Rick Warren's Daily DevotionalSample

Don't Let Limitations Limit Vision

God will not only use your gifts to fulfill your destiny, he'll also use your limitations.

Consider Queen Esther: She had several big limitations that made her perfect for the role God wanted her to fulfill. She was an orphan adopted by Mordecai; she was a minority, a Jew living in a Persian country; and she was a single woman.

And God used all of these things, along with the gifts of her beauty, brains, and personality, to fulfill her destiny. Sometimes what looks like a disaster in your life is part of a much bigger plan. But you will never fulfill your destiny if you are having a pity party.

Esther could have just said, "If only I hadn't been chosen, if only I wasn't Jewish, if only I was like someone else." A lot of people do that. They live their lives in resentment, always looking at people and saying, "Well it must be nice to be them."

If you have that attitude you will never fulfill your destiny. You have to realize that the unpleasant obstacles in your life are often God-ordained opportunities to make a difference.

You might be in a situation right now where everything is going wrong and you can't figure it out. But God knows. Nothing in your life is accidental. The pleasures and pains, the opportunities and obstacles, God can use it all. There is nothing God cannot use for good in your life if you'll hand it over to him - and then trust him.