{"id":13072,"date":"2024-07-03T01:24:51","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T07:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2c5a12bd-9abe-11e8-99ad-ca52c1e5b2af"},"modified":"2024-07-03T10:08:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T16:08:23","slug":"does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Does God Really Have a Wonderful Plan for My Life?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In elementary school, someone gave me one of those wallet-sized prayer cards made out of cardstock. It was pink and purple, with an adorable cartoon butterfly and big chunky letters boldly proclaiming, \u201cGod has a wonderful plan for your life!\u201d Like any good 9-year-old, I hung the butterfly card on my wall and soaked in that truth every day for a long time.<\/p>\n

People talk a lot about this wonderful plan that God has for us. After all, He has \u201cplans for welfare\u2026to give you a future and a hope,\u201d right? (Jeremiah 29:11<\/a>, ESV). And \u201cfor those who love God, all things work together for good\u201d (Romans 8:28<\/a>). Plus, \u201cno good thing will He withhold\u201d (Psalm 84:11<\/a>). To top it off, He is our heavenly Father, infinitely more loving and perfect and wise than the best earthly father \u2014\u00a0He will give us fish and not a snake, bread and not rocks (Luke 11:11-13<\/a>).<\/p>\n

But this \u201cwonderful life\u201d sure doesn\u2019t look so wonderful for the role models God gives us in His Word. For example,\u00a0the disciples, who were basically all martyred. Or Mary, who loved God with all her heart and ended up shunned as a pregnant teenager. Or David, whose Psalms clearly show that though we remember him as a successful man of God, he was in the dredges. A lot. Let\u2019s not even start with Job.<\/p>\n

Before I can begin to think that these are exceptions (because, after all, anyone who has been made into flannel graph<\/a> is a little hard to relate to) I can\u2019t help but notice a similar pattern much closer to home. For example, there\u2019s Adoniram and Ann Judson, an extremely godly couple who served as America\u2019s first foreign missionaries, commissioned to Burma in 1812. From the world\u2019s perspective, they lived a pretty wretched existence, involving everything from years in military prison to starvation, burying multiple children, and eventually the deaths of Ann, then Adoniram\u2019s second wife, and finally Adoniram himself. Change the names, dates and country, and you get a pretty good picture of a lot of faithful missionaries.<\/p>\n

God is a loving Father. That is absolutely, 100\u00a0percent non-negotiable. Clearly, the Scriptures mentioned earlier are true (although, context is important for a couple of them \u2014\u00a0Jeremiah 29:11<\/a> is talking specifically about the nation of Israel while in Babylonian exile, which, well, isn\u2019t me). So, that means that we are left with two facts: (1) God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life and (2) The whole \u201cwonderful\u201d thing doesn\u2019t seem to have worked out for a lot of people who believed that.<\/p>\n

I think the trouble is that I\u2019ve been given the wrong definition of \u201cwonderful.\u201d It doesn\u2019t mean what I think is best for me. In some cases, it doesn\u2019t even mean what is <\/em>best for me, in an earthly sense.<\/p>\n

Was it really \u201cbest\u201d for Paul to give up his livelihood and reputation to eventually get thrown in prison and killed? Or was it \u201cbest\u201d for Mary Livingston to go back to Africa with her husband, David, where she died at age 41 of tropical diseases? Honestly, no. Not if you are trying to imagine this \u201cwonderful plan\u201d from an earthly perspective.<\/p>\n

I want a wonderful life, but that isn\u2019t about me. It\u2019s about the kingdom of God. A \u201cwonderful life\u201d is one in which we serve passionately, fiercely and to our final breath, completing the tasks we\u2019ve been put here to do. God absolutely will take care of me. He promises that\u00a0(Philippians 4:19<\/a>; Matthew 6:25-34<\/a>). It just might not look like what the world expects.\u00a0An awesome spouse, beautiful children, and a 9-5 that pays the bills with plenty to spare isn\u2019t guaranteed. Rather, God\u2019s taking care of me means His enabling me to do everything I need to do for His glory. That could mean getting thrown into a situation where all of earthly life, from finances and health to relationships and emotions, is tottering on the edge every day, but His name is being proclaimed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWonderful\u201d is not what is best for my comfort, but what is best for His kingdom. We exist for the sole purpose of bringing glory to God. If we are following His lead and doing that, we are living a wonderful life.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m praying that this changes the way I think about my future. I need to quit asking myself things like, \u201cWhat would be best for my career?\u201d or \u201cWhat would make me happiest?\u201d I\u2019m living for something bigger than that. The butterfly card wasn\u2019t wrong: His plan<\/a> for me is wonderful, but He has a definition of \u201cwonderful\u201d that lasts forever.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Emma Beecken lives in St. Paul, Minn., where she is studying education and history because of her love of small children and old books.<\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright 2015 Emma Beecken. All rights reserved. Used with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life, but the whole \u201cwonderful\u201d thing doesn\u2019t seem to have worked out for a lot of people who believed that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":41088,"menu_order":0,"template":"","categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13072","blog","type-blog","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spiritual-growth"],"yoast_head":"\nDoes God Really Have a Wonderful Plan for My Life? - Boundless<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"God has a wonderful plan for my life, but the whole \u201cwonderful\u201d thing doesn\u2019t seem to have worked out for a lot of people who believed that.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Does God Really Have a Wonderful Plan for My Life?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life but the whole \u201cwonderful\u201d thing doesn\u2019t seem to have worked out for a lot of people who believed that.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Boundless\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/boundless.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-07-03T16:08:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/fernando-brasil-XM_2oqcbpIQ-unsplash-scaled-e1631719731205.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1439\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Does God Really Have a Wonderful Plan for My Life?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life but the whole \u201cwonderful\u201d thing doesn\u2019t seem to have worked out for a lot of people who believed that.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/fernando-brasil-XM_2oqcbpIQ-unsplash-scaled-e1631719731205.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life\/\",\"name\":\"Does God Really Have a Wonderful Plan for My Life? - Boundless\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life-66733065ddbd0.webp\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-07-03T07:24:51+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-07-03T16:08:23+00:00\",\"description\":\"God has a wonderful plan for my life, but the whole \u201cwonderful\u201d thing doesn\u2019t seem to have worked out for a lot of people who believed that.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/blog\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life-66733065ddbd0.webp\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/does-god-really-have-a-wonderful-plan-for-my-life-66733065ddbd0.webp\",\"width\":1500,\"height\":1000,\"caption\":\"A man laying on a bench. 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