Let’s look at some examples of where God has used everything for good……
She was a normal girl growing up in a small town. She was taken to church most Sundays and dropped off by her mom who would return when Sunday School and church were over and pick her and her brother up.
Now in this small missionary church she was raised up to be a leader. She learned from the mentors God provided for her and she grew strong in the faith. Her strength was first shown when she served on the Admin Board as the first youth representative.
In this church she had been baptized, confirmed, and married. This was her home church and her lifeline. When her parents got divorced in junior high they were there to support her and help her through. She learned early on that God would not abandon her and that He would even send people to love her and care for her……people who would serve as His hands and feet.
Later she went to Emmaus and experienced the 4 day spiritual retreat and through that experience she felt called to serve in the prison ministry called Kairos. It was only in men’s facilities in their state but she didn’t care. She felt a real call to serve there. She cooked the meals and supported it with her prayers and her presence. Eventually she was called to serve on the state board. Still with no women’s facility she felt at least she could serve at a greater level.
Through diligence and sacrifice to the ministry….she would come to serve on the first women’s team in the state. She would give one of the talks on that first weekend. She would be able to reach others in that prison because of her life story…..her story of a father who was an alcoholic. Of a father who had abandoned her mentally, emotionally, and physically. Those women knew the truth of her story. God knew how her pain would be able to reach those women…..some of them had been where she was. Some would see the path to deliverance because of her.
She had never known how such tragedy in her life would be able to be used by God to help others. She had not seen that….she had not sought it…..she had only wanted to do what God called her to. She had only sought to be obedient.
Let’s look at another situation where God has used it for good to refine us or to help point us in the right direction.
A woman had been actively searching to find what God wanted for her life. She felt she had followed what he had called her to do only to not have it work out successfully to completion. This made her begin to question if she had really followed God’s leading to begin with. She doubted whether or not she could hear from God and that she could distinguish his voice from all others…..including her own and Satan’s.
After careful examination of the situation she did find the answers she was looking for. She found that indeed God had called her to the endeavor but that he had not called her to make it a success. He wanted her to learn the lessons she needed from that position so that she could progress forward in the plans He had for her. Without the experience, even though it had not been what she had envisioned, she would not have learned what she needed to learn. She would not have been able to go forward toward attaining her place in God’s will. She would not have been able to grow past the place she was currently at.
And yet another example of how God works things…..there was a woman who prayerfully considered the job options she had available to her. She knew what she loved doing and so she felt God saying ‘yes’ you should pursue that job. It is what you like doing. So she took the job in the field where her passions were thinking she would be thrilled there. As the weeks became months she found that she was not as happy as she had once thought she would be. The meetings she was being made to attend where draining the very life out of her. She wanted to be in the ministry she had been called to. She wanted to interact with people…..not be in meetings and politics all day.
She once again prayed to see if she had been mistaken about taking the job but she was at peace about that original decision. Now she wanted to be able to leave this job though. She wanted to be able to find something in her field of calling that would actually be what she liked. God shut all the doors that would have allowed her to leave. She remained in the job 2 years before finally leaving to pursue another job in her field. Was that two years a waste of her time? No because what God did was to use it to show her what things she didn’t like. She had learned a lot about herself in that job and was able to see it had been a learning ground for when she finally started looking into other opportunities. She was able to narrow her choices by knowing what exactly she did and did not like. God used that two years to refine her passions…..to pinpoint her dreams. He wanted to give her a clearer path to follow.
So what did these 3 women have in common? Obedience.
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