Kerry Shook - God's Good Plan
Fear is an emotion shared by every person who's ever lived. We all have fears. God gave us the ability to fear. Fear is not a bad thing. The emotion of fear can protect us from danger. For example, if you're walking in the woods and you hear a rattling noise, you look up and see a rattlesnake coiled up just five feet in front of you, overwhelming fear instantly kicks in. You go into fight or flight mode right away and you run away. If you didn't have the God given capacity to experience fear out of curiosity, you'd probably walk up to the snake to get a closer look. You might even try to catch it with your bare hands. I mean, sometimes the opposite of fear is not faith, it's stupidity.
And so God put, he gave us the ability to have the emotion of fear. Fear is not a bad emotion. It's fear out of control that's bad. Fear was meant to be protective, but uncontrolled, it becomes destructive. And we all have fears that can easily overwhelm us and become irrational, unproductive, and even debilitating. Last year, Chapman University did their annual survey to determine the most common fears that Americans are experiencing, and the intensity of those fears. And it turns out that 85% of us suffer from tremendous fear and anxiety. So if you have some overwhelming worries, and fears, and anxiety today, you are not alone.
Here's a list of the top ten biggest fears that Americans have. They listed 95 fears and they counted the ones where people said, I'm very afraid or extremely afraid. Number 10 was biological warfare. Number nine was pollution of oceans, rivers, and lakes. Number eight was economic and financial collapse. Number seven was not having enough money for the future. Number six was polluted drinking water. Number five was the U.S. getting involved in another world war. Number four was people I love dying. Number three was Russia using nuclear weapons. Number two was people I love becoming seriously ill. And number one was corrupt government officials, which I don't think that's fear, that's just fact, isn't it?
I don't know why that showed up. Now almost all those fears had something in common. They all had to do with the future. One of our greatest fears is the fear of the future, the unknown. I want you to hear what Jesus says to your anxious heart right now. Would you stand in honor of God's Word? It's really short, but it is sweet. Matthew 6:34, Jesus said, so don't be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time. You can be seated. Jesus says, the secret to overcoming the fear of the future is to live one day at a time. Trusting in his care. There are two days you should never worry about, yesterday and tomorrow.
If you're worried about tomorrow, you'll miss out on God's goodness today. The Bible tells us to plan for tomorrow. It's being responsible to plan for the future. You plan for tomorrow, but you live one day at a time. We can make plans for the future, but we can't control the future. We worry about the future because we don't know what the future holds. It's uncertain. It's the unknown. None of us can predict the future. None of us know what's going to happen in the future. Experts are wrong all the time. Only God knows. But there's something in us as human beings where we want to be certain. We don't like uncertainty. We want to control the future. We want to know what's in the future, and we want to have a say in it. We want to control it, but we can't.
It's good to plan for the future, but the only thing that takes away our fears and gives us certainty is God's plan. And there was a time in the Old Testament when God's people were very confused and filled with fear about the future. They were in captivity in Babylon, which is modern day Iraq, and their enemy had conquered them and brought them back to Babylon. They're living in a foreign country. They have no idea what's going to happen next. Their future is up in the air, but God speaks a powerful word of encouragement into their fearful hearts through the prophet Jeremiah. And I believe God wants to speak these same encouraging words right into your fearful heart today.
In Jeremiah 29, 11 through 13, God says, "'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. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You'll seek me to find me, when you seek me with all your heart.'" God says you don't have to be afraid of the future because I'm already there. And it's a hope-filled future for you. God says, I've got a plan for you. So step into my plan and you'll find my peace for today.
See, the most important thing I can do is look to God and his plan for my life. But too often we look to everyone but God. We look to our news feeds. We look to so-called experts. But we have to look to God and find his wisdom for the future. First and foremost, I need to seek his hope-filled plan for me. In Jeremiah's day, the people were listening to a lot of wrong voices. There were a lot of false prophets who were spreading lies. They were saying to the people of Israel who were in captivity in Babylon, that everything's going to be okay. All your problems are going to go away. They're going to vanish instantly. Everything's going to be perfect because God is going to destroy our enemy, the Babylonians any day now. And he's going to take us back to the Promised Land. God's going to restore us back to the Promised Land and it's going to happen any day.
So you better pack your bags and get ready. Forget about settling down here in Babylon because it's just about to happen. Everything in your life is going to be perfect. There's gonna be no problems, no pain, no difficulty. Well, that's what the false prophets were telling the people of Israel. But here's what God says to the prophet Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 29, verse 8, "Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: 'Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in My name. I have not sent them,' declares the Lord".
So God speaks to the true prophet Jeremiah and he says, don't listen to those who are saying you're going to go back to the Promised Land right away. Get your bags packed because God's going to destroy your enemy, and then we're going back to the Promised Land, and everything's going to be perfect, we'll have no more problems in the future. Don't listen to those lies, God says. Then God goes on to say, yes, in 70 years, I'm going to bring you back to the Promised Land. I'm going to destroy the Babylonians. But right now, I'm going to build you up and bless you, and meet your needs, and work miracles in your life while you're surrounded by your enemies. Right in the midst of your enemies, right in the middle of your problems, right in the middle of your pain, I'm going to bless you and strengthen you. God tells them, I'm not bringing you back to the Promised Land right now.
In 70 years, I'll destroy the Babylonians and I'll bring you back to the Promised Land. But right now, I'm going to bless you in Babylon. I'm going to give you peace. I'm going to give you wisdom. I'm going to provide for you. I'm going to build you up. I'm going to do miracles in your life and in your family in the middle of all your problems and stresses and uncertainties. Right where you're at right now. I'm going to bless you in Babylon. This was hard for the people to understand. How can we be blessed in the middle of this stress? How can we be blessed in this bad situation? But I truly believe that's what God is saying to his people today. Because we're not in the Promised Land yet.
Heaven is the perfect place and we're not there yet. Heaven is the Promised Land. It's the place of no more problems, no more pain, no more sickness, no more fears, no more sorrows, no more tears, no more death. That's the Promised Land. But right now, we live in a broken, messed up world, filled with problems and pain, filled with sorrow and stresses, filled with uncertainty about the future. We're not in heaven yet. We're not in the Promised Land. We're in broken Babylon. But God says to you today, if you'll stop trying to make everything perfect in your life, if you will stop trying to control the future, if you will stop trying to make this place on earth, the Promised Land, I will bless you in your Babylon.
Don't worry about the future, God says, because I'm going to bless you right where you're at. Don't worry about the future because I'm going to watch over you. I'm going to provide for you. I'm going to work in your life in the middle of the problems, in the middle of the pain, in the middle of this messed up world that you live in. I'm going to build you up. But the people of Israel wanted to go back to the Promised Land right away. They wanted God to take all their problems away in the present before they trusted him with their future. They wanted their timing rather than God's timing. They wanted God's will, but they wanted it their way. And we can only have God's will his way because it's not God's will anymore if it's not his way.
God's will has always done his way. I always have to make them move, to move into God's will and God's purpose for my life. God doesn't come over to my plan and the direction I want to go even if it's a good plan, even if I have good motives. I have to pray and say, God, what is your plan for me? I'm the one who's got to make changes. And God says to us today, hey, there's going to be problems. There's going to be pain. There's going to be difficulties in your life in this world. You're going to go through situations that you don't understand. I'm not going to lie to you. You're going to have difficulties in the future. But just know this.
I'm going to meet your needs in the middle of the problems. I'm going to meet your needs in the middle of the pain. I'm going to work miracles in your life in the middle of this mess. It's not that God is going to clear up all our circumstances where they're perfect, that's heaven. That's where everything's gonna be perfect. That comes when we get to heaven, but God says, right now I'm gonna bring you through the problem. But I usually pray, God take this problem out of my life. And that's a good prayer. God wants us to pray that prayer. God take this problem out of my life because many times he works a miracle and he takes the problem out of my life.
But sometimes God says, I've got something better for you. I'm gonna take you through the problem. I'm gonna build you up through the problem. Sometimes he says, this time, I'm not going to change your circumstance. I'm gonna change you through the circumstance. Look at this next verse in Jeremiah 29:4. It's so encouraging to me, "This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 'Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.'"
So God is really telling the people, don't let your fears about the future keep you from living in the present. He's saying, stop waiting for everything in your life to be perfect before you really live. Are you always waiting for everything in your life to be perfect and all your problems to be gone before you really do the things that are most important, before you really enjoy life? Are you waiting for that someday when it's less stressful? When everything settles down, someday when it's not so busy, I'll really live for God. Some day when it's not so stressful and I don't have so many problems, I'll get really intentional about doing the most important things. If you're always waiting for God to work his miracles constantly in your life to make everything perfect, you're going to be waiting a long time because that's heaven.
Look at Jeremiah 29:11, because this is the part of the passage that a lot of you know, and this is the part that I want you to memorize, meditate on this week. Maybe write it down, put it in your refrigerator, on your mirror. I love Jeremiah 29:11, but I wanted you to know the verses before and after it and the context of it. "But God says, '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.'"
So God says, I know the plans I have for you. It's a personal, purposeful plan. I know those plans that I have for you, and it's to give you hope, a hope-filled future, to bless you, to build you up. You see, God had a good plan for the Israelites, but it wasn't their plan. You see, the people of Israel couldn't experience the blessing until they faced their fears. They had to come to terms with the fact that their plan wasn't God's plan. Their plans for going back to the Promised Land, hey, it's a good plan. Seemed like a great thing to go back to the Promised Land and those wicked enemies to be destroyed, but it wasn't God's plan at the time. Their plans of going back to the promised land right away, were blown away and they had to let go of their plan. They had to grieve their loss before they could experience God's goodness.
And that's what positive faith is. And I say that because some of you have made some plans and they were good plans, they were perfect plans, but God has blown those plans out of the water. And you have seen those plans crash and burn. They have gone up in smoke, and it's time for you to let go and to realize God has a bigger and better plan, even though you can't understand it right now. It's time for you to grieve a little bit and admit that it's over. But God has something better planned. It's time for some of you to do some grieving and let it go. We have these plans and we hold on to them, and we hold on to them, and we hold on while God has a better plan and we miss God's best.
What I'm saying is if your dream is to play in the NFL and you've been praying about it and praying about it and you're not giving up, but you're 50 years old and run a 10.2 40 yard dash, it's over. Grieve it, let it go. What I'm saying is, some of you had plans for this perfect job, but someone else got the job. Some of you had plans to have this perfect marriage, and now you've experienced the pain of divorce. Some of you had this perfect little plan and it's crashed and burned. So what do you do? You realize that God is not through with you yet, and you let go, and then you acknowledge that God is bigger than the problem and that God will see you through, and no problem can stop God's good plan for your life.
God's got something better even though you can't see it right now, even though it makes no sense to you right now. He wants to build you up and he wants to bless you in your Babylon. I love how this passage says that, hey, build houses, increase there. You see, God's a builder. He's always been a builder. And he calls his people to build up rather than tear down. It's a lot easier to tear down than it is to build up, but God wants us to build up even in Babylon. He wants to bless you in the middle of it because he has a good plan. Maybe we can't understand it right now, but he wants to bless you with his peace and his strength and his provision right here, right now.
And he wants you to be a builder, to build that relationship, to build that walk with him, to build that business, to step out in faith and say, I'm not gonna let my fears of the future keep me from being a builder in the present. So you have to feel the fear, you have to face the fear, but you don't have to feed it, you don't have to focus on it. What do you focus on? Not your newsfeed, but you focus on God's care for you. You give your fear over to God.
You say, God, I feel so much fear right now. I'm overwhelmed. I feel paralyzed with fear, but I give it over to you. I give it over to you and I'm gonna focus on your power and your promises. And I love Isaiah 43, 1 and 2. Somebody needs this today, probably every one of us. I know I do. God says to you, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze".
God says, I care so much about you that I will watch over you and protect you one day at a time. You'll go through some floods in life. You're going to get wet, but you're not going to go under because I'm going to get you through. I'm going with you. You're going to go through some fires in this life, in the future, but you're not gonna get burned, because I'm gonna protect you and I'm gonna go through it with you. You can trust me. Stop trying to control your future and surrender to God's care and control. You can't control the future anyway. You surrender to God's care and control. And I can surrender control to God because he cares so much about me.
That's why you need to get to know the promises of God, meditate on the promise of God instead of all the negative things out there, that you can just keep going over, and over, and over again in your mind. That's what meditation is. If you're a good worrier, you can be a good meditator. Because when you just go over and over again, these worries in your mind, you could be praying about it. You could be going to God's promises about it. And where is worthless, it doesn't help anything. Just messes up the present. Keeps you from experiencing God's blessings and goodness today. And so I can surrender my future to God's care and control because he cares about me and he's the one that controls the big picture. And God's plan is greater than all my problems. God's plan transcends all your problems.
Look at Romans 8:28, a passage that we all know, probably the most quoted passage in Scripture and also the most misunderstood passage. Look at it from the Phillips translation. It says, "Moreover we know that to those who love God, who are called according to his plan, everything that happens fits into a pattern for good". Focus on the two words "we know". It's not I wish. It's not maybe. It's that we know as believers that all things will work together for good. That God can bring good out of every situation and any situation. We know for certain. So there is something certain in this very uncertain world.
If you're a believer, you know that everything that comes into your life that God allows somehow, he will work good out of it and bring good out of it. There is a grand designer, and life is not just some series of random accidents. There's a grand designer, and he has a grand design for your life. He has a personal and purposeful plan for your life. And this promise says everything, everything, everything that comes into my life, God can bring good out of it. Does everything include marriage problems? Yes. God can work good out of those marriage problems and bring you closer to Him.
God can help you trust Him more. Yes. Does everything include financial loss? Yes. God can bring great good out of it. Does everything include divorce? Yes. Does everything include the loss of a loved one? Yes. Does everything include even when I make a mess of things and it's all my fault? Yes. God can bring good out of everything and anything, even my greatest mistakes. And it says here that it all fits together. Not all things are good. This is where it gets misquoted a lot. Hey, everything's good.
Remember Romans 8:28. Hey, you're a believer, it's all good. Everything's gonna work out. Don't worry about it. Not all things are good. A lot of things are bad, a lot of things are awful, a lot of things are evil, but God can take anything and everything and he can fit it all together and bring good out of it. I love homemade chocolate chip cookies. I love any kind of cookies to be honest with you. But have you ever made homemade chocolate chip cookies? Have you noticed when you make them, the ingredients by themselves don't taste very good. I mean, just eat the flour by itself. See how that goes. Raw eggs, disgusting. And I don't care if you're working out and think that's great, that's disgusting. Salt, baking soda, awful. Drink a big cup of vegetable oil.
See how that goes down. By themselves, all the ingredients are pretty bad. But the only thing that tastes good in homemade chocolate chip cookies are the chocolate chips. But if you mix them all together, woo, yum! The smell of hot chocolate chip cookies coming out of the oven, I don't wait for them to cool down. I burn my mouth and gets all over my hands, and they're so amazing. And God can take the bitter, the sweet, the good, the bad, and the ugly, everything that comes into my life and put it all together, and mix it all together to make something beautiful out of it. So I can stop trying to control the future and surrender my fears and surrender my future to God because he's in control.
Look at Jeremiah 29 again in verse 12. God says, "Then you will call on Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart". God says, come to me. Admit your fears. Feel your fears. Face your fears and then bring them to me. Don't focus on them. Don't feed them. Starve your fears. Feed your faith by looking to God and saying, God, I give them over to you. I surrender control to you, then a few minutes later, when you start worrying again, God, I surrender that over to you. Help me do what I need to do today to follow you. Just for today, Lord, give me your wisdom and strength. Just for today, give me your goodness. I need it.
Sure, plan for the future. But more importantly, you look to God's plan for your future. I love Romans 8:31, "What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us"? Hey, one plus God equals a majority. You may be surrounded by everyone that's against you. All your circumstances may be coming against you, but if God is for you, who can be against you? Nothing, no one can stand against God. If you're on God's team, you're on the winning team.