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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Now, salt is good, but if salt should lose its taste, how will it be made salty? It isn’t fit for the soil or for the manure pile; they throw it out. Let anyone who has ears to hear listen.” (Luke 14:34–35)
He allows you to be successful, obtain your education, have the resources that you do, gain popularity or notoriety, so that you will be seen as a representative of His kingdom who has been touched by the favor and grace of God Himself.
But you do not exist just for yourself. You exist to make a difference—an impact.
“Don’t think that you will escape the fate of all the Jews because you are in the king’s palace. If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jewish people from another place, but you and your father’s family will be destroyed. Who knows, perhaps you have come to your royal position for such a time as this.” (Esther 4:13–14)
God never limits Himself to one person. God always has something up His sleeve. He doesn’t reveal it until He needs to do so, but God always has hidden options. He always has an alternate route, another pathway to accomplishing His purpose.
Disobedience to your kingdom calling runs the risk of losing your kingdom calling. Wandering off the pathway of purpose runs the risk of wandering in the wilderness of waste. God will never force you to fulfill your destiny. God will enable you to live out your purpose, but it’s up to you, through your choices and character, to remain in it.
Through those telling words, Mordecai was reminding Esther that she had been chosen to set her own interests aside, let go of her own ambitions, and face an enemy full-on.
“If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come . . . from another place, but you and your father’s family will be destroyed.”
“Go and assemble all the Jews who can be found in Susa and fast for me. Don’t eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my female servants will also fast in the same way. After that, I will go to the king even if it is against the law. If I perish, I perish.” (Esther 4:16)
Let me tell you another way you will know it’s your time and your season. There will be a spiritual conflict that God asks you to intervene in. You will see how He has prepared you to be a blessing and not just to be blessed. But then He will ask you to take a risk of faith.
The greater the uncertainty, the greater the faith and dependency on God. The more looming the potential danger or risk, the more powerful the purpose.
God wants to use you. God wants to bless you. God wants to empower you. But He is testing you to see if you are willing to stick with Him and His kingdom agenda when the going gets tough. Or, if you will simply duck and run for cover.
“Use me in whatever way You choose. Even in uncertainty, I’ll take the risk. Just show me what You want me to do. Show me why You have placed me here and how You are guiding me.”
In these occasions, scenarios seem like coincidences. But in God’s kingdom, a coincidence is simply one of those times when He chooses not to make His presence known. God is the author and maker of coincidences.
Esther 5:2 says, “As soon as the king saw Queen Esther standing in the courtyard, she gained favor in his eyes. The king extended the gold scepter in his hand toward Esther, and she approached and touched the tip of the scepter.”
Asking why she had come to see him, the king went on to say, “What is troubling you, Queen Esther? And what is your request? Even to half of the kingdom it shall be given to you” (v. 3 nasb).
You will never get to see God’s providence at work in your circumstances until and unless God sees you move in accordance with His will.
Far too many of us are waiting on God to move when God is really waiting on us.
Faith is measured by footsteps. It’s measured by your feet. Faith shows up in your walk, not only in your talk. It manifests through your life, not just through your lips. Faith makes itself known through your movements, not just your mouth.
God must see faith in action because “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6).
Many of us are waiting for God to show up and do something in our lives, but at the same time, God is waiting until we show up and step out in faith.
God always has a plan in play, even though He often speaks to us in ways we don’t always recognize.
One of the main ways God answers our prayers and directs us on His providential pathway is through things we consider to be coincidences.
When things don’t look like they are going anywhere—when you feel tired, worn out, and like you are having a useless day—always remember to check the spiritual first. God allows roadblocks for a reason.
Nothing ever goes to waste in God’s economy. No kind deed you perform. No devotion or sacrifice you show to Him. God keeps a record of all you do and is a rewarder of faith, as well as actions (Col. 3:23–24; Heb. 11:6; Gal. 6:9).
If that’s not called “making your enemies your footstool” (Luke 20:43),
“When a person’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him” (Prov. 16:7).
His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways (Isa. 55:8–9).
Deuteronomy 29:29 reminds us, He still holds His cards close to His chest in many ways: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God . . .” (nasb).
And yet God says that not one solitary hair falls from your head with which He is not fully acquainted (Luke 12:7; Matt. 10:30).
Unfortunately, though, what we often do when things appear to be spiraling out of control is to take matters into our own hands instead. We seek to control our own circumstances. Yet this only causes more mess.
Faith is trusting that what God says is true, even when you cannot understand it or see the connecting points between what He says. Faith is taking steps that demonstrate what He has said is true. It is acting like something is so, even when it is not so, in order that it might be so simply because God said so. Faith requires risk beyond reason out of a trust that God knows what He is doing.
See, timing matters to God. He does things with such precision that following His lead and aligning under His direction is imperative to progressing on His providential pathway for your life.
The Spirit told me to accompany them . . . (Acts 11:12) . . . they had been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. (Acts 16:6) . . . but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. (Acts 16:7) That is why I have been prevented many times from coming to you. (Rom. 15:22)
The Holy Spirit is there to direct not only what we do but also when we do it. It’s
That’s why the Bible says that only those who are spiritual will be able to perceive such things (1 Cor. 2:14–16).
Waiting on God means we are waiting on Him to put things together in the perfect timing for things to happen. It doesn’t mean we are waiting on Him to construct everything. Rather, we are waiting on Him to arrange all of the pieces, places, and people in the plan. God is a God of suddenly (2 Chron. 29:36; Acts 16:25–26).
But what I can tell you is that when God does show up, it will often come about suddenly. And in such an unexpected way. God often lets things get worse before they get better.
Yes, God often allows us to get backed into a corner so that we no longer know what is going on or how to solve it. He does so in order for us to discover that He alone is God.
“While they were still speaking with him, the king’s eunuchs arrived and rushed Haman to the banquet Esther had prepared” (Esther 6:14).
“If I have found favor in your eyes, Your Majesty, and if the king is pleased, spare my life; this is my request. And spare my people; this is my desire. For my people and I have been sold to destruction, death, and extermination. If we had merely been sold as male and female slaves, I would have kept silent. Indeed, the trouble wouldn’t be worth burdening the king.” (Esther 7:3–4)
Just as the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was reclining. Then the king exclaimed, “Would he actually violate the queen while I am in the house?” As soon as the statement left the king’s mouth, they covered Haman’s face. (Esther 7:8)
What’s more, Haman wasn’t actually assaulting Esther. He was begging for his life. But God is so good at being the providential God that He is, He will even allow impressions to take place of things that aren’t really happening—in order to accomplish His will.
Scripture says, “. . . the sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous” (Prov. 13:22).
King Nebuchadnezzar stood over his domain of Babylon and said, “Is this not Babylon the Great that I have built to be a royal residence by my vast power and for my majestic glory?” (Dan. 4:30).
While the words were still in the king’s mouth, a voice came from heaven: “King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared that the kingdom has departed from you. You will be driven away from people to live with the wild animals, and you will feed on grass like cattle for seven periods of time, until you acknowledge that the Most High is ruler over human kingdoms, and he gives them to anyone he wants.”
For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing, and he does what he wants with the army of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth. There is no one who can block his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” At that time my sanity returned to me, and my majesty and splendor returned to me for the glory of my kingdom. (Dan. 4:31–36a)
Yes, I understand that things may look threatening to you, but you never have to view them as they look because man does not have the final say. God does.
“The king’s edict gave the Jews in each and every city the right to assemble and defend themselves, to destroy, kill, and annihilate every ethnic and provincial army hostile to them, including women and children, and to take their possessions as spoils of war. This would take place on a single day throughout all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month Adar” (Esther 8:11–12).
Isaiah 59:19 says, “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him” (kjv).
