“Planning on Control” || Release What You’re Not in Control Of || Week 6

Welcome back to the almost finally of our series called: “Release What You’re Not In Control Of”. This series looks at our issues on control and how, through Scripture and personal testimony, you can work on resolving these issues. This is written during the COVID-19 pandemic, so you can say what we’re able to control is at an all-time low. Let’s dive into it.

This week we’re taking a look at Jeremiah 29:11 to see how this well-known passage speaks to us control freaks. This week’s message is called “Planning on Control”.

Jeremiah 29:11 says: “I say this because I know the plans that I have for you.” This message is from the Lord. “I have good plans for you. I don’t plan to hurt you. I plan to give you hope and a good future.”

Jeremiah writes this letter to the Exiles that were taken from Jerusalem to Babylon. God’s intentions in all this are to bring blessings to Israel’s future. You might ask how this relates to control. Good question and it all relates to one letter, “I”. The “I” in this verse doesn’t refer to you and me, but it refers to God.

I think sometimes though we like to believe that it means us. God’s got the plans for us and they’re good. There’s nothing that God will do that plans to hurt us but to prosper us for all eternity. Notice that he doesn’t say that “I have plans for you and they are X, Y, and Z.” Or does he say, “I have plans for you, what do you think of them?” We don’t honestly need to know because even if we did, we’d try to control those plans to fit what we want rather then what God planned. We think that life is supposed to take us one way, but God plans on taking us in a 180 direction and we fight it. We fight what God plans for us because it’s not what we think. It’s not what we control in life, but it’s what God wants. We fear this because we don’t know what God wants, which definitely instills the “Fear of the unknown” and I completely understand that. It says though that God doesn’t want to cause us to hurt. He doesn’t want us to feel pain either physically, mentally, and spiritually, but wants us to prosper.

There may be a pain within that plan because sometimes the biggest way to change yourself is to dealing with the pain now for a prosperous future. We need to go through the break-up, the job loss, the harsh words, the cut friendships because that’s not what God’s planned for us. They’re actually blockading to it and we don’t realize it at the moment. We will realize it a month, a year, or even five years down the road. It won’t be a negative thing then because you’ll have the benefit of hindsight and realize the positives from it. After all, God pulled you away from something holding you back to fulfill his plan.

That’s actually where I’m going to end it. I know this was super short, but I feel this scripture is so well-known that you can check what some other person says about it. I’ll see you next week for the finale where we realize that God is still in control always. Stay blessed!