WHAT WAS GOD'S PLAN FOR US?

What Was God's Plan For Us?

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

That was His plan - that we would live off his love. That's the way we put it. With His love, we would sense all the things that love brings. Love brings some obvious things with it. If you know that the Father loves you with all his heart, then you have a great sense of security in him because he owns the cattle on a thousand hills. If he loves you, he's certainly going to look after you whatever the economics of the country are like. So, love brings a great sense of security.

You know it, you husbands and wives. It's so good when you have somebody who loves you, isn't it? It's so good. It's interesting -- when you lie in their arms you just feel safe. It's just so good to feel safe. Or you remember with your dads or moms -- when they put you to bed, you just felt safe. You felt they would protect you from all the evils outside. You felt that they would supply your food and they would supply your clothes.

Things come from the love that we need. It gives you a great sense of your own importance. You remember how your dad used to make you feel important, and your mom? It's amazing. I mean we make our children feel really important because they are dear to us. It's a pity that sometimes they're so dear to us at the beginning and then we get used to them and they don't continue to be dear to us. But love tends to give a person a sense of value and a sense of worth. And that was God's plan for us.

Even the little beggar that is dying today of starvation on the streets of Bombay, with no parents, no children and no relatives -- even that little beggar, that old wizened man -- would know that his Father noticed him, had numbered the hairs of his head, cared about him and that he was one of the most important people in the world. That's God's plan for us. And then in that love, we would have a great sense of completeness, happiness, and satisfaction.

That was God's plan and here's the way we put it. It might help you to see it more clearly. (Pastor O'Neill shows a visual). It would work like that -- God's love would give us this sense of security. We'd know that he cared for us and that he was looking out for us. That love would come into our own spirits, go out through our minds and emotions, out through our bodies and out to the world. We'd fill the world with a sense of safety and security. We would-be givers. We wouldn't be takers but we would-be givers.

We'd have a sense of significance, importance, and a sense of value in God's eyes. We wouldn't be trying to get everybody else to make us important. We would be able to love other people freely because we wouldn't need anything from them. We would be getting it from God. It transforms a marriage because you're not always looking to the other person for something. You are filled with satisfaction yourself so you're giving to them.

That's the same with happiness. We wouldn't be looking out and saying, "Can I get a better vacation, or can I get a job that will be a fun job?" You'd be happy in God just being with him, just walking through the world with him beside you. And you'd begin to give to the world. That was the Father's plan for us. Here's the way God put it loved ones. In Genesis 2:9, he put it in simple terms because, in the early years of mankind, that's the way we understood things. We hadn't got all sophisticated like we have today.

Genesis 2:9, "And out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden."  And that's what it was. It was the tree of life -- it's another name for God's love or for his Spirit. We were meant to live off the life of God.