October 15, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“‘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 [certain] future.’“

(Jeremiah 29.11)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

It is important to know that God just doesn’t give any future. God gives a certain future. We must be careful to avoid the thought of God choosing our future. For God to make such a choice truly nullifies the ability to choose given to every human being. It doesn’t make sense, does it, to have all kinds of choices and the opportunity to make them and regardless the end result would be the same. The end result was a choice made by another instead of by us. That is not God’s way. However, we must be clear that in the full scope of life there are always consequences to our choices. Ultimately, there are only two consequences: heaven and hell. The choices we make propel us down a path through life full of twists and turns, mountains and valleys, dead ends and detours and sometimes smooth travelling. What is so amazing about God is that He has seen it all. He is the God of choices.

As the God of choices, like a good shepherd, He has travelled every one of them. He is the God of permutations. He has seen all the possibilities of the choices we could make and where they lead to in this world. In the midst of them, He has placed warning signs and course correction options to get on the path He would choose for us which leads to dwelling with Him forever. That would be heavenly and heaven indeed. If we could only trust God enough to allow Him to make the choices for our lives! What is it in our human nature that simply will not allow that to happen? I believe that subject is far too complicated to put my energy into trying to understand it much less explain it. Maybe the simplest answer is “choice” or “will.” In God’s determination for love to be the basic understanding of all life, “choice” had to be in the mix. To deny the ability to choose was to set God up as the dictator of absolute power and control. Why give human beings a mind that could observe all there is and seek out a meaning and purpose for it and for themselves if there was no permission, opportunity nor ability to choose for themselves? The fact is that God did not create aumatons/robots. One might as well believe in zombies! But, in the nature and character of love, the God of choices, made a choice to give His creation such a freedom. When God breathed life into Adam whom He created from the dust of the earth (yes, we were not created out of nothingness), He breathed the Holy Spirit into him. God breathed and infused, filled up and inflated Adam with Himself. God gave Adam life and connected with Him as no other creature could. What that intimates is that Adam was brought to life with a taste for heaven. So much time and energy is spent by theologians to expound upon “original sin” that this simple truth has been overlooked. While we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3.23) having been infected by the choice of Adam and Eve to be independent of God for even the briefest of moments and to act upon it with an eternal consequence, we also are born with a taste for heaven. God made sure that the promise and reality of heaven was not foreign to us. He placed within our DNA (try to find this in the genome) “the way, the truth and the life” which leads to heaven. Before there was a known Christ, David expressed that “taste for heaven.” It is right there as plain as day in he 23rd Psalm…”and I shall dwell in the House of the Lord forever.” Even if it was described as “heaven on earth,” or David imagining living in the Jerusalem temple all the days of his life, it was no less “a taste for heaven.” The only creature who disdained that taste for heaven was Lucifer. His dissatisfaction with God had to come from the most simple misunderstanding. I believe Lucifer thought he had no choice in the matter of determining his meaning and purpose. I believe Lucifer thought that who he had been created to be was all that he could be. I don’t think it was all that he could be. I do believe it was the fullness of who God believed Lucifer was meant to be. In a “heaven full of choices,” of all the wonderful things Lucifer could have been, God appointed him to lead heaven in pure and glorious worship of the One True God. What an honor! What a blessing! It was a “certain” future!

But like so many people in the world, actually like all of us, we think we do not have a choice except to choose something else. Why is it so hard to believe that God would bypass all the other options for our lives that could exist and choose a most “certain” one? To borrow a phrase, we must “trust the process.” We all know how wonderful it is to be “chosen.” We actually long to be chosen. We long for someone to choose us to love, value and cherish. God did this before we were ever born. He said so to Jeremiah, “Before you were formed in the womb, I knew you.” And it wasn’t that God was simply familiar or cognizant of Jeremiah. To “know” someone implied an intimate and personal relationship filled with love, meaning and purpose. I believe our ultimate purpose is to make that choice to “know” God. Jesus makes it more possible to have that “certain” future. He made the ultimate choice for us by laying down His own life so that we might become the righteousness of God. He died so that we might live into the best choice anyone can make…to be with God forever. Why can’t we just choose to accept the certain future God does have in mind for us? Why do we have to do it the hard way? Perhaps the very nature of “choice” makes that the most difficult question to understand and answer. It is both a burden and a blessing. However, mighty ones of God, we can do it with the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.