You made it. 2023 is in the rearview mirror: global climate upheaval, shootings, and wars on two fronts. Hello 2024. Time for a new plan for a new year with old promises in tow. Considering how calamitous 2023 was, can you really afford to approach resolutions-making the same way, considering your track record? With a few weeks left in the first month of 2024, you have time to reconsider promises made. Why don’t we do better with our resolutions? Maybe the problem is not the plan, but the planner (that would be you and I). So the plan for a better year is this: Better Planner, better Plan. The Prophet Jeremiah offers a better Planner for a plan for a hope and a future.
11 'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. 12 'Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13 'And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. Jeremial 29:11-13
Judah was in a calamitous year: exiled to a foreign land for failure to live according to their covenant with God. If they want better days, they need a better plan crafted by THE Planner who offers a promising future. Here is the plan:
I. A better plan seeks the welfare of the place where God has placed you so you will find your own welfare. God’s letter to Judah directed them to seek the welfare of their exile place for their own good by going about their lives accepting God’s corrective judgment.
5 'Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens, and eat their produce. 6 'Take wives and become the fathers of sons. . .7 'And seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Jer. 29:5-7
The application summary is this:
1. Build: Encourage/build up somebody.
2. Plant: Start something positive that will outlive you.
3. Raise up a family: Have relationships that feel like family.
4. Seek the welfare of the place where you are: Do good for someone else.
Not all judgments are destructive judgments. Some are corrective. Accept where God has placed you to make you better. Go about your life, accepting the corrective judgment of God and you will find the promises of God by seeking the good just where you are.
II. A better plan requires a better life to connect to the better “Planner” –God—whose plan is to give you a hope and a future. God’s letter to Judah directed them to seek Him whose plan is to give them a hope and a future.
12 'Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. Jer. 29:12
There are bad plans and false planners who are not from God who want to deceive you (8,9). You need to Seek the better Planner by means of a better prayer life. A “Good God, good meat, let’s eat” prayer life won’t get it. A “9-1-1 and done” emergency prayer life (calling only when you need something) is no way to build a relationship. Only calling your boyfriend or girlfriend when you needed something that didn’t work back in the day when you were courting. It won’t work with God this new year (or ever).
2023 maybe in the rearview mirror, but its dust lingers. If you want a better resolution track record so 2024 is a hopeful future, not a repeated calamity, resolve this: Better Planner, better plan. We want to thrive, not just survive.
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