When you take a window seat on a flight, there are two times you would like to look out the window – while it is taking off and when it lands.
• You’ve lots to see then. Anything in between is just pitch darkness and just plain white.
Before, you see the clouds above you.
• Taking off after some time, you cross them and you find the clouds below you. The sky of clouds becomes the sea of clouds. And you can see thin slices of cloud formations.
• You can have a dark and overcast sky one minute, and then you see above the clouds and very bright and sunny sight. No wonder people say, behind every dark cloud, the sun is still shining.
And you are still in the atmosphere. We have not even gotten into outer space.
• The whole look has changed. You are looking from a completely different perspective.
• We are just 20-30,000 metres above ground. I wonder how God looks at things, from His angle! What kind of a view does He have?
You know why man needs to pray? Because we need to see things the way God sees them.
• We can only see things on ground level. We live mostly by sight, not by faith.
• When we pray, we are seeking to understand God’s ways and His will, and to see things from His perspective.
This is the experience of the people of Israel during Jeremiah’s time.
• They were now in exile in a foreign land, having lost their home, their jobs, and for many, their families.
• You know how sad they were? Psalm 137:1-4 reveals a little.
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. 2 There on the poplars we hung our harps, 3 for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" 4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?
God has a Word for them. [Read Jer 29:4-14]
When everything is taken away from you, what you do not have is a hope and a future.
• And this is precisely what God will give them – a hope and a future.
• He said through prophet Jeremiah: “I know my plans for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (v.11)
God has the perspective of an eagle’s eye – it’s higher up and it’s farther away.
• God says He will bring them back from captivity. 70 years was the time God has set.
• This was His discipline. The people had turned away from Him. They worshipped idols and did evil in the sight of God.
• Warnings have been given but they did not heed them. So God ‘cane’ them using the Babylonians. When the disciplining is over, God will bring them back.
God has a plan. God always has a plan. He says to them: “I know my plans for you.”
• God does not second-guess what He wants to do with our life. It’s really scary if someone wants to gamble with your life that way.
• We seek God because He always has a plan for us.
God has a purpose in all that He allows in our lives, even if it means some hardships.
• Our life is not like a piece of log being tossed by the currents of this world.
• God says He has a plan for His people. They may not know it all the time, or understand His plan, but God does. He says, “I KNOW my plans for you…”
• He need not have to guess. God knows what He is doing in your life today.
That’s why the wisest man on earth – King Solomon says in the book of wisdom PROVERB 3:6 says “In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”
• Before this line, he says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.”
• The wisest man on earth directs us to another Wisdom, the wisdom above his wisdom; the source of his own wisdom.
We often allow the circumstances to dictate us. That’s ground-level sight.
• We sit by the river, like the Israelites, and weep. There is no song in our heart.
• We forget that God is good. We forget that God has a purpose in everything He does. We forget what God has promised.
Jeremiah reminds the people, this is what the Lord says. He has “plans to prosper you and not to harm you...”
• God’s intention for us is always good. Believe this today. We may not see it at first, but trust Him.
• History tells us God is right, because after 70 years, the exile did return to their homeland. It seemed improbable but it happened. Nothing can stop God.
TWIN TOWERS SURVIVORS
On September 11, 2001 terrorists flew two hijacked passenger planes into the World Trade Center Twin Towers. Many who work in the Twin Towers survived because they were not there. They came together and shared their stories:
♠ One of them took his son to the Kindergarten, it was his son’s first day at school.
♠ One of them missed his bus.
♠ One spilled food on her clothes and had to take time to change.
♠ For one, his car wouldn't start that morning.
♠ And then there was this man who put on a new pair of shoes that morning, but before he got to his office, he developed a blister on his foot. He stopped at a store to buy a plaster. That is why he is alive today.
These messed up events saved their lives. We may be in a messed up situation today, but remember, God is in sovereign control of His plan.
The situation you are in may be where He wants you to be at this very moment.
What did God ask them to do?
• The Lord asks them to settle down in the foreign land – see verses 5 onwards - build houses, plant gardens, and raise up your families…
• Verse 7 says, “Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
God desires to bless His people where they are.
They do not have to wait. God will bless them where they are.
• Of course, blessing has nothing to do with a particular place or time. It has to do with God. Where the Lord is, there will be joy and peace and hope.
• Jeremiah tells them, God will prosper you where you are! You do not need a change of the circumstances in order to be blessed.
• We don’t have to wait for things to turn around, wait till you find a new job, wait for a new house, or wait till you graduate from school, or for some things to change, before we can be blessed.
God blesses us where we are! He is with us whatever the circumstances.
• He said He is going to bless them while they are still in exile. God was with them in Babylon.
• If you care to put our trust in God, you will experience His blessings where you are. We don’t have to wait for another time, or another place.
Perhaps, you may have been looking for God’s blessings in the wrong places.
• We are longing for a special something to happen in order to see God’s blessings?
• We like to think that the grass is greener on the other side. We keep looking over the fence, and end up not eating the grass we have at our feet.
• The truth is the grass is greener where you water it.
God is all we need, and He is with us today. We need to worship Him and seek Him with all our heart.
• The Lord says in verses 12-13, “Call upon 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.”
• Whatever circumstances you find yourselves in, pray. God is just a prayer away.
• Isaiah says, “Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.” (Isa 59:1) He will be there to comfort and guide you.
Living out God’s plan does not mean everything will be easy.
• The people have to learn to settle down in a foreign land, build their homes, plant their crops, and raise their family, in a different culture and environment.
• It will take hard work. It will mean a lot of adjustments. When God says, “I will bless you”, does not mean life will be easy and smooth-sailing.
• We are going to find His blessings in the challenges of life. He is with you to bless you, even in the midst of hardship.
Many good things happened during these 70 years.
• The Book of Daniel tells us many capable men were taken to the palace and trained to serve the King of Babylon. Daniel and his friends were among them, and they went on to become the best administrators in that land. And God’s Name was proclaimed and glorified in the foreign lands.
• The Jewish people were able to live in peace during these 70 years. They had time to write some of the greatest books of the OT - 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Psalm 137 were all written during this 70-year period.
• Most important of all, they learnt their lesson - the people realised that they had been unfaithful to God. This whole calamity was a discipline, and it caused them to return to God wholeheartedly.
This was God’s plan. He uses whom He pleases to fulfil His plan.
• He uses the Babylonians to bring discipline, and then the Persians to bring them home. Nothing is outside God’s domain or beyond His power.
God has been doing that throughout Israel’s history.
• God used the captivity of Joseph in Egypt so that Joseph would be in a position to prepare Egypt for the famine that was to come.
• God used the daughter of Pharaoh to adopt the baby whom she called Moses, so that the child would be brought up in the safety of Pharaoh’s palace. He was then trained in the Egyptian courts so that one day he can lead His people out.
GETTING PAST YOUR PAST
Charles Colson was an aide to the former US President Richard Nixon. He was sent to jail in 1974 for a crime he committed.
As a result of his experience as a convict, Colson founded Prison Fellowship after his release, to help convicts know Christ and start a new life. It has now become the world’s largest Christian outreach to prisoners and their families. Prison Fellowship has more than 50,000 volunteers working in hundreds of prisons in 88 countries around the world.
This ministry got started 25 years ago because Charles Colson committed a crime and was imprisoned. His time spent in prison became a turning point in his life. This was all a part of God’s eternal purposes for this man. Not only was his life changed, his work became a blessing to thousands of prisoners today.
SOURCE: Alan Perkins in "Getting Past Your Past."
It was a part of God’s plan from the very beginning.
• Just like the people of Israel, just like Colson, your life cannot be ruined, not by your sin or anyone else’s.
• God’s good plan for your life is not buried under the mistakes of the past.
• God has a plan for your life, a good plan, a loving plan, and that plan is still in effect. You haven’t missed it. He is working in your life today.
Will you believe that? Make a fresh commitment to seek God with all our heart.
• In this short passage, the Lord stresses a few times – pray, call upon me, come and pray to me, seek me.
• He wants to show us the way. He wants to give you hope and a future.
