His Plan and Our Destiny!

Fresh Manna
by Pastor Tim Burt

Have you ever heard anyone say something to the effect, “If I was God, I would have done things so completely different from how He did it!” Basically that person reduces God to their level and exposes the ignorance of their understanding of God.

What we will all one day fully understand is that God’s plan for all mankind is perfect. We will learn that in order for God to create a people that were not mindless robots, He had to create us with the gift of free will motivated by love. That meant He had to create mankind fallible, knowing that in giving us free will, we’d have the freedom to make wrong choices that might be wrongly motivated.

That is anything but a simple plan. It’s a plan that only God could comprehend and manage. Intelligent Design studies shows the complexity and beauty of all things created. Man could not begin to scratch the surface of God’s intelligent, creative, and majestic design that we see in the human body, the earth, the stars, and in all things created by Him. The omnipotence of God’s greatness in all we can see and study, tells the sincerely honest man that God alone is God and is worthy of our trust.

God had a plan that is perfect with rules and regulations that He laid out in the Old Testament. Go and read them all. If everyone would have followed His rules perfectly, the world would make sense and run decently and in order. But, the very free will that God gave us presented us with the freedom to make wrong choices. You and I have both made more than our share of them. When we did, someone got hurt. Wrong choices hurt people. Thus, the world we live in is full of hurt.

When a person receives Jesus into His heart as Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit of God comes to live within that person. They now have the Spirit of God helping them learn God’s ways so that they can make right choices. After Jesus died and rose from the dead to pay the punishment for our sins, the rule list was reduced to guidelines and instructions learning to walk after the Spirit and wrapped up in loving people with the love of God. James 2:8 says, “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. Jesus taught His disciples, “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” John 13:35

No, God did not make a mistake when He created the world. Nor did He create the pain that we feel in this world. If he just wipes out those that cause pain and injustice, then we get wiped out because we sometimes cause it.

We are far from perfect and none of us get everything right. But Jesus cleansed us of our sin and made us right with God. We know we fall short, but because of Jesus, we’ve been made clean in God’s eyes. He’s equipped us with His Spirit to teach us right choices motivated from a heart of love for Him and others, and to influence and bless the lives around us with that love.

It is a perfect plan that for now seems very imperfect. Do you want to know what makes it seem more perfect? You and I walking out our destiny to love others with His love!

1 Cor. 13:12 (NLT) Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.

In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt