“For 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.” — Jeremiah 29:11
The first time I heard someone say that their past had defined them, I was standing behind the espresso bar pulling a shot. He was a young man — mid-twenties, fresh out of incarceration, looking down at the floor. He told me, almost matter-of-factly, that he was “the kind of person who couldn’t expect much.”
I disagree with that sentence. So does Jeremiah. So does God.
The promise in Jeremiah 29:11 was not spoken to people in palaces. It was spoken to people in exile — far from home, stripped of dignity, surrounded by a culture that had every reason to believe their best days were behind them. God’s response was not to repair their circumstances first. It was to repair their imagination of the future.
That is the work of The Caffeine Experience. Not coffee. Not employment. Not even certificates. The work is to disagree, with the gospel as our authority, with every voice that has told our learners they are stuck where their worst chapter found them.
If you have ever sat across from someone who has come to believe they are too far gone, you know how hard that disagreement is. They don’t need a pep talk. They need a place where they can begin again — with people who refuse to remember them only by what they have done. They need a runway. We give them an espresso machine.
The promise is still true today. The future God has for any person — including the one reading this — is not negotiated with their past. It is given by His grace.
Marginality, friend, is not destiny.
Soli Deo Gloria — To God alone be the glory.
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