For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
This verse gets quoted so often it's easy to miss what it's actually claiming: that God knows something about your future that you don't. Not a vague, hopeful feeling — a specific claim that the plans are for your welfare, not your harm.
That's a bold thing to say to anyone standing at the start of an uncertain year. Jeremiah wrote it to people who had lost their homes, their city, everything familiar — not to people whose lives were going smoothly. The hope wasn't offered because things were fine. It was offered into the middle of the wreckage.
If you're skeptical that anyone, let alone God, has good plans for you specifically, that's a fair place to start. But it's worth asking the question honestly instead of assuming the answer: what if the future isn't just something you're bracing for, but something being prepared for you?
If the idea of a God who actually has good intentions toward you feels hard to believe, that's exactly the kind of honest doubt worth exploring further.
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.