This Season Is Intentional
What feels small, routine, or unclear in your life is not random. In today’s devotion, ‘Your Daily Cup’ writer, Dianna Hobbs, reminds you that God uses every season to prepare you for purpose.
Even when you cannot see what God is doing, know that he is indeed working (Credit: Andresr/Getty Images)
I didn’t know it then, but God was already preparing me.
Back on Niagara Street on the west side of Buffalo, I was just a scrawny teenage girl with French braids, shorts, and a T-shirt. I stood on the sidewalk at our church car wash, shouting at the top of my lungs, my shoulders aching as I held up a homemade sign drawn in bright marker.
“Car wash! Two dollars!” I called out, my voice barely rising above the roar of passing cars.
I still smell the pink suds. I hear the water hitting the pavement. Cars rolling past. Some slowing down. Most not.
But I stayed out there under the hot sun.
Determined.
Trying to raise funds to help somebody else.
My father, also my pastor, was always pouring out. Feeding the hungry. Praying for the sick and the shut-in. He used his own beat-up van to pick people up, making sure those without transportation could get to church and wherever they needed to go.
And we were right there with him, doing whatever we could to support it.
I didn’t know it then, but those small, sweaty moments on that sidewalk were shaping me. God was training my hands before I ever understood the assignment.
Jeremiah 1:5 declares, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.”
He knew me before I was born.
He knew me as that teenage girl on Niagara Street, standing on a sidewalk with a handmade sign and a willing heart.
He knew what He placed inside of me before I had the language to call it purpose.
Before I understood nonprofit leadership.
Before I recognized the call to serve.
Before I saw how feeding the hungry, showing up for people, and meeting real needs would become the work of my life.
God already knew.
Nothing about that season was random. Every small moment that felt ordinary was laying the foundation for something much bigger than I could see.
And the more I’ve lived, the more I’ve come to understand that this is how God works, not just in my life, but in yours too.
God is not absent from your process. He is not reacting to what unfolds. He is already there, ordering your steps with intention.
Which means nothing about this season is random. Nothing you’re doing is wasted. Even the parts that feel routine, quiet, or unseen, carry weight you may not recognize yet.
We clearly see this truth reflected in the story of Moses.
In Exodus 2, Moses was raised in Pharaoh’s house, positioned inside the very culture God would later send him to upend. Acts 7:22 tells us, “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.”
Long before he stood before Pharaoh demanding the release of the Hebrew slaves, long before he led God’s people out of bondage, he had already been shaped by the very environment he would one day confront.
He learned their customs. He understood their systems. He moved within a world that, at the time, likely felt like nothing more than the life he was living.
It didn’t look like preparation for deliverance. It just looked like his life.
But God was already at work.
And when the moment came, everything God had been building in private was exactly what was needed in public.
And here’s what I want you to get: the same God who prepared Moses is ordering your steps now.
So this season you’re in, the one that feels unclear, the one that doesn’t seem to fully connect yet, the one where what you’re doing feels small compared to what you believe God has shown you, it matters more than you realize.
Not because of how it looks, but because of what God is doing through it.
He is not piecing your life together as He goes. He knows what’s next, and this very season is preparing you for greater.
“Nothing in your life is accidental. You are walking in what God has already prepared.”
It may feel mundane, I know, but it’s not. It may seem ordinary, but it’s not. It may appear disconnected from divine destiny, but it is not.
It is intentional. It is purposeful. It is necessary for where you’re going.
God is shaping you, positioning you, and guiding you into what He has already ordained. And it is more than you can see right now.
To remind you that this moment—and every season—is intentional, strategic, and divinely ordained, I’m stirring Ephesians 2:10 as the sweetener in your cup of inspiration:
“God has made us what we are, and in our union with Christ Jesus he has created us for a life of good deeds, which he has already prepared for us to do.”
As you drink down the contents of your cup, know that you are not figuring your life out as you go. You are walking in, and into, something God has already prepared.
The steps you are taking right now are not separate from your purpose. They are a part of it. Even this season, with all of its questions and quiet moments, is being used with intention.
Stay where He has you. Keep doing what He has placed in your hands. There is purpose in it, and there is clarity ahead.
Let’s pray.
God, thank You for reminding me that this season is intentional and that You are preparing me for greater. In moments when I feel behind, off course, or forgotten, help me remain faithful. Renew my confidence that every step is ordered and every moment is being used for Your purpose and Your glory alone.
Strengthen me to trust You fully in the process. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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As always, thanks for reading and until next time... may today's cup of inspiration uplift, encourage, and empower you!
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