There’s so much bad news being broadcast these days, I sometimes think I should tape a copy of Jeremiah 29:11 to every remote control in our house. That way, every time I turn on the television and see the latest negative reports and dire forecasts being touted by the media, I’ll be reminded of what the Bible says:
“‘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’” (New International Version).
For all of us as believers, that is the truth. It doesn’t matter what else is going on in the world, God has a good future prepared for us. He has a plan for us so filled with His BLESSING that the more we walk in it, the more we’ll see His goodness manifested around us everywhere we look.
Even in the midst of this sin-darkened world, God’s will is for us to be abundantly blessed in every way. He wants us to be whole and complete—spirit, soul and body—with nothing missing and nothing broken. He wants us to be free from every work of the devil. He wants our families to be saved and thriving, our homes to be peaceful and our finances prospering. If something in our life isn’t right, He has a plan to make it right.
I’m telling you, if I’ve learned anything over nearly 50 years of walking with the Lord it’s this: God is a good God! His plan for our future far exceeds anything we could ever come up with on our own.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
When I think about the dreams I had for my life before I was born again—dreams I once considered big and exciting—I almost have to laugh. They didn’t hold a candle to what God had in mind for me. The things He’s done in my life have been exceedingly above what I could have asked or imagined.
What’s more, He’s not finished! Even after all these years, He still has great things in store for me.
The same is true for you!
“Well, I don’t know about that,” someone might say. “I’ve been born again a long time now and if God has a great plan for me I certainly haven’t found it.”
Then maybe you need to make sure you’re really seeking it, because, according to the Scriptures, seeking is what opens the door to God’s plan for your life. He won’t force it on you. You have to go after the plan by going after Him.
Jesus said it this way in Matthew 6:33: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Here’s how that verse reads in The Amplified Bible: “Seek (aim at and strive after) first of all…(His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides.”
Seek means “to go after with intensity, to pursue, diligently inquire, require or search for something.” It denotes a sense of urgency, intense interest in, care for and desire for that which is being sought.
A good illustration of seeking is what I do when I need to go somewhere and I can’t find my car keys. Over the years, that’s happened often at our house. Not to Ken, of course. He has a certain place he always keeps his keys, so he hardly ever loses them. (When he does, it’s a big deal!)
I, on the other hand, am pretty much the exact opposite. I often neglect to put things in the right place. Although Ken has tried to help me—if he’s said it once, he’s said it too often: “Gloria, if you’d just put your keys where they belong you wouldn’t lose them.” His reminders haven’t done much good. Sometimes my keys still go missing.
When they do, I seek them! I don’t just casually glance around for them. I don’t look for them for a while and then get bored and give up. Or shrug my shoulders and say, “This is too hard. I think I’ll just stop driving and stay home from now on.”
No, I practically turn the house upside down searching for my keys. I stick with it until I find them. Why? Because I know I can’t go anywhere without them!
God Never Stops
As believers, we need to have the same attitude toward God. If we want to experience the blessed and prosperous future He’s planned for us, we need to seek Him diligently and fervently. We need to put Him first place in our lives.
How?
By making His Word our No. 1 priority.
That’s what Ken and I started doing back in 1967. We began to go after God’s Word with great intensity and diligence. We searched our Bibles day and night, not just as a religious exercise but because we wanted to grow in faith. We wanted results!
We’d discovered that when it comes to moving forward in the plan of God, faith is like spiritual car keys, you can’t go anywhere without them. So, since faith comes by hearing the Word of God, we spent nearly every spare moment attending to the Word, because for years we’d been going nowhere. Even though we were born again, we’d been living a very low existence. Financially, we were in pitiful shape. We didn’t have enough money. We didn’t have a decent car, a nice home or good clothes.
Physically, we weren’t doing much better. We routinely came down with whatever sickness happened to be going around. We didn’t know God had provided healing for us so whenever symptoms hit us, we just put on our pajamas and went to bed with the “Oh dear, I’m sick again!” attitude.
None of this was God’s fault. He was working in our lives, trying to help us. We just didn’t know how to cooperate with Him. So we ended up taking whatever the devil handed us.
When we began to learn what the Word of God says, however, things started to change. We began to increase. We were able to pay off the mountain of debt we’d been dragging around and we started to prosper. We learned how to stand against the devil, receive our healing and enjoy divine health.
In other words, we started going up in every way and we’ve never stopped—because God never stops. He always has more, not only for Ken and me but for all His children. It’s just how He is. He loves to keep blessing His people. He takes pleasure in continually increasing us, and He always will.
Give the Seed Time to Grow
To receive the increase God wants to give us, though, we have to keep seeking Him. We have to keep going after His Word because what we do with God’s Word determines how much of His plan and future we get to experience. The Bible leaves no doubt about this. It says again and again:
“For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)
“My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.”
(Proverbs 4:20-22)
“The sower soweth the word. And these are they which are sown on good ground; such as hear the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred.” (Mark 4:14, 20)
This is the way God’s kingdom works. It operates by the laws of seedtime and harvest. When we plant the Word in our hearts, receive it by faith and act in accordance with it, it brings forth a harvest of blessing. It causes God’s wonderful promises and plans to manifest in our lives.
“But Gloria, I have planted the Word in my heart,” you might say, “and nothing much has changed for me yet. Maybe the Word won’t work for me like it does for you.”
Sure it will. God is no respecter of persons. He loves you just as much as He loves me, and His Word will work for anyone who will believe and obey it.
It won’t necessarily work instantly, however. I wish it did! I wish every time I asked God for something, it would immediately materialize right in front of my eyes. But that’s generally not what happens. Just as it takes time for a physical seed to grow up and bear fruit, it usually takes time for the spiritual seed of God’s Word to grow and produce results in the natural realm.
That’s why Jesus said in Luke 8:15 that once we’ve heard the Word, we must “keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.” It’s through faith in the Word and patience that we inherit God’s promises (Hebrews 6:12).
Ken and I haven’t always understood this. We initially expected our faith harvests to come almost overnight. For example, about 30 days after we first heard the message of faith, we went looking at new houses. Our bank balance was so low we could hardly afford a chicken coop, but we went shopping for a house anyway, figuring somehow we’d be able to buy one.
We weren’t looking at mansions, just nice, new little homes. They weren’t really very expensive. But compared to what we could afford, they cost a fortune. We talked to the builder about purchasing one and he said, “How are you going to finance it?”
“Our Father is going to pay for it,” we said.
It might sound like a peculiar response (I’m sure the builder thought it was), but our hearts were in the right place. We just didn’t know very much yet. We needed more Word in us to back up what we were saying. We couldn’t buy a new house that day because we didn’t have new-house faith. We were still living in a dumpy, old rent house. We didn’t even have faith for a good rent house yet.
Did we let that discourage us? Did we give up and quit on God?
No. We kept seeking Him and putting Him first in our lives. We kept planting His Word in our hearts and our faith grew until there came a day when we could buy a nice house without even going into debt. JESUS IS TRULY LORD!
Your Heart Will Process the Word
If you’ll patiently keep seeking God and planting the seed of His Word in your heart, the day will come for you too when whatever you’ve been believing for will manifest in your life. It might look impossible to you right now. You might not be able to figure out how God is going to get it done. But it doesn’t matter. Eventually your harvest will come.
How do I know? Because Jesus confirmed it. He said: “So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come” (Mark 4:26-29).
A few years ago, I was standing in faith for the seemingly impossible (I don’t recall now what it was.) and I saw something in those verses I’d never seen before. I realized that between the time I first sow the seeds of the Word in my heart about a particular matter and the time my harvest comes, my heart is processing the Word. It’s working on it much like the earth’s soil works on a physical seed.
I’m not a farmer, so in the natural I don’t really understand everything involved in the process. But I do know that if I put a tomato seed in the ground, it has to stay there awhile before it will grow. If I dig it up every day and look at it, or if I neglect to water it (especially here in hot, dry Texas) it’s not going to come to anything.
On the other hand, if I give the soil the opportunity to complete the process, if I nurture and protect the seed and give it the water it needs, eventually out of that one tiny little seed I can get a whole harvest of tomatoes.
Even naturally, that seems impossible. Yet it happens all the time. How much more can we be sure we’ll receive a harvest from the seed of God’s Word?
With God all things are possible!
So don’t worry about all the bad reports being broadcast on the news. Don’t be troubled by all the media’s dire predictions. Your future is bright. God has good plans for you, and regardless of what’s happening in this natural world you can keep right on walking in them.
As long as you seek first the kingdom of God, keep planting His Word in your heart and watering it by meditating on it day and night, as sure as there is a sun in the sky, your supernatural harvests will keep on coming…until one of these days, everywhere you look you’ll see the goodness of God.
*Article taken from February 2015 issue of BVOV Magazine. Read the PDF version here.
