God’s Unique Design-My Cup for Me and Your Cup for You
Psalm 16:5 ~ “O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot.”
One of the sweetest and most freeing things my Lord and Savior continues to teach me is that He is holy, sovereign, loving, and concerned with each one of us. He gives us the room to make choices in our lives, and at the same time, He faithfully carries out His plan.
My choices and situations are what brought me to the place uniquely needed by me to submit to Jesus as Lord of my life. My choices and the situations that God allows me to experience bring me to a heart space where I continue to relinquish my will to Him.
The Bible demonstrates this by using the metaphor of a cup. In Scripture, the cup metaphor is used to talk about what has been assigned to your life. The cup can represent many things:
· Receiving, being open to, or seeking God’s salvation and rescue. Psalm 116:13,
· Receiving God’s wrath or judgment, like we see in Isaiah 51:17 and Jeremiah 25.
· Living in abundant blessing from God. Psalm 23:5.
· Accepting and being obedient to God’s will. John 18:11.
· Enduring suffering or sharing in the suffering of another. Matthew 20:22–23.
There are more references, but the point is the same. Our cup is shaped by the combination of our choices, the circumstances God allows, and how we respond to God in those moments. Our response reflects our heart toward and our submission, or lack thereof, to God the Father.
To get a glimpse of God’s goodness toward us, we must understand that God’s economy is not our economy. We equate goodness and blessing with abundance and comfort. While blessing can include these, God equates blessing and goodness with being drawn into, a relationship with Him and alignment with His purposes.
God made this plain to me in my empty-nest season. I have seven children, and after 15 years of marriage, I became a single working mom. Years later, I grew discontented with what I felt was the result of having been a single mom. I felt like there were gaps in my children’s lives that I could not fill, and that I felt God chose not to fill.
I experienced deep grief over every choice I made – should I have worked less? Should I have given up going back to college? Should I have been less involved, or more involved, at church? Was I too strict? Was I strict enough? Was there something I could have done differently to seemingly make God more responsive to my children, and my children more responsive to Him?
One day, I threw up my hands and conceded, “Lord, I don’t get it, I feel abandoned, but you said you would never leave me and you don’t lie so you are right.” My spirit echoed Peter’s words: “To whom else would we go, Lord? You are the One with the words of life.” John 6:68. In that moment, the idea of the cup as our lot in life came to mind. My choices and experiences were what I needed to come to know Jesus. Further, I began to see that not only do I have a cup, but my children, as they grew and made choices, were living the cup that God allotted to them.
This encouraged me that my path wasn’t haphazard, but rather it was part of what God allowed me to experience in life. I saw this in my children’s life as well. Our choices, which we are accountable for, are made within the framework and boundaries of God’s plans and part of that plan is for us to be drawn into relationship with Him. As such, we all can choose to agree with God and accept His plan. What does it mean to agree with God? Agreeing with God means believing on Jesus.
Acts 16:31 – . . .”Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household” and Romans 10:9 – “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
Agreeing with God makes us new and brings us into relationship with Him, and God comes to live in and with us, and calls us to be set apart for Him. He walks with us as we take up the cup and live out our life situations.
Oh, the love, mercy, and wonder in the fact that we can choose how we respond to God. God allows us to have choices, and yet, our choices exist only within the overarching framework of God’s individual plan for each one of us and for humanity. God’s unique design is a cup designed to bring each one of us into a loving and protected relationship with the Creator of the universe. Beloved, take up your cup and no matter what it is and know that you are loved!
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