Does God have a plan for me?

The Apostle has shewn how blessedly the Holy Spirit works in us by the new life in Christ, and the indwelling Holy Spirit, producing spiritual experiences. Now we learn that not only is God the Holy Spirit in us, but that God is for us in "all things" that are taking place around us. In regard to all the circumstances of life, the trials, the sorrows, the conflicts and the difficulties, we may not know how to pray as we ought; but this we do know, "That all things work together for good to them that love God". We may not always see how this loss, or that trial, is working for our good, but faith knows that good will be the result in time and eternity. To understand the way in which all things work for good we may have to wait, even as the Lord said to Peter, "What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter". Another has said, "The sorrow may not be remedied, but the sorrow is blessed".

To assure our hearts that all is working for good, we are reminded that we are "the called" of God; and, if called, God has a purpose for us. God saves us because we need saving; God calls us because He wants us. All God's ways with us in the present have in view the fulfilment of His purpose for us in the future.

The energy of God given to the soul enables us to walk in works which are the expression of that energy, and of our vital union with Christ God sets each one ill his course, and there is a speciality of Providence in connection with every individual. God is great enough to number the hairs of our head; you and I are too little. God is so great that he can count cups of cold water; we are too little, too tiny, to do so; we can only lay hold of general features. I must be holy, — that is quite true; but who marked out the path for a Daniel or a Paul in their day, and for the early Christians in theirs? Who fixed the time of your birth, all your path in life, your trials, your sicknesses? It was God, the living God! God comes in everywhere, in every thought, and step, and act of life — even in turning to speak to any one in the street.

This, too, is the principle of real piety, because it keeps us in constant dependence upon God, and in constant reference to God. It is an amazing comfort for my soul to think that there is not a single thing all through my life in which God as my Father has not a positive will about me to direct me; that there is not a step from the moment I am born (though while we are unconverted we understand nothing about it), in which there is not a positive path or will of God to direct me here. I may forget it and fail, but we have in that word and will of God what keeps the soul, not in a constant struggle against one thing and another, but in the quiet consciousness that divine favour has provided for everything - that I do not take a step but what divine favour has provided for. It keeps the soul in the sweet sense of divine favour and in dependence upon God, so that like David we can say, "Thy right hand upholdeth me." Moses does not say, Shew me a way through the wilderness, but, "Shew me now thy way." A man's ways are what he is: God's way shews what He is.

Divine providence will always reach its goal. In the book of Esther there is a twofold objective: first, the salvation of the Jews and the exaltation of Mordecai in Persia (a figure of the salvation of the Jewish remnant in a future day and of the Lord Jesus and His coming glory in the millennium); second, the destruction and ruin of Haman (a figure of the coming antichrist). All this speaks of the ‘fulness of times’ when God will ‘head up all things in the Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth’ (Eph. 1:10). At that time, God’s government will no longer be indirect but all will be under the direct and visible control of the Son of man (Ps. 8), the Lord Jesus, the man of God’s counsels, who will rule over all things. God has a great pre-determined plan for this creation and we can be sure that He will accomplish everything according to His purpose, especially as it concerns His Son, and to His glory. We can also be sure that He will also accomplish His purpose in our lives. All will turn out to His glory.

But in making us, God had His thoughts about us. Not one thought that He had in His mind, when He made us at the beginning, will fall to the ground unfulfilled; but now all His thoughts concerning us are set before us in His Son. He has predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren (Rom. 8:29). To this end He has been working from the beginning, and to this end are all His dealings with us. From this He cannot be diverted. He has made the power of Satan, the fall of man, the rejection of His blessed Son work to this end. He is able to make everything serve His purpose, and nothing can militate against His gracious decrees. He has also His purposes in creation, and He will fill it with His glory and praise. And as it is in redemption He has come to light so everything will be filled with the glory of that work. But in the ages to come we who are saved in this dispensation have the nearest and highest place to Himself, as sons along with His Son, and as the body and bride of the heavenly Man.

In the “Yoke and the Covenant” section of Jeremiah, God introduces to Israel His intentions by these words, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith Jehovah, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you in your latter end a hope” (Jer.29:11). His will for them, His promises to them, His thoughts about them, as we have seen, are frequently reinforced by the expression, “I will”.

The God of peace whose thoughts of peace towards Israel, expressed in the new covenant, is likewise the God of peace to us. He may allow circumstances for us akin to Israel's captivity in Babylon. To outward appearance all may be in turmoil. But He is the God of peace, and has towards us thoughts of peace, and has planned for us a “latter end”.

The second thing that lies in this scripture is, that even now God is working towards this end. In all His present dealings with us, in all our varied experiences, in all the trials, sorrows, dangers, and persecutions that attend our path, God is leading us, and using all these seeming adversities, as the sculptor employs his chisel, to produce conformity to the image of His Son. The full result, as will hereafter be seen, is never attained here, but this is the end God has always in view. Knowing this, for He reveals it in His own word, we can with confidence adopt this language, and say, "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." What an unspeakable consolation to our souls! All things — not one is excepted, but all things, the bitter and the sweet, adversity and prosperity, sickness and health, yea, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword — all are but instruments in the hands of our God to work out His purposed end. How calmly then we may repose in Him and in His love! Like Jacob, we may often be tempted to say, "All these things are against us;" but no, they are for us, working together for good. We may not see the need of this trial, or the reason of that sorrow; but God is watching, noting everything — what we require, and what the effect produced upon us. Our future condition is before Him, and He leads us by a right way to secure the blessing for us.

Here, then, we have the believer the workmanship of God in Christ, and this "unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them." This is a very remarkable expression, and one that we cannot too much weigh. It is not the good works of the law — not those which might seem so in human judgment, but an offering of a new character, heavenly and of grace, which was in God's mind and all determined about us before the scene existed into which we are now brought. The same God who had a purpose of saving us and blessing us with Christ before the world was made, had a certain line of walk, a special course of action, in which He expected the recipients of such favour to walk. It is not the thought of the good we ought to do as men, as a means of showing that we are willing to obey God under the law. It is not loving God, and one's neighbour as oneself simply, but another type and display of love altogether. It flows from our new relationships, and if it be exercised in loving God and loving those around us, it is according to the rich love which God Himself has shown us in Christ. It is not merely duty, let it be the very highest form of obligation. If a man were to walk merely in this, though ever so well, he would fall short of what a Christian ought to be, and they are not the "good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them." The law was brought in by Israel's presumption and self-conceit; it was not something that God had before ordained for His people to walk in. Therefore it is said in Romans, that law came in by the way (περεισῆλθεν). It was a thing that entered incidentally, as a sort of parenthesis brought in for a special but very momentous purpose. And it has done its work, and the believer, even if he had been under it, is brought clear out of it and made alive to God. He has a new husband, and is dead to the old one. But here the truth is put in a very beautiful form, in harmony with the character of the whole epistle. As the calling and the purpose and all that God thought about us were before the world was, so even the character of the believer's walk was ordained before ever we came into the world and is in its own nature entirely above it. It is a question of our manifesting God aright, as He is now displaying Himself. "Be ye followers of God as dear children."

Jeremiah 1:5 and Galatians 1:15, 16 show that God marks out and calls His servants even before they are born. In the light of this He fashions the vessel for His purposes and orders all the circumstances of his after life. Everything which he passes through is calculated of God to prepare and train him for his divine calling in life, even though he may as yet be unconverted and unaware of his heavenly calling. The apostle Paul is an example of a man possessing a most remarkable natural character, as well as extraordinary training and acquirements before conversion, all of which were providentially ordered of God to fit him for his special place of ministry in the Church of God.

After Paul had made clear in Ephesians 2:9 that salvation is the work of God without any works done by men, he continues: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." This shows on the one hand that it is God's purpose that His people should perform good works and on the other that we need not look out restlessly for the good works we are to do, because God has ordained them for us. We simply have to abound in them. "And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work" (2 Cor. 9:8).