Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD Almighty.

Zechariah 4:6 (NIV)

One of the things I am learning in this season is just how powerless I am. I am a high-achiever by nature. I was voted most likely to succeed in high school and graduated valedictorian.¹ I know how to get things done. And in life I have certainly done some things well. But there has been a sense of being unable to step into my true purpose and calling, a feeling I am arm’s-length away from what I was actually put on this planet to do.

I suspect this is true for many of us. We have yet to step into the fullness of our destiny. When we feel we are not quite where we want to be in life, the temptation is to push. It is to try to make something happen. This is especially true when we know God has called us to the thing we desire. Many of us in fact have been spiritually trained to do so. God wants what is best for us, He is for us, and He has delegated everything we need to make the life he has for us a reality. Such training has merit; it is much better than being completely unaware and unwilling to believe God has much of anything for us, much less prepared to partner with him in the adventure he has for us.

But there is a counterbalance to all this, and it is that nothing happens apart from His Spirit. It is only by His Spirit that anything lasting and worthwhile is accomplished. The line of demarcation between doing nothing and doing something with our lives is not defined by activity or inactivity per se, but by our responsiveness to His Spirit. In preparation for our calling, God often detours us and calls us to the deep places with Himself. It is not because He wishes to frustrate us or His own plans. It is because our destiny is much more than what we do: it is who we are. God is not just accomplishing destiny through us; He is building destiny in us. Our career path is not the destiny: we are. There is therefore purpose in the waiting. There is purpose in the delay. There is purpose even in the setback and moment and season of disappointment. There is purpose even and especially when things go horribly wrong and do not work out.

Some of us struggle with this. We do not believe God causes all things to work together for our good. Especially the things that blow up spectacularly in our faces, the things that seem to be the very opposite of all that we know is true about Him. We refuse to believe God could be behind some of the things that we walk through. We would rather believe God is in control of those moments of our lives that go well where His extravagant grace is undeniable. We choose to believe God is the God of revival only, not the God of all of our lives; we reason there is a small portion of life God occupies called His manifest presence, and in every other area of our lives, we are on our own. But this is not because we actually are. It is because we have refused to acknowledge Him as the God whose care embraces all that transpires in our lives.² We have chosen unbelief over faith, and it has blinded us from seeing God in the moments He is often doing his best work.

And sometimes His best work is bringing us to a place of realizing just how powerless we really are. That we really can do nothing apart from Him. That everything rests on His ability to show up and make something of our present mess, and of our lives. And that we can trust Him to do so.

1. Technically, co-valedictorian, a status I shared with two other students. ↩︎
2. Matthew 10:29 ↩︎