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"What's meant for you won't pass you by"
I started out feeling like this was a bunch of wishwashy nonsense that people tell themselves to help them survive today. Because what was to assure us that we wouldn't be complete fools tomorrow and sabotage whatever good that could come our way? God knows I have, a fair few times!
But the longer I've pondered the interplay between the Sovereignty of God and the Responsibility of Man, and the more the Spirit opens my eyes to its nuanced intricacies, I've come to find a certain degree of comfort in that statement. I've come to believe in God's wise dealings with and despite our follies, and that no purpose of His can be thwarted, indeed.
But today, I realized that this statement has an unhealthy effect on me, and perhaps, it may on you too?
It keeps my sights, heart and mind firmly fixed on some future point when I believe I will receive some degree of fulfillment, that I cannot find today. It keeps me looking forward to that bright and glorious tomorrow. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's bad to be hopeful about the future. All I'm saying is that this thought robs me of the contentment I should be able to feel today.
It also reveals to me that the main reason I find this statement comforting is because I live in an unbelief-induced-anxiety today. Somewhere in the depths of my deceitful heart lingers the doubt that God may not live up to who He has proven Himself to be so far in my life and promises He will be in the future - sufficient.
Has that something that is "meant for you" stolen the sufficiency and contentment that you are to find in Him? Now I don't know what that something is for you, but I suspect that you, like me, are painfully aware of what it is. That's the very reason this statement speaks to us, right?
I do sincerely hope, though, that God was an active part of your belief that something was meant for you. It might be a something you're looking forward to in life, a point you're hoping to reach in your journey with God, or even a ministry or calling God has laid on your heart. However spiritual this something is, it's not God. And for that simple reason, it cannot be the source of our contentment.
Another more radical, borderline treacherous thought accompanied this realization, today. It is that this statement implies that this very period of waiting we are in before the something arrives was just as ordained by God, as the thing itself. Because if this wait wasn't meant for us, it should have passed us by, right?
I'm sure you'll agree that believing in the sovereignty of God has a challenging side to it. But what I propose is this. Can we invest ourselves as wholly into this waiting (with a sufficient God by our side) as we hope to invest in the things we wait for? Because often what looks like periods of inactively waiting now, tend to look like spiritual growth spurts, in hindsight.