“LOVED” OUT OF DIVINE PLAN

I read the story of a man who spotted lava that was about to break out into a butterfly. As he watched the process, he was moved with concern for the lava so he helped to break the shell. It turned out to be a beautiful butterfly but it had no wings to fly. In the process of helping it, the wings became the sacrifice.

Let’s begin with a note of caution: If you are a student or a youth and you are being “helped” in your examinations to cheat your way through, you are being robbed of your wings. You will be beautifully decorated with certificates that you will never be able to defend. There will be no wings to fly. Potentials will remain potentials. Such help is a burial service for a greater life of exploits. Do not offer it. Do not accept it!

Some people love you but will sentimentally keep you away from your divinely ordained purpose. Joseph cannot fulfil destiny wearing the multicoloured garments of Jacob, his father! His brothers are at the field while he stays as “Daddy’s boy” at home. Daddy’s boy will not fulfil God’s plan.

You will not amount to much if those who are meant to train you love you too much to keep you on your toes. If you are surrounded by those who slack the pace for you and lower the standard for you, you will remain in the slow and low places of life.

Joseph would never learn management skills in his father’s house. He would have stayed a dreamer for life. He can only learn that in Potiphar’s house.

Joseph would not have mastered how to manage scarce resources and tough people if he did not go through prison. In prison, you ration meals and prisoners are tough to manage (especially that he was himself a prisoner). If he stayed at home, he would always think there was plenty. And when famine comes, he would have to carry sacks to look for food also without realising that his calling was greater than that.

You may never know that there is more if you stay in the company of those who are “okay with wingless beauty”.

Some people love you genuinely but will keep you out of God’s processes for you. Peter wanted to keep Jesus from the cross. Jesus would not have it. He rebuked him.

There is a journey for you. Take it. Do not lose your wings because you settled for “short-cuts”. Many things can be stolen from a man but a man who goes through process will keep reproducing it.

Joseph was favoured at all levels. It was not chance. It was not luck. He had mastered certain things which shot him to the top anywhere he got into.

Let me close with the words of the Shunamite woman to her rider when she sought the prophet over her only son that died:

Drive, and go forward; slack not thy riding for me…
(2 Kings 4:24 KJV)

Do you have a relationship that drives you?
Do you have those who would always propel you forward?
Do not settle for those who will slack for you.

You have a destiny to fulfil!