Facing Your Future

Facing Your Future

God’s Game Plan for Your Life

8/27/03

I. Introduction

There was a frog that absolutely knew his destiny was to turn in to a handsome young prince. But for confirmation, he decided to visit a fortuneteller. The fortuneteller brought the frog in and gazed into her crystal ball. She said, “Oh, I see something. You are going to meet a beautiful young woman.”

The frog gets very antsy, “Yes, I knew it. I’m going to become a prince.”

The fortuneteller continues, “From the moment she sets eyes on you she will have an insatiable desire to know all about you. She will be compelled to get close to you--you’ll fascinate her."

The frog is very excited. He asks, “Where am I? At a singles club?”

The fortuneteller answers, “No, Biology class.”

Before you go off to a fortuneteller to decide your destiny, you might want to check out what God has to say. Tonight’s message is “Facing Your Future: God’s Game Plan for Your Life.”

By the end of the night, you’ll know that God indeed does have a plan for your life. You’ll learn how to find that plan and how to follow that plan.

First things first, God has a plan.

II. The Man with the Plan

Jeremiah 29:11 “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.’”

Jeremiah 29:11 (MSG) “11I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out--plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.”

God has HUGE plans for your life. This Scripture is taken from a letter to the exiles in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzer had sent a group of Israelites from Jerusalem to be held captive in Babylon. These are God’s people that were prisoners of war, but Jeremiah prophesied to them that God had a plan, a better plan than being prisoners. You may not be in a place of prosperity now and you may think God has NO plans for you, but He does. And it’s not just any old plan, it’s a plan to give you a good and prosperous future.

No matter where you’re at in life. No matter what stage you’re in. You may be getting ready to graduate high school, you may have just started high school. You could be in middle school. And you may think, “I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. I don’t need to know what I’m going to be doing in the future.” You may think you don’t need to know yet, and that’s your choice, but the cold, hard truth is that God has a plan, and with knowing more about God’s plan, you’ll be able to make quality decisions that will get you to where you need to be.

And the first step is wanting to know more about God’s plan. It’s not enough just to know that He knows and He has a plan. You have to know what that plan is. So, how do we know His plan?

III. Finding the Plan

Let’s look deeper into that passage and see what happens.

Jeremiah 29:12-14 “Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.”

Jeremiah 29:12-14 (MSG) “12"When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen.13"When you come looking for me, you’ll find me.

"Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, 14I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed. "I’ll turn things around for you. I’ll bring you back from all the countries into which I drove you"--GOD’s Decree--"bring you home to the place from which I sent you off into exile. You can count on it.”

Knowing God’s plan begins with knowing the Man with the Plan. To find his plan, pray that He would reveal his plans and purposes for your life.

1 Corinthians 2:9-12 “9That’s why we have this Scripture text: No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this, Never so much as imagined anything quite like it-- What God has arranged for those who love him.

10But you’ve seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you. The Spirit, not content to flit around on the surface, dives into the depths of God, and brings out what God planned all along.”