Something simple hit me this morning when I woke up — one of those revelations that feels almost obvious at first, but carries more weight the longer you sit with it. It has to do with how some of us ended up in the lives we’re living, and why God’s grace and promotion still follow us even when we fall short. If you have been chosen by God for a very big assignment and you’re tempted to be hard on yourself about how you’ve handled some of the harder seasons of your life, this one is for you.

You Didn’t Sign Up for This

A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.

Proverbs 16:9 (KJV)

I’ll use myself as the example because I can only speak from what I’ve lived. If you had asked me years ago what I wanted to do with my life, the answer would’ve been simple — fly airplanes. That was it. I was happy doing it. I wasn’t looking for anything else. I wasn’t asking big existential questions or chasing some grand spiritual calling. I just wanted to fly.

But God shut it down.

Not because I failed at it. Not because I made some catastrophic mistake that ended it. He just closed the door. And then He started opening other doors — doors I never asked for, never would’ve picked, and honestly never would’ve walked through if I had been given a choice in the matter.

That’s the part I think we miss. We spend so much time blaming ourselves for how we’re handling situations that God Himself put us in — situations we never volunteered for, never would have signed up for, and never would’ve wanted if someone had laid out the full picture in front of us.

God Throws Us Into the Deep End on Purpose

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9 (KJV)

God doesn’t just allow hard situations — He engineers them. He places us — sometimes forces us — into environments and circumstances that are specifically designed to stretch us beyond what we think we can handle.

And here’s the key part: He knows we can’t handle it.

That’s not a mistake. That’s not an oversight on His part. He puts us there fully aware that we are not equipped, not prepared, and not ready. He puts us there knowing we’re going to stumble. He puts us there knowing we’re going to make a mess of some of it.

And He does it anyway.

Why We Still Get Promoted When We Screw Things Up

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

1 Corinthians 1:27 (KJV)

Apostle David E. Taylor has shared many times how God kept promoting him even when he repeatedly failed — sometimes badly. For years I heard that and received it as encouragement, but I don’t think I fully understood the why behind it until this morning.

The reason God can promote us even through our failures is because the situation was never our idea to begin with.

When a commander sends a soldier into a battle that the soldier didn’t request, didn’t train for, and didn’t feel ready for — and that soldier fights hard, takes some hits, makes some mistakes, but makes it through — you don’t strip that soldier of his rank. You honor him for going. The mission wasn’t his choice. The enemy wasn’t his choice. The terrain wasn’t his choice. He just showed up and fought.

That’s some of us.

God assigns the mission. God picks the terrain. God determines the level of opposition. We didn’t ask for any of it. And so when we get knocked around in it — when we have extremely bad days and have attitudes we’re not proud of, when we don’t handle things the way we wish we had, when we barely make it through — He doesn’t hold it against us the way we hold it against ourselves.

What’s Being Built in You Is Bigger Than You Can See

And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope.

Romans 5:3-4 (KJV)

Through all of these horrible situations we have to walk through — the ones we didn’t ask for and didn’t want — something is happening in us that we almost never recognize while it’s taking place. Our character is being developed. Our faith is being developed. Our trust in God is being developed. And most of the time, that entire process is invisible to us while it’s happening.

We don’t always start off well. That’s just the honest truth. I certainly didn’t. Looking back at some of the seasons I’ve been through, my starting point in many of them wasn’t pretty. But I’ve noticed something as I look at where I am now compared to where I began: the end result is that I am a much better person across many different dimensions than I was at the start. That development was not something I engineered. It came directly out of the pressure of the very situations I never would’ve chosen.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s by design.

God isn’t just trying to get you through the situation. He’s using the situation to build something in you that could not have been built any other way. And because that process is largely hidden from us while it’s happening — because we’re too busy just trying to survive — we often don’t give ourselves credit for how far we’ve actually come.

But the growth is real. The change is real. And it’s working in your favor more than you know.

Keep Going

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Romans 8:1 (KJV)

I think a lot of us walk around with a kind of low-grade shame about where we are, how we’re doing, and how we’ve handled the road that got us here. Like somehow if we were better, stronger, more disciplined, or more spiritually mature, we’d be doing this whole thing more gracefully.

But this morning’s revelation cuts through that.

You didn’t design this road. You didn’t draft the assignment. The ugly stretches you’ve walked through, the seasons that broke you down, the situations that made you look bad or feel like a failure — you didn’t go looking for any of that. God put you in it. And He expected you to go through it, even if you barely made it, because He knew that was the only way something real was going to get built inside you.

His favor doesn’t lift just because we’re imperfect in a fight we didn’t pick. That’s actually the very reason grace exists — because He’s asking us to do something that is genuinely beyond us, and He knows it.

The next time you feel behind, ashamed of how you’ve handled something, or like you should be further along than you are — remember this: you didn’t ask for the life you’re living. You didn’t choose the path that was chosen for you. You showed up. You kept going. And in the process, you were being changed in ways you couldn’t even see.

The promotion was never contingent on perfection. It was contingent on presence.

Now, before we close, there’s one very important piece of advice I need to give you… If you look at someone like myself in the situation I’ve just described and think you can make judgments about me, you had better watch it. God is the only judge here, not you. If you think you’re going to make judgments about people in my position and attack them verbally (and monetarily), I hope you’re ready when God decides it’s time to judge you. Based on what I’ve seen in dreams about people who have been attacking me for these reasons… trust me, you are on very thin ice and are playing with fire. Quit now before it’s too late because my crown is still sitting on my head (which I earned by going through all this).

To be continued…

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