God’s Plans Are Greater

The week between Palm Sunday and Easter is one of reflection and introspection for many people. For me, I’ve seen with new eyes what was going through the crowd during Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

Yes, some in the crowd were His devoted followers. Others were curious. Intrigued. Maybe they even admired Jesus. Everyone saw Him through a different lens. Their own.

Palm Sunday showed that public acclaim for Jesus isn’t the same as having a saving faith in Him. Enthusiasm—even admiration—doesn’t equal faith.

Think about the “Hosanna” chant. “Hosanna” originates from the Hebrew words yasha (“save/deliver”) and anna (“beg/beseech”). Combined, hosanna means “save now” or “deliver us, we pray.”

Whoever hosanna’d first tapped a deep-seated heart desire in the crowd. Each round of cheering spread its deliverance mentality like wildfire. Here was the miracle worker who [surely] had the power to liberate the Jews from Rome’s oppressive hand.

A different kind of deliverer

The circumstances surrounding Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem seemed to confirm that. In the ancient Near East, kings rode a horse into town to signal war. Conversely, they rode a donkey to signify entering in peace—meaning the king had already conquered his enemies.

The crowd worshipped an outcome. Instead, they should have worshipped the God of the universe in human form.

Jesus’ disciples should have known Zechariah’s messianic prophecy, but I imagine even they got swept up in the moment because they still didn’t understand God’s greater plans for that history-defining week.

Deliverance we need, not what we want

To be fair, would we have done any differently? If we lived under an oppressive dictatorship, would we not want relief? On a smaller scale, do we not want relief from life’s financial burdens, relational hardships, health limitations, and other ick that life foists on us?

Sure we do.

Yet God says, “My plans are greater.”

That doesn’t make the day-to-day of our lives easier to handle. But it should shift our focus.

Even when we can see retrospectively that God was at work doing more than we knew at the time, we still won’t see the full picture this side of heaven. We can only glimpse His greater plans.

Case in point: A little boy recently asked Joni Eareckson Tada, “Would you have told your seventeen-year-old self to take that dive into a lake [which broke her neck] if you could know what would happen after that?” Joni replied that if God had explained then how He’d use her quadriplegia to establish a worldwide network to help disabled children, she wouldn’t have believed Him. And her seventeen-year-old self would have preferred to keep the use of her hands and legs.

As I write this, I’m facing a new health challenge that may be due to long-term fallout from chronic, late-stage Lyme disease. (If you’ve followed me on social media, you’ll know I was out of remission most of last year.) This latest challenge is limiting my computer time and is maddening—not to mention scary because my doctors don’t know exactly what’s causing this issue.

I’ve yelled at God. Pleaded with Him to cut me a break. Reminded Him that I have a dual writing career He hasn’t said to curtail.

There’s nothing wrong with being honest before God. But that’s me seeing through the lens of my pain. I must check myself and ask Him to show me how to view life through His lens. Easter week brings that into sharper focus than ever.

Healing and teaching weren’t enough

Jesus couldn’t have accomplished what God always intended for Him to do if He’d only healed people. Those people still died eventually. Jesus wouldn’t have saved anyone if He’d only preached sermons. Countless men throughout history have delivered persuasive speeches. While His words had the power of God and life in them, Jesus had to die on the Cross to pay our sin debt, past, present, and future. Then God had to raise Him from the dead so we could live with Him forever if we would believe in what He’d done for us.

That takes faith. Not wishful thinking or Pollyanna optimism. That’s cheap faith. Real faith costs something. It’s a deliberate choice—based on scriptural fact—to be all in with Jesus, regardless of where that journey takes us.

Conclusion

Easter week tells us that the power of our faith is not in the intensity of our faith but in the object of our faith. What saves us is the strength of the Savior in whom our faith rests.

Easter is where God met our despair with His purpose.

Because His plans are always greater.

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