Everything’s perfect.
It was the last week of my sophomore year at the University of Colorado Boulder. I had the rest of my life planned out. Halfway done with a biochemistry degree. Medical school in my sights. Dreams of being an orthopedic surgeon for a professional sports team. The mountain house in Vail, the beach home in Laguna, and a white picket fence around each.
I was a brand-new Christian, eager and enthusiastic about all the ways my life was changing.
The guys in my small group and I had just memorized Jeremiah 29:11, perhaps the most quoted Bible verse of all time: “ ‘I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ ”
As I walked up to my apartment, I smiled and then whispered a prayer that only God and I could hear.
God, I’ve been thinking about all the plans you have in mind for my future. And I want you to know that I’m in. I don’t wanna miss a thing. I want all of it.
I had no idea how dangerous that prayer was, or that over the next decade, God would ruin every single one of my plans.
Breaking Bad Theology
Jeremiah 29:11 might be the most misunderstood verse in the entire Bible. But don’t panic. Behind every word, there’s a rich background of historical context that gives it a specific meaning.
In the Old Testament, hundreds of years before Jeremiah, God established a covenant with a man named Abram and made him some pretty epic promises. Here’s the casual version: Abe, I’m going to make you into a nation more numerous than the stars in the sky. I will give you a land to call home, and through your people, I will bless the entire world.
No big deal.
God wanted to bless the world through the Israelites, but time and time again, they chose their way over his. Until God finally gave them over to what they wanted. Following their own ways and plans, the Israelites were eventually conquered by the Babylonian army and carried into a seventy-year exile.
As a prophet for God’s people, an Israelite priest named Jeremiah delivered a message to the Israelites in exile, complete with a sobering lesson on the dangers of disobedience and a beautiful reminder that God’s plans were, and still are, better than theirs.
Yes, this verse is a specific promise made to a specific group of people in a specific situation roughly 2,600 years ago, but it’s overflowing with general implications that are true for you and me today.
Be encouraged! You are a child of God, and he does have good plans for you.
But as the saying goes, Jeremiah 29:11 cannot mean for us what it did not mean for them.
As a pastor, I’m just trying to guard your heart from the fallout of false expectations so you don’t get hurt by God for not giving you something he never promised you in the first place. I want you to be encouraged by the incredible implications of Jeremiah 29:11, while also interpreting it responsibly in light of the full counsel of God’s Word.
After all, the more you know the story of God, the more you’ll know the heart of God. And the more you know the heart of God, the easier it will be to discern his plans.
Follow Jesus, Not Your Heart
You have a good God who has good plans for you. But he might ruin your life.
And by that I mean he might change every detail you’ve already mapped out. After all, they’re his plans, not yours. Remember when God said, “I know the plans I have for you”?
Exactly—God is the one with the plans.
However, he also knows His plans are better than your plans.
God cares about your passions and preferences, and he loves that you’re a planner. He made you that way. But let’s not make the all-too-common mistake of assuming God’s plans are a buffet, where you can take what you want and leave what you don’t. If it were, then they wouldn’t be God’s plans; they’d be yours.
We often want things that God doesn’t intend for our lives, just like the Israelites did. Many of the things I want today will not lead to the plans God has for me tomorrow, even though sometimes it really feels like they will.
This isn’t about bringing God into our dreams; it’s about surrendering to his. Seeking the Planner, not the plans. And that takes two things:
One, the faith to believe God has good things in store for your life.
And two, the trust to open your hands, even if it means God might ruin your plans.
Ten Years Later . . .
A decade after my picture-perfect walk home from finals, almost everything about my plans had changed.
I never went to medical school. And instead of homes in Vail and Laguna, I owned a two-bedroom condo in Littleton, Colorado. (The beach house is still a dream. I’m just playing the long game.)
My professional plans quickly changed from orthopedic surgeon to pastor just a few months after I graduated from college. God then downloaded a new dream into my heart to start a church with my brother Ryan, and my best friend, Ethan, and the more we dreamed, the more we started filling in every detail.
Slowly but surely, God changed all the details, including our dream city on the beach, San Diego, and we ended up church planting in Austin, Texas, three hundred miles from the nearest ocean.
Scripture tells us there’s power in our testimonies because our stories are the living and breathing evidence that God is working. And this is my testimony: God ruined my plans, and it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
I remember driving with my pregnant wife and our anxious dog from Denver to Austin, towing a U-Haul packed with everything we owned. When we passed the Welcome to Texas sign, I said a big, little prayer: “God, please let this crazy dream work.”
And in that moment, a thought filled my heart with a rush of confidence for the rest of the drive: This is God’s plan, not mine. All the details are now his.
Trusting God’s Plans When the Future Is Unknown
So, here’s a thought-provoking question: When it comes to God’s plans, can you get out of your own way? Because if you can’t, your commitment to your own details will eventually limit what God wants to do. Trust me, when you step out in faith and follow God into the unknown, you want to know in the depths of your heart that it was his idea.
Because then the outcome is on him.
And that’s the feeling of gratitude and peace I felt as we crossed the Texas state line. God, thank you for ruining my plans.
Surrendering Your Plans to God
I challenge you to turn your plans into a prayer and surrender the outcome to God. Open your hands and release your grip. He’s a good Father with good intentions and your best interests at heart.
***
Adapted excerpt from What Does God Have Planned for Me Next? by Doug Wekenman. Copyright © 2026. Published by WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House Christian Publishing Group, LLC. Used by permission.
Doug Wekenman is the Teaching Pastor at Red Rocks Church and leads the Austin location alongside his wife and best friends. Passionate about making faith come alive for people, Doug writes and teaches about trusting God and taking the next step in life with confidence, including What Does God Have Planned for Me Next? He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Samantha, their three children, and their black lab, Luna. Doug loves people, the ocean, golf, sneakers, and tacos—though not always in that order.
