Beloved, I am Dr. Mark Chironna and this is God Today. We all know that powerful verse from Jeremiah 29:11. Where the prophet says, “‘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.’” That word “welfare” is the word “shalom”. We hear it all the time from our Jewish brothers and sisters. I wonder if we can hear it so much that we take it for granted.
When Jeremiah is writing these words, he is writing to a company of people that have been dislocated and misplaced from the Land of Promise. They are in a land called “confusion”. They have been dislocated and they have been mislocated. They are waiting to be relocated in the Promise. They’ve been exiled and they want to get home. Jeremiah wants us to know that in spite of the disorientation that can take place at certain seasons in our life, when we feel like we are being dislocated and mislocated, disoriented and mis-oriented, that God is going to reorient us. He is going to replace us in a place that is filled with shalom and hope.
What is that…that is shalom? Very simply: it is the absence of all things harmful, the presence of all things beneficial. Put more simply: nothing missing, nothing broken. It is God’s desire as you begin today, to realize He knows the plans He has for you and those plans involve nothing missing, and nothing broken. Allow your heart to soak on that reality. Allow your mind to meditate on the fact that the Prince of Shalom, Christ Himself, brings to you in His person that absence of all things harmful and the presence of all things beneficial. You love Him, He loves you, His Father is a good, good Father. The best is yet to come.
Father, seal this word to the hearts of your sons and daughters and glorify Jesus through them by the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen.