The book of Jeremiah has always been one of my favorites, I think it’s because I relate more to him than any other person in the Bible! He was a man grieved by the sin & wickedness of God’s people, & he felt as if no one was heeding the warnings he spoke. 

I feel his discouragement & deep sadness over the condition of God’s people. I agonize with him as he gives a message that is not only unpopular but is also the cause of rejection & contention from family & friends – even to the point of being thrown into a deep cistern! I can definitely relate to Jeremiah’s frustration with being ignored because I’m frustrated by this almost daily! (Mom of a teenage boy here!)

Despite his message of doom & gloom, Jeremiah also has one of the most popular verses on hope in scripture. “ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you & not to harm you, plans to give you hope & a future.” 

As a young girl, I underlined those words in my bible & memorized them. Pretty signs hung on my bedroom wall as a reminder that God had good plans for me. I wrote this verse over & over again in my diary to look at whenever I faced fear & trepidation about what the future held. 

I do love the picture of a loving Father assuring his beloved daughter that she needn’t worry about her future because He has a plan – a good plan full of hope & welfare, of peace & prosperity, not of evil or destruction.

I know that during seasons of uncertainty & worry, these words encourage me to know that God holds my future – He already knows what’s up ahead even when I can’t see it! 

There’s nothing wrong with the right understanding that God has the ultimate perspective & plans that we can look forward to with hope. He knows what our lives are like 60 or 70 years down the road when we are old & gray. He does have a plan & purpose for each of us that is meant to give us hope for the future. 

But if we’re looking at this with the idea of a gentle father lovingly assuring an obedient & innocent daughter that her future will be all roses with no thorns, then we’re missing the truth and context of His Word. 

We are taking these verses completely out of context if we take them to mean that there is nothing discouraging, troubling, or painful in His plans for our future.

The words are actually from – yes, a loving Father – but also an angry Father speaking to a rebellious people. He is speaking as YHWH, the One true God who has had it with the wicked disobedience and sin of His children. He’s spent most of the previous 28 chapters commanding Jeremiah to tell His people to either knock it off or face the consequences. By the time we get to chapter 29, it’s too little too late, and the consequences are now set to happen.

When He tells Jeremiah to speak the words of 29:11, it isn’t a flowery, fluffy kind of promise that says, “Don’t worry, every little thing is gonna be alright.” It’s surrounded by God telling them that He will surely lift them up & cast them from His presence, bringing upon them everlasting reproach & perpetual shame. His immediate plan for them is destruction.

While the words “For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to give you hope and a future” look good on a coffee mug or wall hanging, the verses following that say, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, behold, I am sending on them sword, famine, & pestilence, & I will make them like vile figs that are so rotten they cannot be eaten.” 

This probably wouldn’t sell well at the local Christian bookstore!

But the truth is that God has plans for our good and for our discipline. His hopeful future for His people included captivity. Jeremiah’s words were words of hope while in captivity! He was reassuring the exiles that God had not forgotten them, He had not abandoned them. He did give them a hope and a future, but they also had to go through seventy years of waiting to see that hope become a reality. If some went into captivity at the age of 70, then they would not see it in their lifetime. But at the foundation of this hope is where faith is built, stretched, and strengthened.

Hope is not determined by what we are experiencing in the here and now but by what we know and trust God for in the future. 

This is not some frail or fluffy kind of promise meant for the weak of faith. 

This isn’t the kind of promise you will see on a pretty graphic shared on Instagram. 

This is the kind of promise that requires a gritty kind of faith to believe and hold onto! But this is the kind of faith God desires for us to have.

Because like Romans 8:24 (NKJV) tells us, “For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?” Hope is not determined by what we are experiencing in the here and now but by what we know and trust God for in the future. Hope found in hard times will stretch our faith and grow us in Christlikeness.