Sometimes, we face seasons that make us feel miserable and discouraged. We experience seasons where we don't know if God is in the process of grooming us, or whether He has left us. Seasons where the challenges seem impossible and unreal. It is in these difficult seasons in which God grooms, stretches and molds us. These are the seasons in which God prepares us for what He has planned for us.
It is in the olive press seasons where God is pressing the anointing out of us in order for it to flow from a place of intimacy with Him, from a place where we are fully dependent on Him to see us through the challenges of life. While God shared this word with me, He told me that it is imperative that His daughters realize that preparation is not just necessary for those in full time ministry, but it is vital for every single one of His daughters.
Oftentimes, when speaking about a God-call on your life, we mistakenly believe that true purpose in life is attached to the calling of the five fold ministry. We mistakenly believe that the concept of calling could not include a housewife, a working mother, a teacher, a nurse or an attorney. We do not realize that God calls us for the day to day. God calls us to a place of interaction with others. He calls us to the workplace, to motherhood and to ministry.
He has called us to a life worth living that flows out of dying to ourselves, denying our own expectations and well-wishes in order to obediently embrace God’s desires for us.
God prepares us for the day-to-day through our everyday life. He prepares you to be able to minister to the colleague at your workplace who is going through her second divorce. He prepares you to minister to the mother whose child is diagnosed with ADHD and struggles to cope with his learning disabilities. God is preparing you to journey with the girl at college who feels the pull of light and darkness in her soul. God is preparing you to be a lighthouse to women who feel left in the dark. His daughters are feeling tired, broken and confused. And He desires your revelation of Him to draw them into the Father's heart.
He is stirring your heart and stretching your faith. He is training your hands for war. He is taking out your heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh so that you can learn to be gentle, empathetic and sincere with His broken daughters. He is instilling compassion and grace in your soul because you know what it feels like to be left out and lonely. He is using your heartache and He is using your story. Your God has not forsaken you. He is preparing you for the purpose at hand. He is training you and discipling your soul.
He is asking you, whether you, woman of God, are prepared to lay your life down for the saving of many lives? He is asking you whether you believe that your purpose stretches far beyond yourself in order to embrace the sister sitting next to you. We know that God has given us the promise that He will turn everything in life around for the good of those whom believe in Him. Your pain, your sorrow and your sacrifices are not in vain. They are in preparation of a diligent soul, a ready hand to serve and a gracious tongue ready to love on others. The enemy seeks to destroy you, to bring you harm, to kill your spirit, but it is when we place our pain, hurt and sacrifices in the hands of our Father that we allow Him to turn it around for us.
The pain is in proportion to the promise of a higher calling. A calling to love, serve and lead from a place of hope and strength. God is preparing you for what He has planned for you.