Where God Plants You, He Plans to Grow You

• There comes a moment, beloved, when you stand at a threshold. Perhaps you stand there today and you look behind you at the familiar road that brought you here. And then you look ahead into a landscape you do not recognize. And the first question that rises in the human heart is the question of accident.
• How did I get here? Is this a mistake? Did I take a wrong turn? The enemy of your soul will whisper that lie with a fervor, hoping you will believe it. He will tell you that you are lost, that you are off the path, that this unfamiliar territory is proof of a divine oversight.
• But I am here to tell you with every fiber of my being, that you are not here by accident. Let us settle this truth in our spirits right now. You have been placed deliberately, intentionally, with a precision that surpasses all human understanding. You are not a leaf blown about by the chaotic winds of circumstance left to land wherever fate may decree. Oh no, you are a seed.
• And a master gardener does not scatter precious seed onto the pavement or toss it carelessly into the barren rocks. He studies the soil. He understands the climate. He knows what that seed contains within its tiny shell, the latent oak, the hidden vine, the blossoming flower.
• And he chooses the very spot where the conditions, however severe they may seem, will compel that life to break open, to push downward, and to rise upward. Think of Joseph, a boy with a dream of sheav and stars suddenly shoved into a dark pit by his own brothers. Was that an accident? From a human vantage point, it was a tragic crime, a horrific betrayal. It looked like the end of every promise. But it was a placement.
• That pit was the first in a series of divinely orchestrated rooms, a slave’s quarters in Potif’s house, a forgotten cell in a pharaoh’s prison. None of them were comfortable. None of them looked like a throne room. But every single one was a necessary chamber in the palace of his preparation. God put him where he would grow, not where he would be comfortable. The cruelty of his brothers, the false accusation, the years of silence.
• These were not signs of God’s absence. They were the very tools used to strip him of arrogance, to build in him integrity that could withstand temptation, to cultivate an administrative gift in the lowest places, and to forge a faith that would eventually say to those same brothers, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.