We are being transformed into the likeness of the image of Christ; from glory to glory. This happens by the Spirit of the Lord.  2 Corinthians 3:17

You’ve probably heard the expression: “A fish out of water.” The beauty and grace we see when we watch a fish in the water is lost when you catch it and throw it up on the shore. The beauty and grace is not in the fish, it’s in the environment. Once you take the fish out of the environment God made it for, it flops around and looks clumsy.

If we are to exhibit the beauty and grace that God wants for us in 2017 we need to be in the environment He has made for us. If we go off into some other environment, we lose the beauty and grace because we weren’t made for that environment.

I’m sure you have seen people who have either left the place God has for them, or have never found the place God has for them, and they are “like fish out of water”. They never operate in the beauty and grace that God has for them because they’re up on the shore flopping around trying to survive in a hostile ecosystem.

Moses was eighty before he entered into the environment that God had for him. Joseph went from one problem to another until Pharaoh had a dream that Joseph was enabled to interpret. But a lot of times, we just leave the place God has for us, or else we settle into an environment that isn’t what God has for us and we stay there out of apathy or fear of pulling up roots, fear of what people will say, or whatever.

Sometimes, like a fish, we end up being very useful in someone else’s fish tank—useful to them but not to anyone else. God created a perfect environment for someone else and we get trapped in it and end up like a trophy on the wall because our identity is all tied up in someone else’s ministry. And that always leaves us looking good, but lifeless. It leaves us an echo when God called us to be a voice.

It’s like David going out to fight the giant in King Saul’s armor. It looked good on Saul, but David not only looked silly in it, it encumbered him with a lot of safety mechanisms that Saul needed, when David’s strength was agility and speed. David respectfully gave Saul back his armor and went out to face the giant with the sling he was gifted with.

So as we kick off 2017, as we look at re-starting our lives in a new year, the challenge is to consider if we’re still where God wants us to be (or were we ever there?). Are we flopping around gasping for oxygen in an environment that’s perfectly suited to some people, but not for us? Or are we in the stronghold of God’s unique call upon us?