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Part 1: God Can't Stop Thinking About You!

When the Innumerable Thoughts of God Become the Unshakeable Foundation of Your Hope

We have all heard it. It is printed on bookmarks, stitched onto pillows, painted on the walls of Sunday school rooms: "Nothing is impossible with God." We say it. We believe it. And we are absolutely right to believe it.

But today I want to share something that may surprise you. Something that, if I am being honest, may even make a few of you uncomfortable when you first hear it. Because today I am going to tell you that there are certain things God simply CANNOT do.

I am not talking about His power. I am not diminishing His glory for even a moment. What I am about to share is, in fact, the most staggering and breathtaking proof of that glory — proof that is intensely, achingly personal.

Over the next few moments together, we are going to look at one of those impossible acts for the God of all possibilities. First on the list:

God Cannot Stop Thinking About YOU!

My wife Carolyn and I have been together for more than fifty years. Fifty years of early mornings and late nights, of shared laughter and quiet tears, of ordinary Tuesdays that somehow became the most precious days of our lives. And I can tell you — when you truly love someone the way I love her — they never really leave your mind. They are with you in the car, at the table, in the still hours before the sun comes up. That is what love does. It thinks. Constantly. Tenderly. Without ceasing.

Now, my friend, I want you to take that kind of love and multiply it by everything that is infinite. Because that is the love God has for you.

Here is what He said to a people in exile — people who had lost their homes, their temple, and very nearly their hope:

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." — Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV)¹

When the great Hebrew scholar Lois Tverberg opens up the ancient language of this verse, something extraordinary comes alive.² The Hebrew word translated "thoughts" is machashavot (מַחֲשָׁבֹות) — and it is not a soft or passive word. It is the word a master architect uses when he is bent over his drafting table, designing something magnificent. It refers to deliberate, crafted, intentional plans. Not idle daydreams. Not vague impressions. God is not halfheartedly aware of you. He is actively engineering your future.

And look at the verb God uses: not "thoughts that I think" — past tense, over and done. Not "thoughts that I will one day think." He says, "thoughts that I think" — present tense, right now, in this very moment. The thoughts God has toward you are not a memory. They are not a promise deferred. They are ongoing and happening now.

His thoughts toward you are personal.

He does not think about humanity in vague generalities. He says, "the thoughts I think toward you." You — with your name, your history, your heartbreak, your hope that you are almost afraid to speak out loud. You are not a face in an endless crowd to the God who made the cosmos. You are known. You are seen. You are cherished by name.

His thoughts toward you are precious.

The poet-king David, who knew both the heights of the palace and the depths of the cave, wrote these words with trembling wonder:

"How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!" — Psalm 139:17a (NKJV)³

The Hebrew word David uses for "precious" is yaqar (יָקַר) — a word reserved for the rarest, most costly, most breathtaking treasures.⁵ God's thoughts toward you are not routine maintenance. They are treasure-thoughts!  They are not obligatory check-ins. They are yaqar. Rare. Radiant. Beyond price.

His Thoughts toward you are profound!

Listen again:

"How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I awake, I am still with You." — Psalm 139:17–18 (NKJV)³

Those precious, rare, radiating, treasure-thoughts God has toward you are profound! Sand. Close your eyes and think about the enormity of that for a moment. If you have ever walked a beach at sunrise and reached down to take a single handful of sand, scientists tell us you are holding approximately one million grains.⁴ There are an estimated seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains of sand on planet Earth! And David says — under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit — that God's thoughts toward you outnumber all of them.

And then the psalmist adds in Psalm 40:5:

"Many, O Lord my God, are Your wonderful works which You have done; And Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered." (NKJV)⁶

Did you catch that final phrase? Even David cannot list them in sequential order. He is saying God's thoughts toward you are so vast, so continuous, unending, so relentlessly overflowing that they exceed the very capacity of a numbered list.

Again, David cannot fathom the depths of God's thoughts and says,

"O Lord, how great are Your works! Your thoughts are very deep." — Psalm 92:5 (NKJV)⁷

The Hebrew word translated "deep" here is amaq (עָמַק) — the same word used to describe the fathomless floors of the sea.⁸ God's thoughts toward you do not skim the surface of who you are. They do not stop at the polished version of you that you present to the world. They plunge all the way down — past the failures you hide, past the fears you cannot name, past every complicated, broken, beautiful corner of who you are — and He is not put off by a single thing He finds there.

His Thoughts toward you are all about peace

And every single one of those thoughts — every machashavot, every grain of sand in that infinite number — is POSITIVE, is about your PEACE, is "good."

The word God uses for "peace" in Jeremiah 29:11, when He says, "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace…" is shalom (שָׁלוֹם) — but carries a meaning so much richer than mere tranquility.⁹ Shalom is the ancient Hebrew picture of wholeness, completeness, flourishing — a life restored to everything God designed it to be. God CANNOT formulate a thought toward you that wishes you harm. He CANNOT plan for your ruin. He is constitutionally, eternally, irrevocably FOR you.

His thoughts pull you toward hope!

There is a saying that has echoed through the centuries, and the great American writer Lewis Mumford captured its essence this way: *"Without food man can survive for barely thirty days; without water for little more than three days; without air hardly for more than three minutes: but without hope he might destroy himself in an even shorter time."*¹⁰ We were made for hope the way lungs were made for air.

And God knows this about you. That is precisely why the promise He makes in Jeremiah 29:11 ends where it does — "to give you a future and a hope."

In ancient Hebrew, the word for hope is tikvah (תִּקְוָה) — and embedded in that word is an image that will take your breath away.¹¹ Tikvah shares its root with the Hebrew word for a cord, a rope — something taut and strong and stretched toward something just ahead. God's hope for you is not a quiet wish. It is not a gentle suggestion. It is a lifeline — tied to His own hand — PULLING YOU forward into a future that is better than anything you can presently imagine. Hallelujah! Thank You for such gracious thoughts toward me, O God!

There is one last thought I want to leave you, and it is perhaps the quietest and most beautiful of all.

The Scripture tells us that *"He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep."*¹² (Psalm 121:4, NIV) The God of the universe — the One who spoke galaxies into existence and holds every atom in its place — does not sleep.

Have you ever wondered why?

I think — at least in part — it is because you are always on His mind.

He CANNOT stop thinking about you. Not when you are at your best and your life looks exactly the way you hoped it would. Not when you are at your worst and you feel that no one — not even God — could possibly still care. Not in the middle of your long night, when the darkness feels absolute and the silence feels like abandonment. No! Like a parent with a child in prison, you are on God's mind even during your worst moments and STILL, His thoughts toward you are for your GOOD! In fact, whatever your situation or condition, He is thinking about you right now, in this very moment, with thoughts of shalom (of tranquility, of completeness, of wholeness, of healing) and not of evil — thoughts deeper than any ocean, more numerous than every grain of sand on every shore, every last one of them filled with hope for your tomorrow. His thoughts are FOR YOU, not against you!

You are never out of His mind. You never could be.

For the God of all possibilities, that is simply impossible.

Shalom!

References

  1. Jeremiah 29:11, New King James Version (NKJV). Thomas Nelson, 1982.
  2. Tverberg, Lois. Reading the Bible with Rabbi Jesus: How a Jewish Perspective Can Transform Your Understanding. Baker Books, 2018, pp. 23–31. See also Brown, Francis, S.R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Hendrickson Publishers, 1994. Entry: מַחֲשָׁבָה (machashavah), p. 364.
  3. Psalm 139:17–18, NKJV.
  4. Howard C. McAllister, University of Hawaii. "How Many Grains of Sand Are on Earth's Beaches?" Scientific American, September 2008.
  5. Brown, Driver, Briggs. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Entry: יָקַר (yaqar), p. 429.
  6. Psalm 40:5, NKJV.
  7. Psalm 92:5, NKJV.
  8. Brown, Driver, Briggs. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Entry: עָמַק (amaq), p. 770.
  9. Tverberg, Lois. Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus. Zondervan, 2012, pp. 54–56. Entry: שָׁלוֹם (shalom).
  10. Mumford, Lewis. The Conduct of Life. Harcourt Brace, 1951, p. 179.
  11. Brown, Driver, Briggs. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Entry: תִּקְוָה (tikvah), p. 876.
  12. Psalm 121:4, New International Version (NIV). Biblica, 2011.