His Perfect Plan : Minjung Choi
Jeremiah 29:11-14 (ESV)
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 hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you, declare the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”
I hate it when things don’t go the way that I planned. When I was young, I thought I would have my dream job and live a life that I dreamed of living by the age of 25. Here I am, at the age of 25, still struggling to graduate college unsure of what I want to do with my life when everyone around me has a job, graduating to get a job, or even attending graduate school pursuing their dream. It seems like everyone around me has a clear vision of what they want to do except me. I started to compare myself to others and seeing where I am now, and where they are, I began to question my existence and my purpose. Why did God create me? What is his purpose in my life? Not knowing the answer, all I could do was try my best with everything that was given to me at the moment.
At the start of this year, I was finally sorting things out in terms of my future. I was planning everything out so that I can finally graduate as fast as I can to get a job. But my plans got ruined after the COVID-19 happened. Because of the virus, the things that I was planning got delayed. Even worse, the restaurant that I’ve been working for more than 3 years told me not to come out until things get better. Not only were my plans ruined, but I also lost my job and I didn’t know how I was going to afford to pay for everything. In my mind, all I could think of is how am I going to pay for my rent, insurance, and other things that I have to pay for? I felt anxiety crippling into my heart. At that moment, the only thing that came into my mind was that I needed to pray.
I started praying to God every night. I cried out for His help. As I was praying, every night God made me realize that the plans that I was planning for didn’t have him. I was planning everything for my own selfish desires. This broke my heart because after all those years praying to God for his guidance, I was relying on myself when I should have been relying on God. My prayer changed from asking for help on my worldly desires, to repent and to surrender. I prayed that I would be able to surrender everything to Him. My heart, my own selfish desires, my future, and my life.
One night after prayer, I had this urge in my heart wanting to open up the bible. So I opened the bible app on my phone and the first thing I saw was a verse of the day which was Jeremiah 29:11, “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 hope.” I couldn’t ignore it and started reading the whole chapter and God gave me this verse Jeremiah 29:11-14. God was reminding me that He had his perfect plan prepared for me even before my birth. God is telling me that all I have to do is to seek Him with all my heart and He will find me and give me everything that I need.
It would be a lie if I say that I no longer have anxiety about my future. I still don’t know what I want to do with my life. I still struggle to surrender everything every day for God to take control. But I know that He is a faithful God who will always remind me that I need to surrender. Whenever anxiety seizes me, I know that God will give me a heart of peace and will let me know that He is guiding every footstep that I take. All I have to do is seek him with all my heart and He will guide me to His perfect plan and will use me to glorify His kingdom.