God wants you to be great. He wants you to be the best version of yourself. God wants you to thrive, overcome, and conquer anything that would keep you from being everything that He has designed for you to be. What God has for you, is for you. The only thing standing between where you are and where God wants you to be is your obedience to the directions He's given you to be successful. All this because God loves you and His love for you has shown you how to love Him back.
Romans 8: 38-39 says, "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
There is actually no thing on this earth that can separate us from God's love.
However, we do have a propensity to allow our humanity to distract us from God's love.
We often get in our own way. We fall prey to immediate gratification and forget that God's will is often a long game. God knows what's ultimately best for us. He knows what we look like when we are walking in the fullness of the greatness He has called us to, and more often than not it takes time to get there. It takes trial and discomfort. It takes patience and long suffering. It takes trust in God and His perfect will for our lives.
Our circumstances can blind us into taking the easy way out. When times get hard, we are looking to find the quickest solution to a problem that is designed to bring out the best in us. The easy way out cheats us of our strength and wisdom. It forgoes character building in favor of instant gratification. Instead of allowing a situation to grow our patience we opt out and accept less than because it means that we don't have to wait. Instead of letting our situation teach us endurance, we give up because it means that we don't have to continue in a difficult thing. Opposed to holding our peace and allowing God to fight for us we lash out so that we don't look weak to those around us. And whenever we act instead of allowing God to act for us, or move when God has told us to wait, or give up when God has told has to keep going, we push ourselves away from what God has for us and who He wants us to be.
Let us learn a lesson from David. In 1 Samuel 16:13 God sent Samuel the prophet to anoint David to be the next King of Israel, only there was already a king in Israel, Saul. And even then Saul had children who, if anything were to happen to him, would be well within their rights to succeed the throne. However, Saul had sinned against God and as a result of that sin had forfeited the throne not only for himself, but for his offspring.
God called David to be great (to be king) and to do great things (a mighty warrior king), and David knew that God called him to be great and to do great things. Yet, even with this knowledge, David had to wait until it was time for him to become king, before walking in that greatness. From 1 Samuel 16:14 and forward God was preparing David for when he was to be anointed king over all of Israel in 2 Samuel 5:3. Every trial, every battle was to make David stronger and wiser so that he was able to be the king God wanted for His people. Additionally, David didn't cut corners to get there either.
God was creating a warrior in David before he became king, and in such a way that the people took notice. So much so that Saul began to become jealous of David and tried several times and over the course of several years to kill David. Even in this David remained patient and obedient to God's instruction for his life. David was God's choice and the better warrior, so even when David had opportunity to kill Saul, he chose to remain steadfast in his commitment to God's perfect plan.
Understand this: David knew that God called him to replace Saul as king, yet David waited until God killed off Saul before allowing himself to walk in that calling.
The easy way out would have put David on the throne sooner, but at what cost? David would have usurped power and would have had to fight over a thrown that God was already prepared to give him.
This is greatness. To know that God has something spectacular just for you because He loves you, and you work in His will doing His good pleasure because you love Him back, in this being as great as He has called you to be.
