A Wonderful Plan
God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life. This is the first of The Four Spiritual Laws, Campus Crusade’s core evangelism tool used in various forms for over fifty years. These words summarize a positive and powerful truth: because of His great love, God has made a way — a wonderful plan — to grant every person the life for which mankind was created. The other three points, of course, cover what keeps us from God’s love and plan (sin), God’s solution (Christ’s death and resurrection), and how we can find it (trust in Christ).
These words — God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life — summarize the powerful and true motivation for the gospel story. It points to God’s heart for all of humanity, His desire to liberate each person from the consequences of rebellion and restore them to the glory of being fully alive in Him. God’s plan, driven by the unfathomable depth of His love, is about victory, redemption, healing, wholeness — a spiritual and, someday, physical return to the intimate paradise of Eden.
Talking about “God’s love” and a “wonderful plan” affirms the nature of God and connects to the longing in every heart… somehow, there’s got to be more to life than this. Yet we must be clear how “wonderful” is truly defined, both for our sake and for those who need the gospel. “Wonderful,” according to the dictionary, means “excellent; great; marvelous; of a sort that causes or arouses wonder; amazing; astonishing.” Genuinely understanding the wonderfulness of God’s plan means that we must see it spiritually, through the revealing work of the Holy Spirit. In awe, we humble our hearts and accept, then proclaim, the gift of salvation.
Can it be said that God has a “wonderful plan” for every single person? What about a person suffering a painful disease? The countless victims of natural disasters? AIDS orphans in Africa? Martyrs? If I knew a person would die a horrific death tomorrow, could I tell them today that God has a wonderful plan for their life? Absolutely “yes.”
The Apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:5 that “God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.” The moment a person decides to trust Christ, he or she is destined for heaven. By following Christ and living a life filled with the Holy Spirit we can receive the power, grace, love, and direction to live in this world. Yet bad things still happen, even to the most faithful believer. When we choose to put things into the eternal perspective, we realize that nothing that happens to us in this life can make God’s plan any less than marvelously, astonishingly wonderful.
The plan that God offers each person is woven like a thread in the rich tapestry of His master work to redeem all of Creation. Continuing in Ephesians 1:10, Paul reveals God’s endgame strategy: “At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ — everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan.” The adjective “wonderful” seems insufficient — as if human language could ever adequately describe God’s plan.
