Small-group study
Jeremiah 29:11: For I Know The Plans I Have For You
One page, about 45 minutes. Read it through before you meet, and feel free to skip a question if the conversation is already flowing.
For I know the thoughts that I think towards you,” says the LORD, “thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future.
1. To begin
Have you ever loved a verse on a card or a mug, then later found it meant something a little different from what you thought? What was it?
2. Read it again, and look closely
Have someone read the verse aloud a second time, slowly.
- Who is speaking, and to whom? (The "you" here is a whole people, not first one person.)
- What two outcomes does God name, and which one does he rule out?
- Notice the word "know". Whose knowledge is certain here, and whose is not?
3. What does it mean?
- God says this to people in exile, far from home, and the same message included seventy years of waiting first. How does that context steady the promise?
- It is often read as a guarantee of personal success. Is that what it says, or something deeper and harder?
- What is the difference between God planning our good and God planning our comfort?
4. What about us?
- Where do you most want to know the plan right now? What would it mean to trust the Planner instead of needing the plan?
- If God’s good for you might include a long wait, does that disappoint you or steady you? Sit honestly with your answer.
- Who do you know in their own season of exile who needs to hear that God has not forgotten them?
5. To close, pray
Tell God where you are desperate to see the plan. Ask him for the harder, better gift: trust in him while the future stays hidden.