ONE OF MY favorite Christian memes is this encouraging thought: “When God put a calling on your life, He already factored in your stupidity.” For those of us with a tendency to fear we’re going to screw up His divine will, it’s comforting to be reminded that God is bigger than our muddle-headedness and mistakes. It certainly takes some of the pressure off of getting everything right (not that we shouldn’t try).

The thing is, God is much more committed to His plans and purposes for our lives than we are. Sure, there are seasons when we’re passionate about pursuing them, but most of us have those “meh” times when the fire has dimmed to embers. Or, we drift off course in some way. 

It’s also worth keeping in mind that I suspect none of us is going to have 100-percent-pure motives this side of heaven. Our own hopes and dreams get mixed in with what we think are godly desires and promptings. But He uses even them to lead us in the way we’re supposed to go.

I don’t go through life with the sense of having an open line to heaven all day and every day, but I’ve had one or two significant moments along the way. Like the time I prayed for God to show me what He had for my future, in line with Jesus’s “ask, seek, and knock” direction in Matthew 7:7. I specifically asked Him to send me an address to seek out, and the very next morning received a letter in the mail inviting me to an adventure that would redirect my life.

Only more recently has it occurred to me that the remarkable answer to my prayer—coming from overseas, as it did—must have been mailed out before I’d even made my request. In other words, maybe God prompted my prayer for direction He had already given. Thus, He made His will something I wanted to fulfill rather than something I felt duty-bound to follow.

In addition, the benefit of hindsight has helped me see that while I was enthusiastic about embracing God’s leading into missionary service, there was an at-that-time unrecognized/unacknowledged part of me that was in some ways looking to escape and separate myself from my past. What I thought was me seeing crystal-clearly was, in fact, “in a mirror dimly,” as Paul observes (1 Corinthians 14:13). How wonderful that God can and will use our poorly formed faith and unresolved pasts to draw us into our future.