God Has a Perfect Plan for Your Life

My original title for this article was a question: Does God Have a Perfect Plan for Your Life? But I thought it might get more traction if I made it into a statement! Either way, is it true? At first glance, it certainly seems appealing. But how does our human free will come into it—or doesn’t it? Do we have no more say in what happens to us in life than a dog on a leash? Can our mistakes in life derail God’s perfect plan?    

It’s not uncommon to hear in sermons that “God has a perfect plan for your life,” quite likely basing that on Jeremiah 29:11 as a prooftext, “For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for prosperity and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” If it’s a sophisticated sermon it might get paired with Psalm 139:16, “You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” How are we to understand what these verses are saying? Much will depend on what we expect to find: how we understand God involves himself in our lives, and especially the degree of control.  

Calvinists (and evangelicals influenced by Calvinism—wittingly or otherwise) take the level of God’s control over human affairs to the nth degree. God is the machine operator, pulling all the levers and pressing all the switches of every single thing that happens in this world. If we read those verses through a Calvinist lens, they appear to fit that model. But the stark staring obvious problem with the Calvinist viewpoint (comforting though it can be on one level) is that it means we must credit God with bringing about every bad thing that happens in human life (every abuse, every rape, every painful death, every natural disaster) and simply trust that God knows best; that he knows what he’s doing. It takes linguistic gymnastics of the highest order to articulate how God can escape responsibility for all of the evil in this world (either by willing it or at least allowing it—which, for an omnipotent God, would be effectively the same thing).  

If we look more closely at Jeremiah 29:11 (rather than extracting it from its context and quoting it as if it’s a stand-alone truth), we immediately see two important things. One is that through the prophet, God is speaking to the people of Israel collectively—it’s “you, plural,” not each one of them (or us) individually. It’s speaking to the nation, which is currently in exile, in captivity, in Babylon. Two is that the verse immediately before this oft-quoted proof text tells us when verse 11 is going to come about: which is seventy years hence! In other words, when all of the current hearers will most likely be dead.      

Perhaps that’s enough to derail the standard “God has a perfect plan for your life” sermon, but just in case it’s not, let’s have a closer look at the original Hebrew. The first keyword is “plans.” In the 56 instances it appears in the OT, the KJV (at least) never translates it as “plans.” It means “thoughts” or “purposes” in a broader, more general sense. Having thoughts for us, or purposes for us—especially us collectively—is rather different from meticulously detailed plans and specifications such as an architect or engineer might draw up for a building project. It’s the same Hebrew word in Genesis 6:5: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of mankind was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” Several Bible translations render it “thoughts” rather than “plans” in Jeremiah 29:11, but for some reason (maybe because it’s appealing for a Modern audience?) “plans” is the word that enters the lexicon for popular evangelical sermons!        

Another keyword in the verse is “prosperity.” Naturally, health and wealth “prosperity gospel” preachers love it. It fits well with their “name it and claim it” message that provided you have enough faith—defined for practical purposes as donating your money to their bank accounts as an act of faith—you, too, can experience great wealth (as well as being the means to bring about that promise for them). However, the KJV translates this Hebrew word as “prosperity” only four times out of 237 instances. The ESV and NRSV translate it as “welfare.” The CSB has “well-being.” The Hebrew word here? Shalom! (šālôm). It’s often translated as “peace,” probably for the sake of finding a single English word, but it has a far richer meaning, along the lines of “when everything in life is as it should be”—a wholeness, completeness, and well-being in life. Yes, those ideas include prospering, but more in the sense of flourishing—not in a “God wants us all to be rich” sense. So once again—and all the more so, perhaps—why is it that “prosperity” is the one that enters the sermon lexicon for Jeremiah 29:11? Might that, too, be because the English word is more appealing?      

So what should we say about Jeremiah 29:11? We must always start with what a verse or passage was saying then, to them (the original author and audience), about what, and why. In light of what we’ve already said—taking account both of the Hebrew and the context—it patently is not trying to offer each individual Christian a tailored plan for each and every moment of our lives, written in heaven before we were born. Even if it were, what would be the chances of us finding it and staying within the tramlines? I suppose a Calvinist would say, “Well, obviously, every time you thought you were outside the plan, you weren’t really.” And I do see the appeal of Calvinist thinking—it seems to explain a lot—but is it really satisfactory? Might the relationship between God’s Calvinistic sovereign control of every single moment of everyone’s life and our own free will be rather more complex? Otherwise, even from the very start of the human story, we’d have to conclude that when Adam and Eve sinned by eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, it was God who made them do it. And if that was true for them in their sin, wouldn’t it be true for us, in our sin? Again, it takes linguistic gymnastics to rescue the reputation of the Calvinist God.   

So what about that twinned verse, Psalm 139:16 (see above)? The first thing we can say is that, unlike Jeremiah 29:11, it’s clearly speaking of an individual rather than the nation. Once again, how we interpret what it’s saying will depend significantly on the English words that we choose to translate the key Hebrew words and what we infer from those English words.

There is little to debate about the word for “days” (its meaning is the same in Hebrew and English, speaking either of 24-hour periods or more generally of “my life and times”) or  “written in [God’s] book.” The questions surround “every moment was laid out” for me. I think it’s as good as impossible here to separate translation from theology (or perhaps we should say, from ideology). Bible versions translate it variously as “ordained” for me, “appointed” for me, or “planned” for me— all of which do suggest they were “decided for me.” Similarly, “written” for me suggests scripted, like a movie. No doubt a Calvinist reading will see the “perfect plan” idea being validated by all these versions. However, there is more to be said. The Hebrew word most often has a softer, less-prescriptive meaning, that of “formed or “shaped” by God. It’s the word that’s used in Genesis 2:7, “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground …” It’s most often used for the work of a potter “fashioning” his workmanship. Might it be the case that what leads us to how we read what this verse is saying is a Modern versus Ancient world perspective? Is the original meaning more artistic and creative than a mechanistic and scientific Modern reading? Is “fashioning” the same thing as “controlling”? Is “shaping” the same thing as “dictating”? I think we will each need to decide for ourselves on this.

Let me offer a few thoughts that might steer you in a particular direction. One is, beware attaching too much significance to any single verse or passage in isolation, especially when what we’re talking about is a particular way of reading what we think that verse or passage “must” mean or “appears” to mean. Ask whether that accords with Scripture more widely, and give particular attention to the NT over the OT. Also keep in mind the genre of the Psalms as Wisdom literature and how to read that (see part II of my book, Reading The Bible With Its Writers— https://tinyurl.com/2drm46yv); here we’re seeing David reflecting his perspective, rather than a divine propositional truth. Equally, think about how your experience relates to your proposed reading. Does a perfect, meticulous divine plan for every moment fit well with the way your own life works out in practice? If not, then why might that be? Does life suggest that even if God did have such a plan for us, it would be as good as impossible for us to know whether we were deviating from it moment by moment, even in terms of whether we choose a bagel or a muffin for breakfast, or an americano versus a cappuccino. What was the divine plan, and did we miss it? Or might such a plan be less detailed—more along the lines of always wanting the best for us and having the same kinds of hopes and desires for what we do in life and how it works out that any devoted parent would have for their child (but without being controlling)? Might it be that God lives life with us in real time? That he would love it if we did such-and-such when choices need to be made; that he thinks we would be great at this or that and wants to help us to see that; that he just knows there would be so much good fruit if we did this rather than that at this moment? That he always knows what would be good for us, and even best for us, but ultimately his shaping and forming is cooperative and guiding rather than coercive and controlling?

I leave you with a couple of motoring metaphors for God’s leading and guiding and the role played by human free will (aka, human frailty) in that: sat nav! If your experience of sat nav is anything like mine, it’s frequently needing to be “re-routing” when I take a wrong turn. When I think I know better than sat nav (which is allegedly a common male trait, when it comes to driving) and I take a different route (as I did two days ago—only to find the road ahead was closed) sat nav does not take over the controls and force me onto its route, it works with me (sometimes having to repeat that time and again, if I’m stubborn). Like all metaphors “sat nav” only works to a point, of course, but maybe there’s something in it you can work with.

My car also has a gimmick called “lane departure warning” which recognises if I’m in danger of unwittingly drifting over the dotted line into the next lane and gently “nudges” the steering wheel back to where I should be. I can ignore it if I want to—in fact, I can even switch it off—but on my head be it if I do. Maybe that’s something the Holy Spirit is wanting to do for us all the time, gently “nudging” us in life, as he lives it in real-time with us. If you want a verse for that, Isaiah 30:21: “Your ears will hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left.” If there’s no “word behind you,” then take comfort you’re probably on the right track!