Encouragement for Today

May 6, 2024 What if Your Greatest Limitations Are … a Gift? SARA HAGERTY Lee en español

“The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.” Psalm 16:5-6 (ESV)

We all have them. Many of us keep a running list of those things barely out of our reach. We daydream about …

When the baby will finally sleep through the night.
When the potential new job will mean money might not be so tight.
When the newest treatment will cure what’s been ailing us.
When that complicated family relationship will improve.

By filling our minds with fantasies of when these things will change, we subtly resent our limitations. We despise the injury, the growing list of bills, and the unique needs in our home that slow us from the pace we’d like to keep. We work fiercely (often subconsciously) to overcome limitations.

No wonder we’re so tired.

Verses like Psalm 16:6, which says “the [boundary] lines have fallen for me in pleasant places,” feel distant and out of reach when we feel underpaid, overtired, and full of responsibility yet parched in heart.

Several years ago, this verse came within reach for me on a family vacation.

Each summer, my family of nine drives two days across the country to dig our toes in the sand and fill our lungs with sea-salt air alongside cousins, aunts, uncles and Nana.

One particular year, after we arrived, I crawled into bed sick and barely emerged for the entirety of our vacation. From my bedside, I heard stories and saw pictures of the days at the beach but didn’t experience them with my family.

It was in this bound space — watching the others around me live what I couldn’t have and resenting that for days — that I eventually heard a subtle invitation from God. He asked me to consider that my daydreams for my life, both for that vacation and also in my everyday world, perhaps weren’t what He had for me.

In Psalm 16:5, David said, “You hold my lot.” This verse moved from words on a page to something written into my life: God has something for me every day, even my most limited ones.

Confined to my bed at the beach, God had whispers for me that still echo through my head and across my limitations today. He met me there. I was isolated, sick, alone in my room … but I was held.

Out of years of beach trips, that was one of the most significant because of my brush with the God who holds my lot. I didn’t walk the beach for hours that year, but I met with God, the One who made the ocean.

Daily, hourly, I often live as if I know what is best for me, and I daydream toward that end. All the while, God is allowing limitations into my life such that the deepest parts of me may grow into believing that “I have a beautiful inheritance” (Psalm 16:6).

Might your limitations be inching you toward a brush with Him?

God, thank You for meeting us inside of our limits — inside of our tiredness, sadness, overwhelm and not-yets. Help us see You rightly here in our limitations. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

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FOR DEEPER STUDY

2 Corinthians 12:9, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (ESV).

List two or three limitations that come to mind as you read this devotion. How have you viewed those limitations in your life? What would it look like for you to see them instead as restrictions God is allowing so that He might reach into deeper parts of your heart and life?

© 2024 by Sara Hagerty. All rights reserved.

Proverbs 31 Ministries thanks Zondervan for their sponsorship of today’s devotion.

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