“God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life!”
I’ve heard this promise/these promises all of my life. I’ve both received the declaration and blurted it out to countless others. A recent sermon from John 3:16 on the love of God got me thinking about this all too familiar sentence that has been tattooed onto my churched soul. If the first part of this sentence is true (“God loves you”), do we really need the “and” part (“and has a wonderful plan for your life”)? I mean, if God truly loves us then why have to throw in the “and has a wonderful plan for your life”? If we are loved by God, then should it not follow that everything and anything that happens to us is part of the divine-love-of-God plan? Do we have to (need to) add the “and has a wonderful plan for your life”?
Not only that, but who is defining “wonderful”? What does that mean? What does the “wonderful-loved-by-God” life look like? Does “wonderful plan for your life” mean all my dreams will come true? Does it mean health, wealth, and prosperity? Does it mean everything will go really well for me when I finally believe God loves me and I accept Jesus as my Savior? And speaking of Jesus, He was obviously loved by God. How did things go for Him while on the earth? Would you consider being brutally tortured on a cross as a “wonderful plan for His life”? Would you use the adjective “wonderful” to describe how the plan of Jesus’ life unfolded? Would you describe every detail of your life as wonderful since trusting Jesus and believing God’s love for you?
I don’t know. I’m probably over-thinking this thing (“yes, Matt, you are definitely over thinking this thing”). But I do believe it is worth considering for a moment why we would need to add anything to the promise “God loves you.” If the Creator and Upholder of the universe, the One we have rejected and sinned against actually loves His image-bearing creatures – then we really don’t need a qualifier. Yes, His plan for our lives is wonderful. But it probably won’t always look or feel that way. Yes, the trajectory of our lives will be with Him forever in the age to come. But usually our plans for our lives here on earth don’t match His plans for our lives. If it truly gets into our bones that God loves us, we won’t need to set ourselves up for disappointment when “the wonderful plan for our lives” doesn’t pan out so, well, wonderfully. Believing and living in the reality of His love doesn’t guarantee everything will be wonderful. But it does mean that whatever comes our way, whatever life throws at us, whether we understand it or not – we can be confident we are living in the deep, eternal, secure love of God. Period.
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