What if your dreams don’t come true?

Learning to trust God when his plans are different to yours.

Our God is a loving God and he has good things planned for those who follow him. This is clear throughout the Bible! For example, in the book of Jeremiah, God’s people Israel are in exile in Babylon and worried about their future. But Jeremiah passes on to them this message:

“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).

I bet that at that moment the Israelites were pretty unconvinced that God’s plans would help them – after all, they were in captivity far away from their homeland! But God’s plans were good, and eventually he did rescue Israel from Babylon and they were returned to their homeland.

God’s plans are different to our plans

A lot of the time, the things that God has planned for his people are not what we plan for ourselves.

When the Israelites were back in Israel, they were still under foreign rule, first by the Persians and then by the Romans. They were waiting for the prophesied Messiah who would come to redeem them. And they were hoping and planning for a Messiah who would rescue them from the tyranny of the Romans!

But God had a different plan for what his Messiah would do. He didn’t send a Messiah to save Israel from the Romans. But he sent Jesus, who did something so much better!

God’s plans are better than our plans

God’s plans are always better than the things we can dream up for ourselves. For example, after I broke up with my high school boyfriend at the end of my first year of university, it was only eight months later that I met the man I ended up marrying!

Here’s a greater example: even though the Israelites expected a Messiah who would drive out the Romans, God sent Jesus to redeem the whole world from the punishment we deserved for our sin!

When life is really hard and it doesn’t go the way we planned, it can be so difficult to see the goodness of God’s plans. But sometimes we need to look at a situation with different eyes. Maybe it will take time – perhaps it will even take until we join God in heaven! – but God’s good plan for us will be carried out!