613 But God ...

God is fully satisfied with who he created you to be. He’s proud of how he formed you and equipped you. Oh what pride he poured into the details of YOU. Every thing with purpose for a purpose. From the color of your skin to the color of your eyes and the special shape of your nose, your strengths and your soft spots, your passions and your desires, all hand selected by the almighty to make the one and only you. He wasn’t rushed in the making of you. He didn’t get halfway through and run out of time. He didn’t say “ahhh, well that’s good enough I gotta move on to the next creation.” No, he knit you together in your mother’s womb with the intention of who you would become and he didn’t stop until he knew you were exactly as he wanted you. Girl, make friends with who you are, it’s something special. God created you to be you, and he choose this exact place and time in history for your life. How crazy to think of all the times you could be living in, you’re in THIS one. That’s not an accident. 2020 was always in your future. God always saw it coming and he chose you and I to be here for this. Not to just survive it, but to become who he created us to be through it. When we began this year, we declared it would be the year of 20/20 vision. The year to see things more clearly. The year to get it right. The year of a clearer perspective with a focus on what is truly important. And while it seems like a whole crapfest of events, hardships and crisis have plagued much of the 156 days so far, the reality is NONE of it has been a surprise to God and it’s not an accident you’re living in the middle of it all. God uses the hardest of times to refine us and make us better. He works through the chaos to bring peace. He eliminates the nonsense to reveal the priorities of life, and when those priorities have been way out of whack, he starts moving things himself. Remember the story in the bible of Jesus walking into the temple and seeing people mistreating this holy place so he starts flipping over all the tables … yeah, that’s kinda 2020. Some tables have been flipped. Some tables needed to be flipped, didn’t they? Has the evil one had his hand in some of the events of this year? Oh, I’m certain of it. But there’s nothing God can’t use. We know that because of Genesis 50:20 “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Joseph spoke these words. A man who had been betrayed by his own brothers and lived decades imprisoned or enslaved all because they were jealous of him. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair. But Joseph remained faithful in it all. Everywhere he went, he found favor. Where he was a slave, he became the favorite. Where he was imprisoned, he was promoted. And all this time as evil was taken out on Joseph, God had a plan. Joseph was now the Governor of Egypt and his brothers who had sold him into slavery when he was only 17 years old were before him begging for food. All those years, all he had gone through, he could have grown bitter. He could have ended their lives and they would have deserved it. But instead he saw how God had used even the worst things that had happened in his life for something so much better. Now, because of the bad, there was good. God had used what was intended for harm for good and many lives were saved. Joseph saved an entire nation during a famine. His brother’s lives were saved because of him. Yes, they meant to harm him and Joseph knew it. However what was more powerful than their wrong doing was God’s right doing through it all. Tomorrow is June 6th, a day that marks a radical change in the trajectory of my life. It’s a day I set aside to remember what could have been and d...