Mice and Men February 24, 2015

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.  Jeremiah 29:11 ESV

What a comforting verse.  God's plans for us are pleasing, profitable, positive.  God wants to give us good things, not evil.  With Him we have "a future and a hope".  As I was pondering the implications of this verse, a secular saying came to mind: "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

If God's plans for us are for the best, why do so many of His children live life with less than that?  Is it because God does not have the power to implement  His plans?  No, He is omnipotent.  Perhaps God has overlooked something in His plans for us.  That's not it.  He is omniscience.  Maybe He was not being truthful when He made the promise in Jeremiah.  Hebrews 6:18, Titus 1:2, and Numbers 23:19 all remind is that God is incapable of lying.  So dishonesty on God's part is not the issue.

Since God posses the wisdom, power, and integrity to give us only the best, then when we experience anything less, the fault must be ours.  
  
Weight Watchers International had profits of $1,800,000,000 (that's billion) in 2012.  The diet and weight loss industry grossed $61,000,000,000 that same year.  Over 1 million people attended 40,000 WW meetings each week last year but the average annual weight loss was only 5 pounds.  Not much payback for a lot of time and money.  Yet U.S. News and World Report ranked WW as the number one plan for weight loss.  Something's amiss.

The fault is not with the plan, but with the implementation.  People don't stick to the plan. They continue to snack, skip exercise, eat unhealthy foods, and a myriad of other plan-dooming behaviors.

God does have the very best planned for His children.  His plans are for us to prosper.  His plan is for all to come to a life-giving relationship with Him.  But He will not foist His plans on us.  We are creatures with a freewill.  He will allow us to trade riches for poverty.  Although it breaks God's heart, He won't keep us from wrecking our lives.  He allows addiction, adultery, and avarice. 

When your life is filled with less than the best, it is not God who deserves the blame.  We have deviated from His plan.  Return to your knees.  Seek His path.  Search for His will.  When we walk in obedience, then, and only then, will we discover the best and brightest. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2014/10/29/americans-new-way-of-losing-weight-left-weight-watchers-behind/