Quote by T.D. Jakes

“In our rush to escape the pain, messiness, and brokenness of our lives, we often miss our opportunities for growth. Mired in the muck of our misguided mindsets, we miss what God may be doing in the midst of this dirty place. With a heave, a strain, a shove, a stretch, and a charge upward, we fight to leave the place we were planted, because surely we believe that God has to have something better for us than where we've come from and where we are. ... "Surely," we say in the midst of God's apparent silence, "He will not abandon me in this place of death!" Right when we've lost all hope, we see something we have never witnessed before. When we resolve within ourselves that maybe, just maybe, where we are is our assigned lot in life, God remains vocally silent, but reminds us of his promise by showing us the light we have never seen. We move toward the light, slowly stepping out in faith despite all the pain, filth, shame, and suffering. Breaking through the dark soil where we were placed, we sprout and rise to continue seeing another world of possibilities. The dirty place became the nurturing soil that enabled us to grow and blossom in ways we would never have experienced sitting in the safety of a greenhouse. To keep a seed from being planted is to condemn that seed to never realize its full potential. It is a fact that seeds are meant to be covered and die. Jesus said, "Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." (John 12:24)”