THE FULFILMENT OF GOD'S PLAN AND THE SECRET OF ESTABLISHING A COVENANT WITH HIM 1

12 THEN YOU WILL CALL UPON ME and go and PRAY to ME, AND I will LISTEN to YOU.
13 AND you will SEEK Me and FIND Me, WHEN you SEARCH for ME with all YOUR HEART."
Jeremiah 29:12,13 (NKJV)

• If you wanted to call on God and expected Him to answer as He has promised in the above passage of the Bible, you must a have submissive heart to His Will for your life.

• If you did not submit to the Will of God,
  His plans would not be unfolded to you:
  "FOR I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11 NLT).
• No plan of God will come to fulfilment in the life of a disobedient child of His.
• When God instructed you to sit down and stay in a place, as He told the Jews to do, that they should remain in the Babylonian captivity—they were to be in Babylon for seventy years:
  4 THUS says the LORD OF HOSTS, THE GOD OF ISRAEL, TO all who were carried away captive, WHOM I HAVE CAUSED TO BE CARRIED AWAY FROM JERUSALEM TO BABYLON: 10 FOR thus says the LORD: AFTER SEVENTY YEARS ARE COMPLETED AT BABYLON, I WILL VISIT YOU AND PERFORM MY GOOD WORD TOWARD YOU, AND CAUSE YOU TO RETURN TO THIS PLACE" (Jeremiah 29:4,10 (NKJV).
  READ: Jeremiah 29:4-14

• When you obeyed His Word; commandments and instructions, then He would unfold His plans to you and bring His promises to fulfilment in your life.

• There are certain conditions, or situations, that God would permit in your life, and He would want you to accept them—enjoy those things He has permitted:
  4 THIS is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: 5 “BUILD HOMES, AND PLAN TO STAY. PLANT GARDENS, AND EAT THE FOOD THEY PRODUCE. 6 MARRY AND HAVE CHILDREN. THEN FIND SPOUSES FOR THEM SO THAT YOU MAY HAVE MANY GRANDCHILDREN. MULTIPLY! DO NOT DWINDLE AWAY! 7 AND WORK FOR THE PEACE AND PROSPERITY OF THE CITY WHERE I SENT YOU INTO EXILE. PRAY TO THE LORD FOR IT, FOR ITS WELFARE WILL DETERMINE YOUR WELFARE” (Jeremiah 29:4-7 (NLT).
• God may not want you to strive or force yourself out of such conditions, because He has put you there for a purpose.
• It could be that the situations are permitted for you to learn some things, such as:
  (i) How to relate with Him—God.
  (ii) How to build or develop patience-endurance (James 1:2,3).
  (iii) How to pray and grow in your spiritual life. There might have been a spiritual apathy or drowsiness, thus, He wanted you to wake up.
  (iv) How to grow in love and other fruits of the Spirit according to Galatians 5:21-22.
  (v) And also, It could BE: To prepare you for the next assignment which He has for you. Being the training needed, or required to be undergone, by you—for the vision and plan which He has for you.
  (vi) And It could possibly be to put you in the hidings until He is done or through with those who rose as enemies, who may want to stop you when He promoted you (Matthew 2:13,19,20).
• In the case of the Jews, they were exiled to Babylon as captives, to learn from their past mistakes of not being faithful to the covenant which God established with them. They rebelled and worshipped idols (Jeremiah 33:28-35).
• They were to be in the captivity—under the yoke of Babylonians, until the Babylonians time is up. Until God's anger is vented—given full vent to His feelings:
  "ALL nations will SERVE Nebuchadnezzar AND his son and grandson. THEN THE TIME WILL COME FOR BABYLON TO BE DEFEATED, AND many nations and great kings will make Babylon their SERVANT" (Jeremiah 27:7 New Century Version).

• God's dealings

• If you are under the dealings of God, you should just submit and cooperate with Him, and allow it to be thorough (Jeremiah 27:8).
• If you did submit and cooperate with God, under His dealings in your life, you will be made to experience relief and comfort, even under the dealings, or sufferings, or the captivity (Jeremiah 27:11)
• However, If you refused to submit and cooperate, you wanted to force yourself out of the dealings, the captivity, you may suffer the more:
  "AND it shall come to pass, THAT THE NATION AND KINGDOM WHICH WILL NOT SERVE THE SAME NEBUCHADNEZZAR KING OF BABYLON, AND THAT WILL NOT PUT THEIR NECK UNDER THE YOKE OF THE KING OF BABYLON, THAT nation will I VISIT, SAITH JEHOVAH, WITH THE SWORD, and with the FAMINE, and WITH THE PESTILENCE, until I have CONSUMED THEM BY HIS HAND" (Jeremiah 27:8 DARBY).

• If you allowed God in this dealings, you do allow it to be thorough, you will have or experience some reliefs, though not without pains.

• The reason for the pains, in spite of the submissiveness, is, to learn some lessons; because you cannot learn without pains—humans have sinful and rebellious nature or body. Nobody learns in comfort, human beings learn faster in pains and hardships.

• Outcome of God's dealings

• God will unfold this plans to you and cause the vision He has given to you, to be fulfilled (Jeremiah 29:10,11).
• He will listen to you when you call on Him (Jeremiah 29:12,13).
• God will punish or deal with your captors—the tormentors (Jeremiah 25:12-14; 30:16).
• He will end your captivity and restore your fortune (Jeremiah 29:14).
• You will become God's friend and confidant (Genesis 18:17-21).
• Abraham became a friend of God, because of humility and obedience.
• When God called him out of his father's country, he obeyed even when he did not know where he was going (Hebrews 11:8).
• God promises to give him a child, and he believed and waited for twenty five years before it came to fulfilment (Genesis 18:10; 21:1-3; Hebrews 6:15).

• You will not fail in Jesus' name.

• Whatever is contrary to your health is rebuked in Jesus' name.
• Be healed of that disease, sickness, and every infirmity, in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.
  Peace!
  TO BE CONTINUED