God Has a Plan

“All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip His people to do every good work.” – 2 Timothy 3:16-17 NLT


As we, at Branches, are going through the Bible in the year 2012 from cover to cover, it’s been kind of fun going through it chronologically. To see the events unfold in the order they happened can open our understanding a bit more as we look into a time and a culture very different than our own.

It’s really easy for the church today to look at the Scriptures through filters of our own experiences, laws, human rights, lifestyles, economic achievements, social orders, and post WWII non-imperialistic politics. The world has also gotten smaller as technology and transportation have improved. What used to take weeks or months to relay a communication takes only moments to go around the entire world. People regularly travel across the continents to do daily business and are back home again within hours. This calls for filters of tolerances, acceptances, protocols, behaviors, and mindsets previously not part of the daily thinking of the church.

It also opens the church up to the same thinking as the Israelites had when they were settling in the land of Canaan; they wanted a king in order to be like all the other nations. They no longer wanted God to speak to them through His prophets and judges. They wanted a king to call the shots. God warned them. He told them that a king would cost them in taxes, labor, economic slavery, and debt, but they insisted…they wanted to be like everyone else.

It was easier…to their thinking...to just accept the religious practices, laws, family protocols, and business dealings of the other nations than it was to be “different” by following what God had set up for them for pure religious practices that He would accept, laws that were just, family order, and honest business dealings. It cost them. But God faithfully used their situation to get them back to His intended purposes for them as a people, to bring the Messiah to the world through them, and reach into the entire world with His message of hope for all of mankind through the Good News; and He will continue doing that for them as He wraps up all of time someday.

He has it written in the Scriptures.

This is the main thing: God’s Word is true. Whether you and I believe it is or not, it is. North is still north whether I am lost and don’t believe it or not. God has always had a plan, He will continue on His plan, and He will be faithful to His plan to complete it. And the Scriptures are how He has let us in on how that plan works!

So, as we at Branches are reading through the Bible this year, know that it is not just a compilation of Hebrew stories, good proverbs, and teachings of a good person who meant well. These Scriptures, though not the life and hope God offers in and of themselves, point to the life and hope that He is offering us all! And not only do they point to Jesus who is the way, the truth, and the life, but they teach us what is true in our daily life and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives and then to correct the wrong thinking and doing and enable us to think and to do what is right! What a gift!! Not only has God told us His plan in the Scriptures, but these same Scriptures teach us His plan, show us when we are out of His plan, enable us to understand His plan, and empower us to participate in His plan.

I love the apostle’s realization of this same thinking: “I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue His work until it is finally completed on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” – Philippians 1:6 NLT

God has had, has, and will complete His plan as written in the Scriptures! We will continue to be looking into them!