The Purpose of Life is Preparation

PRESSURE is an inordinate device doing many things. It forces us to respond, it creates impetus to adjust and grow, it teaches us what to avoid in future, and it can bring us to a place of utter surrender. There are many pressures that work for God’s purposes in our lives that we have no idea about. Let’s look at pressure as the catalyst for growth and performance through the purifying glory of preparation.

Every hurt, betrayal, disappointment, frustration, denial, rejection, and lie is pressure intended to compel us to prepare. To respond best is to reflect over what happened, take the pain within ourselves, with God resident, and absorb the pressure in the pain — a meditative activity.

We finish with this prayer: “Lord, make me better. Use this for my learning. Help me to learn what I need to learn. Help me convert the darkness I’m feeling into light for benefit. Compel me to not look at what the other party should do. Make this grief I feel part of my preparation for the greater thing coming. Help me to one day be able to thank you for this pain I now feel.”

What we then carry about with us is the purpose that will ever drive our lives in an inspiring direction: God is active, right here, right now, in preparing us for the greater thing. We don’t need to know what the greater thing coming is. Indeed, it can only harm us to know. But we trust his purposes in grooming us upon our purpose.

When we are focused on our purpose — to hone in on our preparation — we are able to more fully accept our lives, as they are, in all humility. God’s not finished yet.

Denzel Washington once said, “Luck is where opportunity meets preparation.” In other words, there is no such thing as luck. But, in being diligent around preparation, in waiting patiently for the appropriate time, a person creates something out of the opportunity they are inevitably presented.

Opportunity is inevitable. Our role in the waiting is one of preparation. All good things have their time. To each good thing is appointed a season.

***

Three reminders that God’s got this:

1. He’s not finished with us.

2. He’s not finished with them.

3. He’s not finished with the situation.

God is preparing us all. If we will relax from our ambitious zest a little in life and focus simply on what God is doing, we’ll be amazed at the peace and joy that will flood in by the agency of the Holy Spirit.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.