The Word To Live By: 8-10-25
Phil Waggoner
For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11
The Word To Live By: You can’t do a “Promise Tour” of the Bible and not include Jeremiah 29:11. When you hook up with God’s plan for your life, you can expect good. (Not government welfare, which is the bottom rung for what God has in store for you). If you look up welfare in the dictionary, you will find words like well-being, happiness, good, and safety as synonyms. His plan is certainly not for disaster but for a good, well-being, happy, and a safe future. But this is not the end of that promise. Have you also read verses 12-14? “You will call to Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you.” The first place you are going to find God is in His Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). However, the more I’m in the Word, the more I find God in my daily life. Several weeks ago, we had one of the young people in our family get caught doing something uncharacteristic of them and very much against the plan of God for their life. I saw the Spirit of God in this, exposing them and answering the prayers of their parents and grandparents, not to mention changing the course of their lives. God is always working in your life to answer prayers according to His will to bring about the manifestation of Jeremiah 29:11 in your life. “This is the confidence we have before Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.” Sometimes our prayers aren’t answered the way we think they should be, but the end result is always welfare, not disaster, which gives us a future and a hope.
Read through the Bible in a year: 2 Corinthians 11; 2 Kings 25; Habakkuk 2;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 10, Matthew 21:1-23, Romans 13
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160