If you’ve been in a Christian circle for any amount of time, you’ve surely heard 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.” (NIV)
I feel like it’s a nice thing to tell little kids and high school graduates and things like that. But what do you do when this just doesn’t seem…true?
Come on, be honest.
You know this one doesn’t always seem to be true. Some of you know exactly what I mean when I say this is an “eye-rolling verse”.
When tragedies and unfair things hit our lives and the goodness and love of God gets called into question, that’s a really, really hard place to be. And this verse doesn’t help.
When this happened in my life, I found myself LOUDLY demanding answers to questions like this:
God, why did you let this happen to me?
How could this possibly be part of Your plan?
What am I supposed to do now?
If you loved me, why didn’t You do anything to stop it?
I’ve struggled for a really long time with trying to hold onto God’s promise in this verse with one hand while wrestling with really awful things happening in my life with the other hand. This is a tough verse. That’s why I’ve had a really complicated relationship with it.
It can be wind in my sails on a good day and gasoline on my fire on a bad day.
See? It’s complicated.
But, there was a day a couple years ago when I was driving alone in my car and wrestling with all of these thoughts. I was voicing my frustrations out loud to God not really expecting much of an answer in return. But then, out of nowhere, as if there were someone sitting right there next to me in the passenger seat, I heard the words:
What if it’s not all about you?
Wait, what? Who said that?
The words hung in the air around me and I knew right then and there in that 55 mph zone that I had been bested. I had no argument. I had no rebuttal. I just sat there with my hands on the wheel in complete silence.
This has happened to me a couple other times before when I heard the Lord speak to my spirit in a near-audible way like this that left me with only one response: silence.
What if my pain and disappointment isn’t all about me??
That was certainly not the answer I was looking for. It caught me completely off-guard in a way I was not at all prepared for.
The directness of it pierced my heart and my pride bled out.
So direct. So revealing.
So gentle. So hope-giving.
Something cold and stubborn in me started to melt away in the days that followed as I heard the words over and over again in my head:
What if it’s not all about you? What if it’s not all about you?
What. If. It’s. Not. All. About. You?
What if the plans God has for me really aren’t as much about me as I thought? What if I’m not actually the star of my own little show?
It’s a thought I had never actually considered.
So, if this verse gets under your skin too, I challenge you to do some tough, grueling work here and dig down deep into your heart and ask yourself the same question:
What if it’s not all about you?
_________________________
Related Posts
#4. The Messy Process of Faith
#9. How One Prayer Request Unraveled My Faith
#29. I Told God to Prove it…and He Did
_________________________
Struggling with your faith? Need a safe space to sort things out? Check out my private facebook group to connect with others who have doubts & questions too: Complicated Faith: A Space for the Doubting & Questioning