A Hope and a Future

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11 is my absolute favorite verse. Between you and I, however, it often leaves me with this gnawing question that only seems to gets louder and louder every time I walk through challenging, unclear circumstances in life:

If God already knows the plans He has for us, why does He leave us waiting around wondering whether or not He will provide what we’ve asked for?

Perhaps you’ve found yourself asking the Lord about His will for your own life before, and received what seemed like no clear answer. Perhaps you, too, are perplexed at times by this idea that God could be perfectly aware of what we want, already know whether or not He plans to give it to us, and yet still seem to leave us in the dark on His plans.

Thankfully, God foresaw that these concerns might arise in the hearts of His children, and He left answers weaved for us throughout His word. The promise we find in Jeremiah 29:11 is one of many that can help us gain understanding as to why God often seems to leave us playing the waiting game as He fulfills His will for our lives. As the words in it assure us, God’s plans for our life includes giving us “hope” and a “future.” Let’s break that down, though; what exactly does hope look like? And what does this future that He promises us really consist of?

We can think about hope as an optimistic expectation of what may one day come; it is positive outlook towards something that has yet to happen. A future, on the other hand, is a destination we progress towards. It is the actual reality that we, at some point, get to live in and walk out. In other words, hope is our desire to reach a specific outcome — a future is the outcome itself.

Now that we’ve spelt out what each of these mean, let’s examine why God offers us this promise — both hope and a future. As we do, may we see how He displays great love for us by doing so, even when it means we have to wait in the meanwhile before we discover His will for our lives.

It’s easy to understand why God promises a “future” to come after we hope. Without a worthwhile outcome for us to experience, we’d be left thinking all our time spent hoping was pointless. If our heavenly Father offered us hope yet never provided any future afterwards, it would leave us forced to think one of two things — that our Lord is either incapable of providing a future for us, or that He is cruel enough to have us believe He would provide while knowing He had no intentions of doing anything for us all along.

We can see why God’s plans for us certainly need to include a future. It’s interesting, however, that He decided His promise would also include “hope.”

Anytime we hope as human beings, we are looking forward to a future we ourselves can’t actually control or guarantee. God, on the other hand, controls and already knows the outcome of every situation. While we don’t know if our exact hopes will come true, He does... What, then, is God’s purpose in having us hope for things He already knows we will or will not receive, when He could simply impart our future unto us? Seriously — why not just hook us up with some spiritual equivalent of the Netflix “Skip Intro” button, bypass hope all together, and let us see the show?

Isaiah 55:8 reminds us that God’s ways are far higher than our ways — and from Ecclesiastes 3:1, we know that He has an appointed time for everything in our lives.

This means that while we can be certain God has a good future planned for us, that future may not look anything like what we expect, nor come when we think it should. He instills hope in our hearts before allowing us to see His plans for us because if not, we wouldn’t be able to envision any better circumstances for ourselves than the ones we are currently in. Without hope, we’d see no reason to persevere through the challenges that will inevitably arise on our way to where He is taking us. Seeing no potential benefits of pressing on, we’d naturally give up at the sight of our trials, and never make it to experience the good future He had in store for us all along.

Our Creator understands that in order for us to progress through this life, we need to have somewhere to move towards and a reason to keep moving forward towards it. In God’s infinite love and wisdom, therefore, He provides both a future for us to someday reach, and hope to sustain us until we get there.

Now, practically speaking, what does His generous promise of “hope and a future” look like as we walk through our everyday life? It often means we spend lots of time hoping for something, unsure of what will really happen, and have years go by before we ever see anything come to fruition. It also means that, sometimes, we receive something entirely different than what we spent our time hoping for.

Either way, having to wait as God slowly reveals His plans to us can feel like the hardest thing He could ever ask of us... However, we indeed have a good, good Father — not an incapable, cruel, or even unaware one — and we can take comfort in this, friends. If God has led you to hope, it means He wants you to know you have a reason to go on. He wants you to live with the peace of knowing that He’s fully aware of your desires and that as you surrender them to Him, He will fulfill you in His most sovereign way and in His most perfect timing.

In turn, we can praise Him during our journey to the manifestation of His plans for us. Our Lord already knows what we want, has the ability to do all things, and loves us more than life itself... We can look to the God Who gave His life on the Cross for us, therefore, and serve Him with confidence, even as we wait and hope in uncertainty towards the future.

What are some things you’re personally hoping for in life right now? While we are still on the road to what God has declared our future will hold — even if we ourselves are not yet sure what that is — will you join me in agreeing that because He loves us, He will exceed our every desire? If so, pray the following prayer with me:

Lord, let Your character and Your Word constantly remind us that our waiting is not for nothing — it has an eternal purpose far beyond what we can comprehend or even see.

As we hold onto the hope You have placed in our hearts, help us to trust that You will supply the future to complete it. Help us to know that even if Your plan looks different than the future we’re hoping for, it will only be better than what we expected.

We believe You will ensure that we find fulfillment in Your love and in Your plans for our lives, and we thank You in advance for this.

In Jesus’s name, Amen.