You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.
John 15:16
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Romans 8:29
In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.
Ephesians 1:11,12
Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, to which I was appointed a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.
2Timothy 1:8-11
God has a plan for our life. His plan is to be trusted as it is the best plan for us all. The plan of God is based on His love, for God is love and all that He plans and does is done in love. We see this very clearly in Ephesians 1:3-6:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
His loving plan for us is a holy calling of conformity into oneness with Himself. God so loves us that He choose to accept us as His dear children for the purpose of being His image bearers. His image is love and our life is hid in His love. God's pure love is not a human love that is fickle and short lived. God's love is found in His eternal unchanging purpose of His divine will. God's love is God Himself and in God there is no shadow of turning. Before the foundation of the world God made up His mind that we are His beloved children brought forth into a fallen world to execute His glorious good purpose.
When I look over my own personal life, as far back as I can remember, I can discern the working of His plan. This plan was laid out for me before I was born on Earth. This is a plan planned in the depths of God for me to walk out by faith. There is nothing in the carnal nature that wants to yield to His plan. God's divine plan is lived out solely out of our new recreated spirit nature.
By the grace of God, through the endowment of His life within us, we yield to the leading of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit always leads us perfectly in accordance to God's will. Unfortunately the flesh will always hinder and oppose God's perfect plan (should the carnal self be left unchecked) even though we may know that His plan is the best plan for our life. The carnal flesh is an enemy to God's way and His will. Therefore we are to mortify the carnal nature and submit our lives to His will for us (see Colossians 3:5-11).
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:5-8)
Today determine in your heart to wholly live out His will and plan for your life. That often looks like cleaving to His Word, refusing to succumb to the cares of life by being thankful to God for the keeping power of the Holy Spirit. Do not let go of the confidence you have in His love for you and know that His plan is for your good and not to do you harm. Trust your loving Heavenly Father and give His Word preeminence over all your thoughts.
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)
