“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,” saith the Lord, “thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” Jeremiah 29:11 KJV
I had no words. It was like I lifted my head for the first time and opened my eyes to the thing that was always right in front of me.
Jeremiah 29:11 is my life verse. It’s the verse I clung onto when I first started seeking out God for myself. It’s the verse that reminds me that God has a plan. I thought I knew everything about it… I had it memorized and probably at some point checked all the translations. But this was the first time I heard it like this.
“For I know the thoughts I think toward you.”
The past few months have been a struggle for me to believe in what God says about me. I convinced myself that He wasn’t with me, that He didn’t care about me, that ultimately God wasn’t here for my good. They were all lies. None of it was truth. I had made it all up in my head. It wasn’t what God thought towards me.
“thoughts of peace and not of evil”
All of these things I let myself believe brought so much brokenness into my life. I was constantly crying. I was always hurt. For so many weeks the smile on my face was just a façade to hide all the pain that I was feeling. They were thoughts of evil and not of peace.
“to give you an expected end.”
I thought I knew my expected end, and when that expected end didn’t seem like it was coming I was hurt. And the pain grew more and more as that expected end seemed to get farther and farther away from my current reality. That’s what allowed the evil to seep in and drown out the peace. That’s where lies started forming and the thoughts God had towards me were forgotten. All because I was running towards my expected end and not God’s.
He knows what’s going to happen. He has known all along. Even when I was full of doubt. He’s bringing me closer to the expected end He has planned for me.