Wait…before you freak out, this is not a post about a plan the doctors have changed…it’s about faith.   Medically…still the same plan.

Anyways… we all have heard the verse from Jeremiah 29:11,

‘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’.”

but what if it just said,

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord.

without all that stuff about prospering, not harming, hope and a future.  It definitely doesn’t sound as pretty or reassuring, but it still has such power!  What if that is what God gives us, the reassurance that He knows and that He has a plan and a plan for each of us?  Is that good enough? 

Many times we want to know the outcome before we even know the details.  Honestly, my first thought with kanser, ‘am I gonna live or die.’  Although I had very little details about anything and those words never came out of my mouth, they hovered in my mind, in my husband’s mind, and I am sure most of my friends and family wondered the same thing.  So tell me God, “Am I gonna live or die?”  Because I need to know so I know what kind of faith I should present to others…so I don’t look like a fool. 

It took a couple of days of really seeking God, searching out His character and tons of prayer and cries for wisdom.  My husband and I hashed out every ugly and beautiful possibility we had.  It ranged from totally perfect powerful healing, to leaving him as a single dad with 5 kids to raise and me missing out on my daughter’s weddings.  Yes, it was super sad and ugly.  I would find myself planning my funeral (it’s amazing how far our thoughts can take us).  But thankfully, after those few ugly days and the worldly shock wore off, we put on our full armor of God (Eph 6:10-11) and remembered who He was in our lives.  There was no room to doubt God or not trust in His plan for us.

Our devotional said it perfectly,

Something is holding us back.  Perhaps it is a fear that maybe we are wrong about God.  Maybe we feel presumptuous.  It is possible, if we have been disappointed in the past, that our misunderstanding is haunting us.  We hear a voice in the back of our minds that says, “What if God doesn’t come through?  What if He makes it more difficult than I can handle?  What if all my hopes are illusions?” So we hesitate to trust God.  We pray and we hope, but faith remains incomplete and doubts linger.  We’ll ask Him to help us, but we withhold judgment until we’ve seen His response.

The call of Scripture is contrary to our natural inclination.  We are called to believe God with reckless abandon- not just believe that He is there and that He is involved with us somehow, though we’re not sure exactly how; but that He is actively, personally seeking our good and answering our prayers.  We are to give up our own strategies and ambitions, to relinquish all “Plan B’s,” to recklessly, irrevocably cast ourselves completely into His arms.  But we’re reluctant, and the problem always comes back to us:  In spite of His track record, we don’t seem to completely trust Him.  Why not?

God calls us to ‘reckless’ trust, the kind that prepares no safety net and reserves nothing for a spiritually rainy day.  That kind of trust, if broken, leaves no room to save face.  But it can’t be broken.  Try to find someone God has forsaken, observe His faithfulness, and ask yourself: ‘Why wouldn’t I trust Him wholeheartedly?’  Think about it.  Why not?”¹

Do we trust God enough with His plans?  Do we believe in His goodness?  Has He proven Himself in our lives?  I believe the most powerful lie satan deceives us with is to doubt God’s character.   When we doubt, we don’t trust.  And when we don’t trust God our lives are left to the careless wanderings of our mind and the subsequent worldly actions.

As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.”                                    Proverbs 23:7

I had to come to the conclusion that if I am not dying, my thoughts can not be leading me in that direction, otherwise (to put it bluntly) I might as well be dead.  If I trust in God, my thoughts and actions need to be a reflection of that trust.  With totally reckless faith and trust there is no Plan B.  He knows the plans He has for me…and that’s all I need to know.

¹C. Tiegreen, One Yr Walk w/ God Devotional, (Illinois: Tyndale, 2004) 132.