Purposed Progression

There is a reason for this step
It’s building a bigger whole
Keep on in the process
There is purpose for it all
Loren Thornburg

I don’t know much about building a house, but I do know there is an order to it, a progression. You can’t put on a roof without walls and you can’t put up walls without a foundation. As a softball pitching coach I know the value of the small steps. I teach the pitch in a progression not moving forward until one step is built as they each build on one another. Recently I was working with a small group of eight year olds. As we began with the early stages of the pitch they became impatient and many whines were heard saying, “when are we going to do the full pitch?!” I am much like these eight year olds. I just want to get to the final goal and skip all of the steps that prepare me for it. I want to be there already (wherever there is). It’s easy to see the purpose of the progression as a pitching coach because I know the importance of each step. If only the eight year olds understood the importance of the steps to the whole they probably wouldn’t complain so much. And neither would I if I would trust the purpose of the progression in more than just softball.

“Soon—and it will not be very long—the wilderness of Lebanon will be a fertile field once again. And the fertile fields will become a lush and fertile forest.”
Isaiah 29:17

God is a god of purpose! Everything He does is for a reason and He is working it for His kingdom, for the bigger whole. He works and is working this purpose out through a progression. Just as the wilderness became a fertile field and then became a fertile forest, that which was desired, so too He is working in the wilderness of our lives to make them fertile fields and then to bring those fertile fields to become fertile forests. He is not satisfied with the fertile field, although it may be fertile, because He knows it was made to be a fertile forest.
Now, He could change things in an instant, but He knows all we would miss in the process. When I think about the way the Lord has worked in my life there are so many times I wished He would take the pain away in that instant. Yet through the healing progression and process I learned more of Him, more of faith, more of trust, and those which are things that not only do I need for other places in my life, but that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss. They bring me into deeper relationship with Him, and that is something that far outweighs the pain or frustration of the process. In the wilderness, in the fields and in the forest remember that there is a reason, there is a purpose, there is a process and our God is working it all for His Good and that’s a step worth taking.