DAY 4: Setbacks (Part 2)

God uses all of our past experiences to prepare us for future opportunities. He is at work even when we can't make "heads nor tails" of it. In Exodus 4, God calls Moses to lead Israel out of captivity. And Moses says, "O Lord, please send someone else to do it." He felt totally unqualified. But here's amazing thing: God spent 80 years preparing Moses for this moment. God put him through 40 years of understanding the customs of the court. He was the Prince of Egypt. Acts 7:22 says, "He was educated in all the learning of Egyptians." The God put him through 40 years of wilderness - he knew the watering holes and weather patterns and wildlife.

God spent eighty years preparing Moses to deliver Israel and Moses didn't even know it. The most qualified person for the job felt unqualified. Don't be surprised if God opens a door that you fell totally unqualified to walk through.

Last December on a snowy afternoon, my family and I visited the home of Corrie Ten Boom in Haarlem, Holland. During the Nazi occupation of Holland, the Ten Boom family hid Jews in their house. Their home was raided on February 28, 1944, and Corrie was sent to a concentration camp. Through an amazing series of circumstances, she survived and her story was made into a movie called The Hiding Place.

When Corrie Ten Boom spoke to audiences about her experiences, she would keep her head down. It looked like she was reading her notes, but she actually working on a piece of needlepoint. After telling her story of cruelty in the camps and the death of her father and sister and her miraculous release, she would hold up the backside of the needlepoint. It was just a jumble of colours and threads with no discernible pattern. And she'd turn the needlepoint over to reveal the finished side. Corrie would conclude by saying, "This is how God views your life and someday, we will have the privilege of viewing it from His point of view."

Corrie could have questioned why she had to suffer in a Nazi concentration camp. It didn't make sense. It was unfair. But somehow God used the suffering if a woman named Corrie Ten Boom living in Holland in 1944 to lead hundreds and thousands of others to Himself.

In the words of 2 Corinthians 2:14, "Thanks be to the God who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ."

(adpated from Senior Pastor Guan Raman devotional "Managing Transitions In a Downturn")