Tuesday, October 25, 2011

PAIN PRECEDES PURPOSE

I feel an inner oppositional force at work. I feel the desire to share my heart, but I also feel the desire to remain quiet. What is within me has been expressed many times for you to find your own encouragement for hope when life seems out of balance or a desperate need for restoration is a craving needing satisfied within your soul. I am learning through seasons of turmoil that the only place to find that peace is within. It is not found by expressing discontent or injustice nor is it found by indignant posturing. Our hope is only found in the power that God alone possesses. He alone knows what is best. Injustices occur. Our skewed perspectives of what is right and wrong occur. Our trust in others expecting our protection to be first and foremost in their dealings with us can also occur. We learn through disappointments and oftentimes devastation that life-lessons are often necessary for our future dealings in the lives that we are called to live out. If we interpret each defect and detour along the way as a life-lesson and learn from it then we begin to view our progress and impotentence simultaneously. We realize humans are exactly that...we rise and fall at the same time.

The dichotomy between our thoughts and our actions is at the very core of why we need a savior. We need someone to guide us that is beyond human and finite in thinking and direction. While faith used as a crutch is often an excuse for those who do not understand it and always accompanies a refusal to release control, for those of us that grow (often by force) through life's challenges, we begin to understand at an even more concentrated level that pain must precede purpose.

Being able to find peace within the process is perhaps the greatest of all the demands we must meet. I have learned in my own challenges that surrender is what I do last, but it is precisely where the provisions and protection occurs for my preservation and advancement. I am not sure I ever could have released my efforts to stand and fight for my story or the truth if it weren't for what God had to allow me to pass through for the objective of my purpose being met. I have found that when we feel outnumbered, both on the side of the enemy as well as even our allies, and we have no ability left to find hope in what is right, we surrender. We allow God to take over. We plead with Him for favor, for mercy, for opening the closed minds of those that stand in our way or hold us back from being restored. And we also realize that if He doesn't orchestrate on our schedule (which is already proven by the endless journey and wanderings we are involved in), then it must be for our good and His goals for our life.

This may be the place that breaking down and feeling helpless also is necessary. Without remembering that feeling, there is no surrender. We don't want to give up our fight. We feel the most vulnerable when we do UNLESS our vulnerability has already been proven to us by the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Remember this quote: "Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties." ~Charles Haddon Spurgeon It is true of some of the most memorable of Biblical contributors to our hope and understanding of God's greatness that they too underwent tremendous difficulties for a much greater and often unforeseen purpose. History is waiting to be made. Do you desire a role in the greatest story ever written? The story is still being written and giving Him the pen is the most assured way of having your designated assignment come to life within its pages.