Next time anyone says, “God has a purpose for your life,” especially in the midst of difficulty or challenge or setback, it might be helpful to “go bigger” than one’s personal earthly plans and “dreams” and wish lists being either cancelled or fulfilled.
“… We may have to let go the particular occasion of our trouble, and first recognize, and then embrace with our heart, the fact that in the affliction there resides the immense eternal potentiality of an increase of the image of God’s Son, which is to be the one and the only character and nature of the eternal kingdom. We have too much visualized the ‘Heaven’ that is to be, as geographical and pleasurable, without giving sufficient weight to the fact of a nature to be inculcated and perfected.” (By T. Austin-Sparks from: One Universal Answer)
“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…” Romans 8:28,29 NKJV.
To be conformed to the image of His Son. Now that’s a tall order. It reminds me of some lines from a beautiful song from long ago that we used to sing at prayer meetings – “The dream I have today, My Lord, is only a shadow of Your dreams for me, only a shadow of all that will be, if I but follow you.”
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit’; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’ But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.” James 4:13-16 NKJV.
Ouch.
When it feels like nowhere, we can be sure He’s now here. The omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent One.
Fear not. Surrender to redeeming grace.
Into And Out Of The Blue 