Equip

My Lord, I sat, wrestling with the question: When you call, do you really equip?

Forgive me, forgive me for my unbelief.

Forgive me for allowing my personal history, my personal circumstances to cloud you and cause doubt. When time after time you seem to have failed to provide the strength for what I perceived was my calling.

Lord, what do you say?

Three words seemed to be your response to my yet trembling heart:

preparation,

steering,

and stand.

Preparation. Forgive me for terming things “failure” from my point of perspective, when you just see “unfinished,” “a season.” Forgive me for taking the forty years of Moses in the desert, and in my uncompleted story see it as the end. For like the season of winter, you are stirring things in waiting unseen.

Steering. Forgive me for seeing the pits and prisons of Joseph, and in my life seeing the absence of your hand. For feeling lost when strength failed in what I was at, then. You are the God who is stirring currents over the oceans, gradually tilting the earth on its axis, to bring to season spring in its time. Your hand is not absent.

Stand. Forgive me for my doubt and unbelief. For not standing in the bitter winds of winter. For letting the giants of weakness turn my eyes from your promised victory, as the spies in Canaan. Lord, your purpose will stand (Isa. 46:10), and on that alone we stand.

It is in the desert you give water, Lord. In the desert you prepare, you steer, and your purpose will stand.