God’s Plan

God has just one main goal: To make heaven as full as possible and hell as empty as possible.

Our lives on earth are important as God uses our years here to give us time to know Him and to introduce Him to others through word and deed.  Granted, there are more purposes to our lives, but these are the overriding ones. 

God’s plan stretches over thousands of years.  My spiritual life today is a tiny part of it and dependent on those who came before.  Hopefully, it will also be a brick in the foundation of those who are yet to come. 

The Born Again experience is a sort of benevolent pyramid scheme.  It depends on the work of others.  Someone shared Christ with Walter Martin at one time, and he wrote a book that pointed me to Christ.  In turn, there are people I have introduced to Christ.  That’s how it works.  There’s an unbroken chain from Adam and Eve to us and on to our spiritual descendents.  That’s God’s plan.

Many Christians believe happiness should be our lot in this life, but God often has a different plan.  It’s not that He doesn’t love us.  It’s that He loves all of us, even those who reject Him.  Jesus died for all the world, not just the few.  Other than our relationship with God and His effect through us on the lives of others, our time on earth is of little value in His grand plan.

On the morning of All Saints Day, November 1,  1755, a powerful earthquake lasting more than six minutes struck Lisbon, Portugal.  The destructive earthquake, accompanying tsunami, and devastating fire afterward killed an estimated 10,000 people many of whom were in churches worshipping.  The atheist, Voltaire, wrote a famous poem questioning a God who could allow such evil to happen to His children.  “Evil?”  I can think of no better way to go to God than on my knees in prayer.  The deaths of these people caused others to realize the temporary nature of life and turn to God.   Voltaire’s poem caused a stir in Europe, and many came to accept Christ through the resulting debates.  God has a plan. 

God often uses suffering and death to bring people to His Son.  If we ever think the godly life should only be filled with happiness, we should reread Job and 2 Cor. 11:21-29 to remind us of what God’s people have gone through in their lives.  The word, “happy” only appears 11 times in the Bible and is never a promise.  “Joy” appears nearly 200 times.  Only the Christian can be joyful through painful trials (James 1:2).

Our God is omniscient.  That means He knows every option, every possibility, and every result.  If it takes the suffering or death of one person in order to effect another’s life and bring them to His Son, then so be it.  There is a priority here.  At a recent funeral at our church, nearly a dozen people who might never have darkened the doorstep of a church otherwise, came to Christ.  The life, and even death of that man was used by God for His purpose.

The loss to loved ones is more than stressful and painful, but we all must leave this life.  For us to question God is laughable, puny finite man trying to understand the methods and motives of an infinite God is foolish.  He gives us a glimpse of His nature through His Word, but other than that, we still stand before a darkened mirror.

God has a grand plan.  Our lives are simply a few ticks on the clock of that plan.  Whether trials enter your life, or your life is filled with happiness, God is working His plan in you to fill heaven and keep hell as empty as possible.