Will Bloom Where I Am Planted

God's timing is perfect. It is not necessarily my preferred timing. As a matter of fact, I think it was in a Beth Moore Bible study she quoted a woman who said, "God's timing is perfect, but He misses a few great times to be early." I'm not always the most patient when it comes to God's timing even though I know it is perfect. Case in point, I'm sitting at work wanting to be working on Women IN Ministry, but God's timing hasn't allowed me to quit my day job to be employed full time at the church ministering to women and working towards another degree in women's ministry.

Today during my quiet time, I was reading from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers, and it reminded me of a few things I'd like to share.

"After sanctification it is difficult to state what YOUR aim in life is, because God has taken you up into His purpose by the Holy Ghost; He is using you now for His purposes throughout the world as He used His Son for the purpose of our salvation." WOW! Am I living like He's using me for His purpose?

"As long as you have a personal interest in your own character, or any set ambition, you cannot get through into identification with God's interests. You can only get there by losing for ever any idea of yourself and by letting God take you right into His purpose for the world, and because your goings are of the Lord, you can never understand your ways." That is scriptural – dying to self (Col 3:9-10, Rms 6:6, II Cor 5:17). We have to put our desires away and search for God's will in it all. So if I am to stay where I am, then I need to be serving Him where I am, setting a good example, being a good employee, being who God designed me to be.

"I have to learn that the aim in life is God's, not mine. God is using me from His great personal standpoint, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him, and never say – Lord, this gives me such heart-ache. To talk in that way makes me a clog. When I stop telling God what I want, He can catch me up for what He wants without let or hindrance. He can crumple me up or exalt me, He can do anything He chooses. He simply asks me to have implicit faith in Himself and in His goodness. Self-pity is of the devil, if I go off on that line I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. I have 'a world within the world' in which I live, and God will never be able to get me outside it because I am afraid of being frost-bitten." Once again, WOW! "He can crumple me up or exalt me" – How flexible am I? How willing am I to allow His hands to mold and make me? Sometimes I find it easier to submit myself than I am to place my children there when in reality and in God's truth, His hands are the safest place to put my children.

Whatever God is wanting to do in your life, are you permitting it? Are you doing your best even though you may not be where YOU want to be? There is some reason God is leaving us where we are…to crumple or exalt, which is it? We need to learn to bloom where we are planted.