God created you on purpose. You were designed, planned, intended, and conceived with a God given destiny in store.
This destiny is not somehow undone by the hardships, challenges, and obstacles that have come against you.
On the contrary, every weight that the enemy places on your shoulders to slow you down and hold you back, God can actually use like some sort of super natural gym equipment to make you stronger, more resilient, more capable, and more able to make a difference where you are today.
For anyone who has ever worked out at a gym, it is common knowledge that if you start off doing reps with a certain amount of weight, you have to continue changing the weight and the approach to working out if you want to achieve maximum fitness. No one starts out performing to their maximum potential, but if you start at your current limits (whatever they are) and consistently work up level by level, pushing your boundaries and exploring your opportunities, your body is capable of achieving strength, endurance, and capability far beyond where you started.
It is the same with your personality, your spirit, your compassion, your motivation, and your identity. No one starts out performing to their maximum potential, but if you start at your current limits and consistently pursue expanding your understanding, extending your reach, improving your attitude, developing your integrity, increasing your character, deepening your faith, empowering your love, and enriching your relationship with God, you are capable of achieving increasingly, abundantly, above and beyond your biggest dreams.
God created you to receive an incredible destiny. You were designed for peace, planned for joy, intended for success, and conceived for blessing.
You were built for eternity.
So, no matter what the enemy has accomplished in your life, it is nothing in comparison with the strength that God has in store for you when you make the decision to start using the same baggage that you have been dragging around all these years as the spiritual gym equipment on which to develop the strength of character and agility of mind to overcome the very same enemy who loaded you up with that baggage in the first place.
You are a person of destiny and your destiny is waiting.
It can seem hard to accept the fact that God has plans for your life. You may look at what you have achieved up until now and wonder what God could possibly do with what you have become. You may look in the mirror and somehow overlook the treasure that God sees in you.
Your potential is not behind you. You haven’t missed your chance.
The key to unleashing your destiny today is in the realization that everything has the potential to bless you — even the enemy.
In the book of Genesis there is a story about one of the most politically powerful men in the ancient world, Joseph. Second only to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt and leader of one of the greatest ancient civilizations with science, engineering, technology, and military might far greater than its neighbors, Joseph had a close relationship with God that gave him a vision of the future and the ability to provide wise counsel in even the toughest situations. Years before a famine of epic proportions hit the land of Egypt, Joseph ensured the survival of the kingdom and its people by creating stores of food that would last for the extensive seven years that it would take for the local agriculture to recover and once again provide for the people of his country. And yet, if you study the story of Joseph you will discover that it is one long series of defeats and injustices leading up to a final victory.
Joseph was the favorite son of his father, but this caused his brothers to hate him and want him dead. They end up settling on selling him as a slave, a destiny from which few, if any, ever escaped alive. He does well as a slave, rising in influence until his master’s wife first attempts to rape him and then falsely accuses him of rape, landing him in prison, once again defeated. He does well in prison, even giving wise counsel to a couple of powerful political prisoners, only to be forgotten for years after one of them is restored to his position of power.
With this kind of track record, it would have been easy for Joseph to look at his life and decide that he was not a person of destiny, that God did not have anything in store for him. But Joseph did not allow his circumstances to define who he was. Joseph opened his life up to God’s leading and lived with integrity, honor, character, and dedication no matter where he found himself, and no matter what evil he experienced.
And so, when Pharaoh ultimately called him out of prison, and named him the governor of Egypt because of his wise counsel, Joseph accepted the destiny which God had in store for him in just the same way — diligently, consistently, passionately, and purposefully using his experiences to make him stronger, more capable, more understanding, and more compassionate as a leader and as a man.
When his brothers eventually needed his help because they were not as well prepared or positioned when the famine hit, Joseph not only helped them not to starve by providing them with food, but also used his extensive influence to provide for hundreds of years of peace and prosperity for them and their descendants by giving them a bountiful and fertile land in which to settle and make their home.
And when his brothers came to ask his forgiveness for their hatred and their violence towards him when he was young, they were justifiably afraid that he wouldn’t forgive them, but Joseph did forgive them,
“‘Don’t be afraid of me. Am I God, that I can punish you? You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. No, don’t be afraid. I will continue to take care of you and your children.’ So he reassured them by speaking kindly to them.” – Genesis 50
Joseph made the decision to develop his character, his identity, and his life upon the foundations of evil that others had provided him, but pursuing the destiny that God had in store for him.
If you are going to unleash your destiny today, you are going to require this same change in perspective. Realizing that the enemy ultimately has no power to define you. Accepting that the enemy ultimately defeats themselves by giving you the very equipment you need to overcome them. And choosing to convert your spiritual baggage into super natural gym equipment on which to strengthen, empower, and achieve the destiny that God has in store for you.
Whatever you are facing today, God has a plan to restore, heal, bless, and provide for you.
You are a person of destiny, born on purpose, for a purpose.
You cannot be overcome and you cannot be defeated if you make the choice to receive the promises that God is speaking over your life today.
No disease, no prison, no addiction, no failure, no loss, no mistake, no abuse, no flaw, no sin can stand in the way of your savior reaching you today, taking you up in his infinitely capable arms, and putting you on the path to eternal life starting today.
You are gifted. You are chosen. You are loved. And your destiny is still in front of you, ready for the taking.
So, make the choice to unleash your destiny today. Unlock your potential. Challenge yourself to work out on the spiritual gym equipment you find yourself gifted with, not just once or twice but regularly.
Develop the strength that God sees in you and you will discover that God is going to take you places you haven’t even imagined.
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