Winning With A Losing Hand

There are moments in life where the gap between what we expected and what we’re living feels unbearably wide. We’re not where we thought we’d be. We’re not doing what we imagined we’d be doing. We’re carrying weights we never would have chosen: difficult relationships, financial strain, infertility, addiction struggles, anxiety, disappointment, transitions we didn’t ask for.

It’s human to look at these moments and think, “God, why would You let this be my story? Why this hand?”

But what if the very thing we want to escape is the very thing God is using to shape us?

Life gives all of us a hand we wouldn’t deal ourselves. And the temptation is to spiritualize our dissatisfaction—believing that being in God’s will must mean being somewhere else, with a different set of circumstances, surrounded by different people.

But Scripture confronts that lie head-on.

Jeremiah 29:11 Was Written in Babylon, Not Canaan We love quoting Jeremiah 29:11:
“For I know the plans I have for you… plans to prosper you… plans to give you hope and a future.”

But we forget the context: This wasn’t spoken to people living peacefully in the Promised Land. It was spoken to exiles—people ripped away from everything they thought God had promised them. And God’s response wasn’t:

“Hang tight, I’ll rescue you tomorrow.”

It was:
Build houses.
Plant gardens.
Marry.
Raise families.
Seek the peace of Babylon.

God told them to thrive in the very place they begged Him to remove them from.

This turns our thinking upside down.

It challenges the modern assumption that comfort = blessing and discomfort = being out of God’s will.

The truth is far deeper: God’s goodness is present in the discomfort, in the confusion, in the pressure.

The very place you want to escape might be the furnace where God refines you.

We often wait for circumstances to change before we move toward the life God is calling us into.

But the call of the Christian life is far simpler: Start doing what you already know to do.
Quit quitting when it gets hard.

God transforms us not through dramatic escape routes but through daily faithfulness.

Through obeying in the ordinary.
Through showing up even when emotions disagree.
Through staying planted even when it feels easier to run.

Instead of “Why me?” God invites us into “Thank You.”

Not because the struggle is easy— but because He is present in it, purposeful through it, and shaping us by it.

When we stop resisting the season we’re in, we start recognizing God’s hand in places we never expected Him to be.

Babylon wasn’t Israel’s prison. It was Israel’s classroom.

And whatever your Babylon looks like today, God is not absent.

He’s forming you.

Strengthening you.

Teaching you.

Preparing you for the future He promised.
You are not outside God’s will. You are standing in the center of it—even if it feels like exile.