A friend of mine from Christian Life Center recently posted this on her page, “Confident that unknown seasons, hard seasons, mountaintop seasons are perfecting me.” She is beautiful in appearance and in her heart. She is a very gifted singer, musician and writer. Just in the few years I have known her, I have seen her gifts develop and truly blossom as she puts them to use for the Lord. I couldn’t be prouder of her if she was my own daughter.
In just two days from posting this to my blog, I will become 78 years old (Lord willing); nearly 67 of those years have occurred after my spiritual second birth as a child of God. After all of those years of mountaintop seasons of blessings, hard seasons of struggles and those unknown seasons in between, I am still an imperfect work in progress. Am I closer to perfection than when I began? You bet I am – getting closer each day! But the only perfect human in the history of this world returned to heaven about 2,000 years ago.
If I compare myself to other people, I might think that my perfection is nearly complete. But the only true perfection in this life is found in God’s word, His Holy Spirit and the Universe He created for us. Compared to those, I realize how far from perfect I still am yet. You see, I am still that lump of clay the Master Potter placed on His wheel when I became a Christian. He has been forming me with His skilled and powerful hands applying pressure inside and out forming me into His perfect likeness – a person worthy to be the adopted son of my heavenly Father. It is only when my transformation is complete that He will remove me from the potter’s wheel and present me to our Father as a finished work.
Until then, God will also use the seasons my young friend mentioned for my perfection. Even the hardest seasons that are meant for evil against me have been and will continue to be turned around by God to bless and strengthen me instead. Joseph was the greatest example of that process. His brothers sold him into slavery, then his master’s wife sent him to prison for refusing her seduction. But God used those evil actions to eventually place Joseph in a position to prevent Egyptians and even his own family from starving during a great famine. That is how God can turn our hard times into blessings. Those mountaintop seasons not only bring us peace, comfort and encouragement, they also give us a scenic vantage point to view the Glory that lies ahead for us. Perfection awaits us in God’s perfect presence.