God has a plan. Will your life be part of it?

“God has a plan for your life,” has become a popular Christian saying. It is often aimed at the unbeliever or new Christian who is still uncertain that God loves and cares for them, so it can be a useful statement to strengthen their faith. Yet it is shorthand for a larger biblical truth, and shorthand has the propensity to be misunderstood or improperly viewed as the full picture. Like a signboard at a crossroads, it is only useful if you go in the direction it is pointing rather than sitting next to it.

This pithy saying is easily misunderstood in our current self-centred and self-glorifying culture. One simply places the emphasis in the wrong place: “God has a plan for your life,” where the most important factor is the life that you are living. With this emphasis, God becomes a helpful life coach to get you through some difficult patches, or worse, a magical genie that carries out all your wishes.

This is not how the God of the Bible reveals Himself to us, so the real danger in this little saying is for the new Christian to develop a wrong idea of God. The title of this blog is my attempt at improving the shorthand, but the article itself is about going beyond the signboard and exploring the truth it points to.

God does indeed have a plan – one that stretches out beyond time and incorporates the whole universe. The broad outline of that plan as it concerns humanity is sketched out for us from Genesis to Revelation. If we dwell on the immensity of God’s plan for the universe, earth and mankind, we may feel that the little life that we are given cannot possibly feature. If the rise and fall of empires is part of God’s plan, then aren’t we too insignificant for His attention?

This is the opposite error to the one I highlighted earlier, but it also creates an incorrect view of a limited God. If He could only see the big picture and not the individual lives within that picture, He would not be the omnipresent God revealed in the Bible. In reality, He is interested in the lives of each of His creatures, most especially of those made in His image (Matt. 10:29-31).

The critical point is to have the right perspective of God, His plan and our lives. This is one of the lessons we find in the book of Job, where God ultimately gives Job the right perspective – one that we would do well to study. In this book, we see that God is intensely interested in Job’s life. He knows what Job is doing and how he is living, and uses him as an example of a “blameless and upright man” (Job 1:8).

God then allows Satan to take this righteous, good life and turn it upside down. This decision made no sense at all to Job at the time, and has likely puzzled Bible readers through the centuries! In his discussions with his friends, Job maintains that he is still righteous, but that this rough treatment deserves an explanation – why would God allow him to suffer?

The answer was that God had a plan. Although Satan tried his best to derail Job’s faith, God knew that this period of testing would benefit not only Job and his friends, but also every reader since this story was penned. The life of one man from an obscure tribe living thousands of years ago has thus provided encouragement to millions of people down through the ages. This amazing outcome was achieved by temporarily ruining that life; leaving Job sitting on a pile of ashes, scraping off painful sores whilst wallowing in deep emotional distress after losing his entire livelihood and all of his children.

In answer to Job’s desperate question: “Why me, Lord?” God did not explain the big picture to him. God didn’t sit Him down and say: “I’m sorry about all of this, but I wanted to strengthen your faith”, nor did He explain that untold numbers of people would read this story as a testament of faith during trial. Instead, God answers the question with many questions (Job 38-41) – each one challenging Job to show his credentials that give him the right to ask God such a question in the first place.

This incredible monologue was all about perspective. God revealed Himself to Job in just some aspects of His glory and power, all of which were already there for Job to see in creation. Before this meeting, it seems that Job had not been fully in awe of the God he served. We all fall into this trap by viewing the natural world as simply normal parts of daily life, rarely stopping to consider the incredible power, intelligence and glory of the Creator. When Job was snapped out of his complacency, he responded appropriately. Not by asking the unanswered question “Why me?” again, but by repenting for not giving sufficient glory to God (Job 42:1-6).

This story does not sit at all well with the idea of God helping us to live our best lives by providing us with a beautiful plan tailored to our needs and wishes. Yet if we are willing to learn from Job’s story, we can gain the correct perspective of God’s plan and our role in it.

First, we see that God’s plan extended far beyond Job’s life on earth – angels, devils and millions of humans were watching Job suffer and listening to (or reading) his mini-sermons as he struggled with his unsympathetic friends and with God. What we often miss is that God works in us at the same time that He works in those around us. Our lives – especially when they are not going according to our plans – can bring others to salvation or encourage Christians to keep up the good fight. For all we know, the trials that God allows in our lives could be part of a demonstration before heaven and hell of the faithfulness of His children.

Second, we see that God was personally involved in the story – He instigates the chain of events by singling Job out as a righteous man and finalises everything with one of the most powerful speeches recorded in Scripture. Even during his loneliest hours, Job was never ignored. In the same way, God gives individual instructions regarding the lives of His children and is closely involved from beginning to end. Even in our darkest times, we need to remember that whatever mysterious things God may be doing, He is not ignoring us.

Third, we see that although God was working in Job’s life, He did not do it in ways that Job expected or wanted. God certainly had a plan for Job’s life, but the plan did not revolve around Job, but around God’s will and purpose. When we are seeking God’s will for our lives, this is critical to understand. God will not provide a tailor-made solution to keep us happy and healthy. He will provide a role that we can play in a plan so grand and glorious that we will only see it in full when we get to heaven. Until then, He answers “Why me?” questions with “I AM.”

Finally, God revealed Himself to Job as sovereign over all things, including Job’s life. It is difficult for us to understand how we can willingly play a role in God’s plans: surely He can just do with our lives as He pleases, without our active consent? Yet even the story of Job is not started with God unilaterally deciding to test him. It starts with Job living righteously and serving God. Only Job’s life could fit into this part of God’s plan, because it was a faithful life that could withstand severe trials. God wants specific people to be willing to play special roles within His plan. If we are unwilling to surrender our little lives to His great plan, then we will miss out on being part of God’s bigger picture.

Knowing that Job’s righteousness was a key reason for the suffering he faced may make us shrink back from doing God’s will. If we stay lukewarm in our faith, or if we don’t give our lives to Him at all, we are likely to have an easier life on earth. It may also leave us feeling that God didn’t really care about Job’s suffering, since He had a bigger plan in mind. If we surrender our lives to God’s plan, will we be treated as a pawn on a chessboard that can be sacrificed at any moment in favour of the overall strategy?

This is another incorrect view of God, who is love and therefore cares for each one of us more than we could possibly imagine. Further, He not only understands suffering in an abstract way – He lived through it on the cross (Heb. 4:15). Jesus knows what it is like to suffer, but he also knows that all of the suffering that the Father put Him through was worth it (Rom. 12:2). When we seem to suffer pointlessly here on earth, we must remember that God’s perspective is eternal. As Paul declared: For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. (Rom 8:18). Giving our lives up to God’s plan will thus produce boundless benefits and rewards, both here on earth and throughout eternity.

God has a plan – a truly marvellous one that extends far beyond our comprehension or our lifespans. Although He could accomplish it without us, He has stooped down to invite us to surrender our little lives and experience the immense privilege of being a part of His plan. Instead of leading a purposeless existence that revolves around ourselves, we can dedicate our few years on this planet to the glory of our Creator – the only life that is truly worth living.