YOU HAVE THE POWER

It is wonderful to have a plan, but that means nothing if you have no power to perform the plan and accomplish the purpose. God sends people in and out of your life to exercise your faith and develop your character. When they are gone, they leave you with the enriched reality that your God is with you to deliver you wherever you go. Moses died and left Joshua in charge, but God told him, "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee" (Joshua 1:5b). Joshua never would have learned that while Moses was there. You learn this kind of thing when "Moses" is gone. Power is developed in the absence of human assistance. Then we can test the limits of our resourcefulness and the magnitude of the favor of God.

Also, we should strive to evaluate who our real friends are. You see more clearly that the people who treated you the worst were actually preparing you for the best. They stripped from you the cumbersome weights & entanglements that hindered the birth of inner resilience. Such friends leave us feeling naked and even vulnerable, but it is through those feelings that we begin to adapt and see our survival instincts peak. There is within the most timid person--beneath that soft, flaccid demeanor--a God-given strength that supercedes any weakness he appeared to have. The Bible puts it this way: "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Phil. 4:13)!

Greater still is the fact that we gain great direction through rejection. rejection helps us focus on new horizons without the hindrances of wondering, "What if?" Buried deep within the broken heart is a vital need to release and resolve. Although we feel pain when we fail at any task, there is a sweet resolve that delivers us from the cold clutches of uncertainty. If we had not been through some degree of rejection, we would have never been selected by God. Do you realize that God chooses people that others reject?! From a rejected son like David to a nearly murdered son like Joseph, God gathers the castaways of men and recycles them for Kingdom building.

Frustration exists in the lives of people who want to be used of God, but who cannot endure rejection from men. I admit I haven't always possessed the personality profile that calloused me and offered some protection from the backlash of public opinion. This ability to endure is similar to having a taste for steak tartare--it must be acquired. If you want to be tenacious, you must be able to walk in the light of God's selection rather than dwell in the darkness of people's rejection. These critics are usually just a part of God's purpose in your life.

Focus is everything. If your attention is distracted by the constant thirst of other people, or if you are always trying to win people over, you will never be able to walk with God. It seems almost as though He orchestrates your rejections to keep you from idolatry. We can easily make idols out of people. However, God is too wise to build a house that is divided against itself. Against this rough canvas of rejection & the pain it produces, God paints the greatest sunrise the world have ever seen.