The Terrifying Plan of God

"God has a plan for you." We say this all the time in the church. It's our go-to cliche comforting people. "You didn't get the job?" "You didn't get the girl?" "You didn't get into that school?" "You're sick?" "You're injured?" Well, "God has a plan for you." And it is comforting, in a way. I mean, I cling to Romans 8:28 just as much as the next person. There is certainly some comfort in the fact that God has a plan for us. However, the more I think about it, the fact that God has a plan for me is actually really terrifying.

The fact that God has a plan for us should scare the crap out of us. I mean, I look at the life that God had planned for Paul and the disciple, and it's terrifying. "God has a plan for you" means that God is going to take me out of my comfort zone. God's plan is not going to be easy. God's plan is going to take me to places where I never would have decided to go. I know how sinful I am, and I know that to deal with that, God has to break me and remake me. That's terrifying. I feel about this kind of the same way I felt going into my Hebrew classes. I'm excited about the result, but I'm terrified of the process. God has a plan for me, and that's scary.

What's comforting to me isn't so much the fact that God has a plan for me. What's comforting is that God knows I'm not strong enough to make it through his plan on my own. He gives us family and friends to get us through. He gives us the fellowship of other believers to get us through. Most importantly though, he gives us Christ. The comfort isn't that God has a plan, the comfort is that he will never leave us. The comfort is that I, like David in the Psalms, can cry out to God in times of need and hardship and know that he will hear me. The comfort is that Christ says "I am with you always, to the end of the age."

God has a plan for me. That plan terrifies me. But I know that he is good, and I know that he loves me. Most importantly, I know that I have a great high priest who is sympathetic and cares for me, and a God who will never leave me nor forsake me. That's a comfort.