Yesterday, I sat questioning my parents and grandfather about how in the world they figured out “what business to go into” or “what made them chose the way they chose to make a living.” For instance, my grandfather very successfully sold air conditioning units for the tops of large buildings. I wanted to know what made him decide, “Yes, that’s it! I’ll sell A.C. Units!”
Basically, I was confused about how anyone ‘picks’ their profession. It just seems to work for everyone. How does anyone decide that they will work in waste management, for example? My mom said that it just ‘works out.’ It’s almost as if a particular profession picks us.
Right now, Dustin and I seem to be in the in- between stages in life. Romans 8: 22-30 helped clear all of this up for me. We’re ‘waiting’ for the correct profession to ‘pick’ us.
“All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.” Romans 8: 22-30
I guess we always thought a profession had already chosen us, and that was baseball, but now that we see that is not the case. It’s time for us to wait for God to show us exactly what it is that He wants us to do.
I think this topic is so appropriate right now because there are so many of us in the ‘in-between’ stage: young, graduated, ready to be successful, but clueless on what do do next. The solution is life on God’s terms.
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