God's Plan for You

What if God’s plan for your life was straightforward and significantly more impactful than you ever imagined? In this short video, we cut through the noise of religious jargon and get to the heart of what the Bible says about your purpose, your struggles, and how Jesus makes restoration possible. Watch and see what it really means to live the life you were created for.

Do you ever feel stuck, inadequate, or discouraged by your life? Maybe you’ve considered religion in the past, looking for answers to your problems or searching for an explanation to some devastating tragedy, but you’ve walked away baffled by the idealism, the religious jargon, or even the apparent hypocrisy of others.

Forget all that. Let me try to make it more basic. Give me nine minutes to share God’s Plan for you in a way that should make sense for your life today. And then you should have all the essentials you need to make a simple choice. Do I turn to God and learn more from him? Or do I turn away and continue down my present course?

God’s Image

It all starts with this basic idea. God created us. And He didn’t just create us randomly. He intricately and intimately made all of humanity. And He made us with a purpose. We all have this purpose — to reflect His character in our lives, to represent Him on this earth. The Bible calls that being made in His image, in His likeness. This means that when people see us, they should get a glimpse of what God is like. It doesn’t mean we are gods with unlimited power or knowledge, but only that we were created to live lives marked by goodness. That was the expectation, the ideal, the standard. As children, we all started off going in that direction, naturally. We were pure, innocent, and trusting.

Sin

But then something happened. At some point in our adolescence, we started to make choices that veered away from this life of goodness that God intended for us. We picked up behaviors from others who didn’t strive to reflect God’s image. It may have been excessive anger, hate, inappropriate sexual desires, greed, treating others with injustice and inequality, or even selfish pride. The Bible calls this Sin. Sin is anything that strays from God’s plan for us to reflect His goodness. Maybe you’re familiar with the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, and how they ate the fruit God told them not to eat. That’s the earliest example of sin. And ever since, humanity has followed the same pattern of drifting away from God’s ideal. The Bible says that everyone has done this in one way or another.

Here's the big problem that maybe you noticed: the more you have given in to this path of sin, the more chaotic, depressing, and out of control your life has become. Some are swimming in hate for others, and not sure how to get out. Some have a pornography addiction, or a drug addition, or an alcohol addiction. Some have gambled away or spent all of their money, even though they knew deep down that it was a terrible idea. Even if your life looks relatively balanced by society’s standards, you might find yourself driven and controlled by desires that pull you away from what God intended.

Here's the thing we learn about sin. We cannot take care of it on our own. Not by human willpower. Not by human ideals, religions, or fads for self-improvement. Not even working harder in religious acts of duty or service will get rid of our sin problem. If left on our own, our sin problem will not go away. Only God can take away our sin problem and help us live up to His image of goodness, the way He always intended.

Choice

This is where we encounter a choice. Everyone of us faces this choice in our lives. We face it today. Do you want to continue living in sin, separated from God and His goodness? If you want to, you may. God will not force you to do anything you don’t want to do. You can spend this life—and the life that comes after—away from Him. It’s your decision. Or you can choose for God to take away your sin problem. You can choose to live with God in your life. And you can choose to live up to His ideal image of goodness.

If that’s what you’re choosing, how do you do that?

Salvation

That’s where Jesus comes in. Jesus is God’s only Son, God in the flesh. He came and lived in this world to show us what God is like. We can see from his example and from his teachings that He was the only human ever to live perfectly up to God’s ideal image of goodness. He lived all of God’s goodness, kindness, charity, mercy, and love with perfection. And He’s the way to get out of our sin problem.

The Bible calls this salvation or redemption. God is saving us from our sin problem through Jesus Christ, who is paying the price for God to buy us back again. We deserved separation from God because of our sin, and we deserved all the bad consequences that came along in our life because of it. But God’s plan wasn’t to punish us. It was different. God’s plan was that His Son Jesus would willingly suffer and die instead of us, on our behalf. He is our payment for God’s salvation. In essence, God punished Himself instead of us! That demonstrates the mercy and love of God. But it also demonstrates that the way we get out of our sin problem is not by our own work, but by the work of God.

That salvation was God’s plan and it’s a free gift for all. But how do we accept and respond to this free gift of God? We do so through trust, what the Bible calls faith. Trust in God and His plan to restore us through Jesus. Trust that Jesus is the only way we can be forgiven of our sins and restored to God’s ideal image of goodness. Now is that all we need to do? Of course not! We can’t say we trust God and continue to live the same way we have been. We need to demonstrate a commitment to change. The Bible calls this repentance. We turn our hearts, minds, and actions over to God to live up to His image of goodness that He intended for us. We decide that we should stop living like we have been, and instead live like Jesus did.

Once we’ve made the decisions to trust and repent, we need to make those life-choices public. We do that through baptism and public confession. Baptism is being immersed in water to seal your decision and to effect God’s work of cleansing and restoration. Confession is the public acknowledgement, without shame or regret, to follow Jesus your whole life.

Restoration

Finally, if you do these things, you’re promised the gift of God’s Spirit living with you, helping to restore your life into God’s image. The Bible calls this process a transformation, a new birth, or renewal into God’s image. The resurrection of Jesus is crucial here—it means that the same power that raised Him from the dead now works in you, empowering you to live a new, restored life. If you choose to accept God’s plan, you enter into a special, intimate relationship with Him. It’s as if you are adopted anew as a child of God. This means He will be close by, helping you and giving you the strength to live the life you were created for—to reflect His goodness.

You no longer have to be trapped in your unhealthy desires and behaviors. You can live a fuller and more joyful life. Does that mean all your problems will instantly go away or that God will take away all temptation instantly, without effort on your part? No, it doesn’t mean that. You’ll still need to learn through God’s Word, to struggle, and to discover through training and experience what is right and wrong. But this time, it’ll be different. You won’t be trapped in sin all by yourself without help, and you won’t be burdened indefinitely by guilt. You’ll have God saving you from your sin.

Sin, if left untreated, leads to destruction and death. But partnership with God’s Spirit, on the other hand, is a path that leads to everlasting life. You will learn, stumble, pick yourself up again, and grow stronger. You will see God fulfill His plan for you as He restores you to the image of goodness He always intended. And then you will look back at the choice you made, and you will say, “Deciding to live with God through Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit, was the best decision I ever made.” I hope you will make that decision today.