If you love God and have an innate longing to please him and walk in his ways – no matter how sinful your life presently is – then you belong to the first of the two categories of human beings born since the creation of Adam and Eve.
The first category are people who were predestined – that is, preplanned – long before they were conceived in the womb, to be saved through Jesus Christ, and live forever with him in the Kingdom of God. These people are the ‘children of promise’. They are born of God’s will. The uniqueness of this category of people is that from birth they have a love of God, or at least they do not have innate hate for God and his ways.
The second category of people are those who are the ‘children of flesh’, born by chance by the will of their human father, or to put it bluntly, they are conceived as a result of the sheer pull of a man’s groins. These children are accursed from the womb, and they are born with a heart that is naturally rebellious against God. Two examples are Cain and Esau. Ponder the following verses carefully:
For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother’s righteous. 1 Jn 3:11-12
“I have loved you,” says the Lord. “Yet you say, ‘In what way have You loved us?’ Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” Says the Lord. “Yet Jacob I have loved; but Esau I have hated Mal 1:2-3
The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. Ps 58:3
Please try to grasp the awesomeness of this truth: God knew you personally even before the creation of the world. The fact that you are inclined to love God is not accidental but providential; that inclination was put in you even when you were in your mother’s womb.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you Jer 1:5
But You are He who took me out of the womb; You caused me to trust while I was on my mother’s breasts. I was cast on You from birth; You are my God from my mother’s womb Ps 22:9-10 MEV
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. Ps 139:16
just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself Eph 1:4-5
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. Ps 139:16
If you love God, it is the absolute evidence that God was speaking about you to the heavenly host and mentioning your name to them even when you were being formed in your mother’s womb.
The Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. Is 49:1 KJV
You were put on earth for a specific and eternal purpose. Your Creator has laid out a definite and detailed plan for your life, both here in this life on physical earth and in the coming life in the Kingdom of God.
Whatever has happened to you in this life so far – all the troubles, all the sufferings, all the sins you committed, all the failures – happened within God’s specific plan for your life. Not a hair of your head fell to the earth without its fulfilling in some infinitesimal way God’s plan he set for you eons before you were born. Your Father in heaven allowed you to make mistakes, allowed you to fall into sin, allowed sufferings, but only because those failures, sins, sufferings, were molding you and preparing you for the plan he has in mind for you.
The future is already laid out for you. God will ensure that no matter what you do, you will eventually become the workmanship he had planned for you. He will complete the work that he began in your life when you were conceived.
being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ Phil 1:6
Something awesome is destined for you in this life. And what is that? That before you die, your life will be made complete, perfected, so you are ready to enter God’s Kingdom and begin fulfilling your eternal purpose God destined for you when he formed you in the womb. Nobody, not even Jesus knows what exactly is the position or responsibility your Father has planned for you in his Kingdom. In fact, so specific is God’s plan for his Kingdom that he is preparing, or already has prepared, two people to sit on Jesus’ right hand and his left hand when the Lord returns to earth.
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Him, saying, “Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask.”
And He said to them, “What do you want Me to do for you?”
They said to Him, “Grant us that we may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on Your left, in Your glory.”
But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
They said to Him, “We are able.”
So Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink the cup that I drink, and with the baptism I am baptized with you will be baptized; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it is prepared.” Mk 10:35-40
Whatever you will go through during the rest of your life on earth, literally everything that will happen to you, will be part of the plan God has for you for this life. That includes all the sins you will commit in the future. God is not responsible for the particular sins you will commit, but he is fully responsible for allowing that particular sin to be committed by you, so you can experience the terrible penalty and suffering caused by that sin, and having experienced it, you can repent and grow even stronger than you were before that sin. But if there is an evil event, or a sin, or any other circumstance that will take away in the least from, or do not contribute in some way to, God’s plan for your life, then he will not allow it to happen. What greater assurance can we have of our salvation, of our ultimate success and victory in this life!
Today you are in the right place, at the right time, doing the very thing God has allowed you to do. What’s happening today is happening according to God’s plan. If it is something sinful, then be assured you are going to come out of it spiritually clean sooner or later, and stronger for your experience of that sin.
However, understand this vital truth. God is not creating zombies or robots. Today you can decide whether to facilitate God’s plan for you by yielding sooner to his will in your life, or continue to live as you are in your present state of sin, and after suffering the consequences for a while, yield to him then. If you are wise, you will take the first course. But either way, you are going to end up exactly where God has planned for you in this life. How soon, how smoothly, is all upto you.
Today you can make the decision to make God’s plan for you easier and smoother each day by walking in the path he counsels you to take. This path is shown in the Bible. It’s a narrow path, but it’s the path that will take you soonest and smoothest, and with the least suffering, to the place God has planned for you even before you existed.
Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. Heb 3:15
Your future is laid out for you. Therefore go forth, child of God, and do all you can to do your little part in God’s plan for you. Keep God’s commandments with all your heart, might, soul and mind. Draw close to God, and your battles against various sin will be won earlier.
Remember, no sin, no evil, no force on earth or in the heavens will be able to thwart God’s plan for you and his faithfulness toward you. he has for you. Absolutely nothing.
So, go forward, O called of God from the foundation of the world, and live your life to the fullest. All the forces in the universe are with you to help fulfil the plan God has for you.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rm 8:31-39
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jer 29:11 (For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. NIV)
Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. 1 Cor 2:9
Joseph Cherian
Prepare The Way Of The Lord! 