fold the word “purposes” into that, as in that God has purposes for our lives.

But what I’d like to look at in this post, regardless of whether we are considering God’s plans or God’s purposes, is the question of if we can mess up bad enough that we don’t enter into them?  Or to put it another way, can we be out of alignment with His plans and purposes for us?

In a way, it would be easy to avoid the question entirely and just highlight examples of people who live out God’s plans in obvious and impactful ways.  For example, I could look at David:  “Now when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his ancestors and his body decayed” (Acts 13:36).  

But only highlighting the good examples doesn’t give the full picture.  We do have examples of people who fought against God’s plans and purposes.  Take the Pharisees, for example:  “but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves…” (Luke 7:30)

A passage I recently ran across seems to indicate that we can mess up without overtly rejecting God’s purposes as the Pharisees did.  In Psalm 106 we find this:  “But they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his plan to unfold.” (v.13)

On the surface, it kind of looks like it could have been an innocent endeavor.  The people perhaps just moved forward without waiting for God to work out His plans.  But the rest of Psalm 106 describes disobedience, stubbornness, grumblings and giving in to their cravings.  Then, when you take into account the punishment for their actions and attitudes, you know that it was far from innocent.

But back to my question:  can we mess up bad enough so that we don’t enter into His plans for us?  Or, can be be out of alignment with them?  While I think there is evidence that we can, I’m not really sure that I can say so with certainty.  But I will say that I’d prefer to not find the answers from the school of hard knocks or maybe by hitting too many potholes on the highway of life and getting my steering out of alignment!

 

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