I did not experience faith that works until I understood that God had a plan for my life. Not just a general plan to help me finish school, get a job, marry the man of my dreams, and have kids—but a specific plan. A plan that He planned for me before I was even conceived.
I understood that my parents had a plan for my life. They carefully planned for my schooling. They did the very best they could in postwar Britain to be thinking ahead and saving for my education.
The idea that God also had a plan and that His was the master plan for my life never occurred to me. Unlike my parents, teachers, and boyfriends, I couldn’t see God, didn’t know Him, and was not remotely interested in Him or His plans. I had absolutely no idea that God had any personal interest in me at all. I considered it responsible behavior to take charge of my own affairs. I was an eighteen-year-old college student, intent on making my own plans for my own life. I appreciated all that the adults in my life had done for me up to that time, but I thought “growing up” meant relieving them of their responsibility and charting my own course. It was going to be my own business to choose my path, partner, and philosophy of living. I had never opened a Bible so had never read any biblical concepts on the subject.
But one day all that changed. God told Jeremiah that He had a plan for his life when Jeremiah was young and inexperienced, and He told me the same when I was young and inexperienced, too. One day I met a girl who was marching to the beat of another drummer. She told me I would never be happy until I connected with God. She had a meaningful life, a sense of purpose, and an unshakable faith in a higher being. She told me that God in love had a plan for her—and that He had done the same for me. I was fascinated, not least because of her vibrant personality that I knew was somehow connected with her faith.
Compared to hers, my own life with all my plans appeared colorless and insipid. Could it be that God was a personal God who cared about me and planned for me in love? Step-by-step my new friend led me to the Cross of Christ and a Savior who died for me in order that I might live with Him forever.
When I asked Him to forgive my sin, my arrogant self-reliance, and my godless independence, I found myself at the beginning of a great adventure—living life according to the grand cosmic plan of God. It’s a wonderful thing to find the Lord in your youth. I thank God for His grace that found me while I still had a lifetime to love and serve Him.
Who is making the plans for your life? You? Your parents, teachers, or friends? Do you know that God has a wonderful plan for your life and that you will never be satisfied until you find that plan by submitting your whole self to Him?
God told Jeremiah that before He even formed Him in his mother’s body He had already figured out the master plan for his life. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” He told him (Jer. 1:5). Think about it. Before Jeremiah existed for anyone else to know, God knew him. And before I was me to know, God knew me. He as surely has plans for you and me as He has for Jeremiah. Before we were conceived in the womb, He knew us! In fact, this knowing and purposeful choosing of God predates our conception.
Like any loving father, our heavenly Father has a plan and purpose for all of His children. In fact, the Bible says, “‘I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future’” (Jer. 29:11). God was talking to Israel, but He wants to give all of His children, including you, hope and a future.
