I was listening to a business guru expound on the virtues of having a plan. “You can’t go about your business willy-nilly,” he said. “You have to plan for success—it doesn’t just happen.”

It brought to mind a memory I had of the late evangelist, Billy Graham. He was asked out of all the millions of people who gave their lives to Christ during his crusades, what was the one aspect of God that seemed to have the most impact. Seeming not to have the answer at the ready, one did spring to the top of his mind as a potential answer. He remembered how God having a plan for each person’s life was something that reached deep inside and offered unexpected hope.

This made perfect sense to me. As a dad to two young adults, the future hangs over their heads like a bit of a dark cloud. The future is the great unknown and anything that is unknown carries with it a bit of oppression for the fear it instills. But if we let our minds wrap themselves around the idea that the future is in fact known by a loving God—because He is creating it according to a carefully crafted plan, should there really be any fear? We don’t know it, but God does because it already exists.

Let our minds wrap themselves around the idea that the future is in fact known by a loving God.

Of course, hard times will always bring about doubts that God’s plan is still being followed. Shouldn’t God’s plan steer us around minefields rather than through them? No. Any God that we believe is large enough to fix our lives we must also agree will have a perspective that we don’t. God allows valleys to increase faith that will bring about joyful mountaintops. Our God is eager to show His faithfulness.

Of course, our idea of a plan is a written list of sequential events. Does God write? The Bible (in Revelation) says that our names are written in the Book of Life. And so if it is true that God writes, doesn’t the mental image of a plan with our name written at the top bring about a bit of excitement that so much thought has been put into your future? It does me. I hope that’s what it will do for my kids who peer out into the future with some trepidation. They could really use the hope that comes with certainty.

God has a plan.

Now, relax and enjoy.

Psalm 139:17-18
How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.

Jeremiah 29:11
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 future.