Each of us has those days when it’s difficult to believe we’re that masterpiece that God made, that we are a miracle in making, that God has something great just ahead. Too often we feel like ordinary wall paint that’s all one tone and not even covering well. But if you look and listen to your life, you’ll find reminders of God’s brushwork everywhere. He’s using all the darkness and light, all that’s faded and bright in your life to make you beautiful. He’s performing little miracles every day to get you to the destiny that he designed from the beginning. You may not see that any more than you would see all the foundational work da Vinci did on the canvas of the Mona Lisa to give her that mysterious, beautiful smile. But then, God’s reminders aren’t subtle either.
I still run into some of the women who cared for me when I was a sickly baby. They love to remind me of the miracle God gave me, noting that when they would pick up the infant me, I was dead weight.
“Like a sack of potatoes,” one woman is fond of saying.
But God had more in mind for me than to be dead weight. My parents determined to claim more of a destiny for me, too. They prayed for more, and isn’t it amazing how the miracle needed was just a prayer away?
Yet how many times do we set out with some great expectation, only to receive frustrating news-maybe even devastating news-that stops us in our tracks. We believe in the best but get the worst. The job that helped you buy your house is no more, and without work you might now lose the house, too. The mobility we once enjoyed is gone because, by accident or disease, so is our health. The love we thought would last forever is suddenly lost.
I’m telling you: there’s a choice to see such things as challenges or, as I like to see them, as preparation for great victories to come. You can be devastated or determined. You can believe you’re a mess or a masterpiece.
You can choose to wait for the world’s woe or God’s graciousness.
God loves it when we’re faithful to where he has placed us, when we refuse to give up, and when we ask big. He loves it when we say, “Okay, Lord, I’m having a tough time swallowing this. I don’t know if I can bear, let alone lift, anymore, but I’m going to press on. “That person is discouraging me, this circumstance is telling me to go no further, that doctor is saying I won’t have the ability, but I’m not going to be left behind on the destiny you have for me, Lord. I’m going with you, wherever you take me, however far I have to go. I want to not just step into what you have willed for my life. I want to walk in it. I want to run. I’m not giving up.”
Excerpt from You Are Made For More!