I was standing in the front of the church on a Sunday night enjoying the worship and feeling my soul fill with love and wonder. Suddenly it felt like God was saying “Fear not your weakness or your limitations or the places where you have the greatest need, for the place of your need is the point of My grace. The place of your weakness is the place of My strength. The place of your cross is the place of My power and the place in your life where you feel unvalued, inadequate, out of control and even desperate, can become the greatest place of strength and testimony in your life.
God has said this before many times, to many people. He said this to Moses, Jeremiah and Gideon, my power and ability only begins to manifests at the extremity of your ability. When you are weak, then I am strong. This is the theology of weakness. Paul believed that Gods power was released through human weakness. “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us”. 2Co 4:7
So we’re not trying to be free of all weakness, or improve our humanity. (It’s mortify not modify our flesh). We are not trying to get to a place where we have no need for His grace. We are never to get to the point where we are strong in ourselves and don't need Gods help or His power. We can only come boldly to the throne of grace if we are in need. We are to be strong but strong in the Lord.
Friend I have found that it is not in God’s plan to deliver us from need or weakness but to fill us with His incredible and powerful Grace, who is Jesus our King.

What has happened to your dream? Has it been delayed, derailed or destroyed? Don’t write it off too quickly. God still plans for you to become your best you, the largest you and the most fulfilled you but it always takes time and stages. Israel camped 42 times and took 42 journeys before they entered into their promised land so maybe you are camping at one stage about to follow the cloud to your next position?

 Sometimes we're not ready for the next step because we don't want to let go of the past or the present. We can't access the dream because we're not ready for the change that every dream from God will requires. It is a fantasy to think that your future will be different and not change anything about your daily routine. Your destiny is locked up in your daily routine and your revelation.

Sometimes we are not ready for His future because He has yet to make us bigger. The person we need to be in future isn’t there yet. Could God be waiting for us to grow up before we can go up? We have to be big enough in character to survive the bigness of our future. And usually, that doesn’t happen quickly.

 But mostly our thinking is too limited and we find we cannot go beyond what our mind or heart can imagine. There were times when Israel couldn't go any further into their destiny because they're thinking was wrong. They couldn’t possess the Promised Land only because they were defeated in their own mind. So for most of us to go on the next stage on our journey, we only need to get a breakthrough from our current thinking.

Sometimes our dream gets lost in our difficulties. Our perspective gets distorted by our problems. Josephs dream seemed over as he languished in prison but God was arranging a setup, not a setback. When Daniel was put in the lion’s den, he was tricked by men but he is still on track with God. Even if your God dream seems dead, Our Father can bring it back to life. There are no hopeless circumstances only hopeless thinking.  Once God had said to Paul that he was going to Rome, nothing could stop him from getting there. The storm meant nothing - the shipwreck couldn't deter him and a snake couldn't destroy him.  Paul declared on the deck of the sinking ship “I believe God”.  He would not be put off. Nothing can stop you getting to Gods planned future for you but you!

Friend, if you think your dream has sunk or is sinking, don’t write your self off. Everything we go through is necessary for our future. But fatalism won't access promises that can only be gained by faith. There is still time to hear from Father, then rise and declare “I believe God” and follow the cloud of His purpose toward His dream.

Charles Dickens book, “Great Expectations,” tells of a poor young man who dreamed that one day he would be a wealthy man and marry a beautiful and rich woman.   As often happens, his great expectations turned into a great disappointment.

Young people get married and expect to never have a difficult moment.  But a lot can happen between the wedding cake and the silver anniversary cake.   It seems that those that do the best in life are those who are able to handle failed expectations without becoming offended at people or God.

The word “offence” means a trap or a stumbling block. It is when you allow an offence to become a snare or allow it to cause you to stumble.  Jesus said that offences were inevitable, so the key is not to let those offences stumble us.  Paul knew this, so he constantly guarded his heart against being offended at God or man. Acts 24:16.  And he had plenty he could have been offended at!  While trying to serve God, he was allowed to be beaten, flogged, imprisoned, shipwrecked and rejected by the very people he was trying to save.  We can be offended by people who correct us or that don’t meet expectations but we can also be offended at God.

John the Baptist, a boyhood friend and relative of Jesus, who ate bugs for a lifetime in order to serve God the best he could, was put in prison but he imagined that Jesus would get him out. After all He broke Daniel, three Hebrew boys,  Jeremiah and Joseph out of prison so why not John?  Jesus left him in prison to die and said.  “And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.” (Matthew  11:6) 

We could almost excuse JB from being offended, it seems like a raw deal, but God saw it differently.  Jesus told the whole planet that John the Baptist was the greatest person ever born of women.  Mat 11:11. That is greater than Moses, David, Samuel and Elijah – the greatest man in 4000 years. And he will be eternally honoured for that. He was the only other man who the Bible says was sent from God. John 1:6 . John had a divine mission, to prepare the world for Salvation and thereby change the entire universe.  Since his death he has impacted more people than in his short life, just like Jesus.  And he was elevated to heaven to be part of life with Heavenly Father and family. He was a victim for a second but a victor for eternity. If nothing else good happens to us in life and we still get to go to heaven, it’s the grace of God and that is a great life.

Friend, To serve Gods purpose in the years we have on earth and then be with God forever, is the grace of God and that is a great life.  How are your expectations? As William Carey said “We should expect great things from God and attempt great things for God”   but are you expecting from Him more that He actually promised. Don’t take offence at God- He is planning a great ending for you. If every day in this life is filled with troubles, we still have a great heavenly expectation.

A number of years ago some teenagers from a local school were killed in a tramping tragedy.  Heavy rains had fallen and the swollen river had washed them away. Some cried out to Jesus and were saved but others died. Presumably, they were praying too, wanting to be rescued, but they weren’t.  The parents gathered around and wondered why some children were saved and others were lost. Outside the theologians defended the sovereignty of God and consoled themselves with the mystery of Gods plan for the accident.  Others may have looked at the tragedy and thought that God is either powerless or if he is powerful maybe not as loving, as we hoped.

We know from scripture and reason that God is loving and powerful but we have to admit, there are mysteries when it comes to tragedies in people’s lives. God is not the only player in the events of the world. Satan does all he can to destroy people, the selfish will of man can do monstrous evil and human beings have insufficient wisdom or foreknowledge to escape every natural danger.

A man called Helmet Thielecke said “When you look through a magnifying class at some cloth, the fabric is sharply in focus in the centre and blurred at the edges. We know edges will be fine because we have seen the centre.  Life is like that too. There are many edges that are blurred but because we have seen the centre, the cross, that greatest demonstration of God’s love, we can accept that the edges we don’t understand, will be woven by Gods love too.” When the King is still in focus, the game is not lost.

Friends, we can trust Gods character, when we can’t understand our circumstances.