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Does God Have a Plan?
July 08 2019
When we’re little children, many times we play with our toys in a random way, exploring as we learn. But we have no grand scheme or purpose to our play. We simply make it up as we go.
But can you imagine God doing something like that? Would the God who is wise, loving, and eternal create the universe without a purpose? Could He create human beings without a purpose?
God is a God of purpose
The eternally wise God surely has a purpose for His creation. The orderliness of God’s creation—from the expanse of the universe down to the microscopic structure of an atom—suggests to us that God is a deliberate and purposeful God.
Look at the earth’s precise yearly orbit around the sun and the moon’s monthly orbit around the earth. Both speak not only of order but also of purpose. Their placement and the regularity of their orbits provide the best conditions for life to grow and be sustained on earth with days and nights, new seasons, and new years. Such order shows us that God doesn’t do things randomly or without purpose. God has a plan for everything.
So what is the purposeful God’s plan for us, His highest creation?
God’s plan for man
After six days of preparing the best physical environment, God reached the peak of His creating work—mankind. In all His preceding work, God simply spoke, and the land, the seas, the plants, and the animals appeared. But when it came to creating man, God didn’t just speak. The Bible states in Genesis 1:26, “And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” As a purposeful being, God made man in a very particular way—in His image. Why? Because God had a plan. An illustration here will help us understand what mankind being made in God’s image means and how it’s connected to God’s plan.
A hand and a glove
Let’s say a knitter sets out to make a glove. Since her plan is to put her hand inside the glove, she knits it in a particular way—with four longer fingers, a shorter thumb, and a hole at the wrist. In other words, she makes the glove in the shape, or image, of her hand, with an opening for her hand to get into it.
The knitter then puts her hand into the glove. If the glove could talk, it might say, “This is why I was made—to contain this hand! Now when this hand moves, I move too. What the hand does, I do too. We were meant for each other!”
Similarly, we (the glove) were made in God’s image so that God (the hand) could live in us. By living in us, His life becomes our life. Like the hand and the glove, whatever God does, we do in oneness with Him. We express the God who lives His life in us, and we make Him manifest to everyone around us.
God has a purpose for your life
God’s greater plan for all our lives is that we would have Him as our life and live Him out to express Him. Certainly, God does care about what we study in school, what kind of job we have, who we marry, and where we live. But He doesn’t care about these things aimlessly. God’s purpose and concern for the details of our lives fits within the bigger picture of His eternal purpose—that we express the God who lives in us and who has become our life.
If we’re empty and without God, or if we don’t live a life to gain God and express God, then our having the “right” spouse, career, or house might be nice, but we still fall short of the goal. God’s greater purpose for us remains unfulfilled, and we also feel unfulfilled, since His purpose is why we were created.
Although the details of our individual lives are all so different, God’s plan is actually the same for every one of us. Regardless of our different circumstances, in our day-to-day living while we drive our cars, talk to our family members, or work at our jobs, God wants to live in us so He can be expressed through us in our lives.
Here’s a short prayer we can pray to thank God for creating us with such a wonderful purpose:
“Dear Lord, thank You for showing me that Your plan for my life is greater than what I study, who I marry, or where I live. Lord, thank You for making me part of Your eternal plan. Thank You for making me in Your image so I can be filled with You and express You. Cleanse me, Lord, and fill me with Yourself. Lord Jesus, I love You.”