Light of the World Today
The series closes with this. When you align your life with the purpose God designed for you before you were born, even the most devastating chapters begin to make sense. And that is the most compelling reason of all for finally answering the question why me.
"I chose you before I formed you in the womb; I set you apart before you were born."
Jeremiah 1:5 NLT
Five parts of this series have answered the why me question from every significant angle. You know your placement is intentional. You know how to stay faithful inside chapters that feel like detours. You know how to release comparison, trust the delay and make the surrender. You know the channels through which purpose is discovered and the indicators that confirm God is speaking. You know the calling is irrevocable, that your past does not disqualify you and that familiar resistance cannot cancel what God has confirmed. Part 6 closes with three final dimensions that complete the picture and send you out equipped to live it.
When the Why Me Arrives Through the Most Devastating Circumstance Imaginable
Immaculée Ilibagiza was born on 14 April 1972 in Mataba village, Rwanda. She grew up in a home filled with love, faith and family. She was studying Electronic and Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Rwanda when in April 1994 her world was torn apart by one of the most horrific events of the twentieth century. The Rwandan genocide began and within days the Hutu militia were killing Tutsi men, women and children with a speed and a savagery that shocked the world. Approximately one million people were murdered in one hundred days. Immaculée lost her mother, her father and two of her brothers. Almost everyone she had ever known was gone.
Her father sent her to a neighbouring pastor's house before the killers reached their home. She hid in a bathroom measuring three feet by four feet with seven other women for ninety-one days. The killers came to the house repeatedly. On one visit they called her name specifically through the wall, saying they had killed hundreds and she would make the next number. She sat in silence in that bathroom, in the dark, unable to move. And it was inside that bathroom, in the most terrifying and most confined season of her entire life, that Immaculée asked her neighbour for a Bible and began to read it for the first time with the urgency of a person who had nothing left but God.
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."
Romans 8:28 NIV
When she emerged after ninety-one days she weighed sixty-five pounds. She had lost almost everything. And she had found something that would direct the rest of her life. She discovered that inside the most impossibly confined and most devastatingly painful circumstance she had ever occupied, God was present, speaking and preparing her for a purpose she could not yet see. She went on to write her story in the book Left to Tell, published in 2006, which became a New York Times bestseller and has since been translated into multiple languages and read by millions worldwide. She founded a charity serving orphans in Rwanda. She has spoken to audiences across the world about forgiveness, faith and the presence of God in the most extreme forms of human suffering. And she has said publicly that the bathroom she nearly died in was where she discovered her purpose.
That is Romans 8:28 walking around in human form. All things working together for good. Not some things. Not the comfortable things. All things. Including the ninety-one days in a three foot by four foot bathroom while killers called her name outside the door. God was working. In the most confined and the most devastating chapter available. And what he built in that bathroom has reached millions of people in ways that Immaculée's pre-genocide life, comfortable and purposeful as it was, never could have reached them.
Your Purpose Is Always Larger Than You
Immaculée did not choose to be in Rwanda in 1994. She did not choose the genocide. She did not choose the bathroom. But the specific experience of surviving what she survived, of coming through it with her faith not destroyed but deepened, of learning to forgive people who had killed her family, gave her a message and a credibility that no comfortable background could have produced. The circumstance was not the obstacle to the purpose. In the hands of God it was the specific instrument of it.
John 15:16 in the NLT says you did not choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for using my name. The fruit is lasting. Not confined to your lifetime. Not limited to the people you can personally reach. Lasting. Esther saved a generation. Joseph saved nations. Immaculée reached millions through a book written from the depth of a ninety-one day bathroom that the enemy intended as a grave. The why of one person faithfully surrendered to God can reshape the trajectory of generations. That is the scale at which God thinks about the purpose he placed in you before you were formed.
"You didn't choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name."
John 15:16 NLT
The One Thing That Holds It All Together
Across six parts of this series we have covered placement, positioning, faithfulness in difficult chapters, comparison, delay, surrender, the channels of purpose discovery, the five indicators of God's voice, the irrevocability of the calling, the resistance of familiar people, the disqualification the past attempts and the circumstance that raises the why me question most painfully. But there is one thing that holds all of it together and without which every insight remains theology rather than transformation. It is not strategy. It is not discipline. It is not even courage, though Immaculée displayed extraordinary courage. It is relationship.
Immaculée asked for a Bible inside a bathroom where she was hiding for her life. Not in a comfortable church seat. Not in a settled season of spiritual growth. In the most extreme and the most pressured environment imaginable. And what she found in the Word in that bathroom was the God who had been there all along, who had known her before she was formed, who had set her apart before she was born and who was working in the bathroom as certainly as he had worked in her comfortable family home before the genocide arrived. The relationship with God that she deepened in that confined and terrifying place became the source of everything her purpose would subsequently produce.
Proverbs 3:5-6 in the NLT says trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do and he will show you which path to take. The showing is relational. It comes through the consistent, daily, honest, surrendered relationship with a God who knows exactly why you are here and who is both willing and able to show you as you walk with him. The why me question is ultimately answered not in a life plan but in the deepening of the relationship with the one who designed the why before you arrived. That relationship is available to you today. In whatever bathroom you are currently sitting in.
So the Light of the World word for today and for the final close of this entire six-part series is this. You were not placed here by accident and you were not designed to live a life that belongs to someone else. Immaculée Ilibagiza sat in a three-foot by four-foot bathroom for ninety-one days while killers called her name outside the door. And from that bathroom came a testimony that has reached millions and a message of forgiveness that the world desperately needs. The bathroom was not the end of her story. It was the beginning of her purpose. Whatever confined and painful circumstance is raising your why me question right now is not the end of your story either. Stop asking why me as a complaint. Receive it as the invitation it always was. And go produce the lasting fruit that only you, with your specific story, your specific circumstance and your specific calling, can produce for the world that is waiting for it.
Memory verse for today
"For I know the plans and thoughts that I have for you, says the Lord, plans for peace and well-being and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope."
Jeremiah 29:11 AMP