I enjoy reading Oswald Chambers’ wonderful Christian work, My Utmost for His Highest. Back on November 5, he wrote this:
If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a number of experiences that are not meant for you personally at all. They are designed to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what takes place in the lives of others. Because of this process, you will never be surprised by what comes your way….Are we prepared for God to destroy our individual decisions by supernaturally transforming them? It will mean not knowing why God is taking us that way, because knowing would make us spiritually proud. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through— we go through it more or less without understanding. Then suddenly we come to a place of enlightenment, and realize— “God has strengthened me and I didn’t even know it!”
This is a very hard lesson to grasp. So often, we attempt to so carefully map out our path that when things do not go as we planned, we assume failure. Yet, the history of the world is full of people who discovered much later in life that an earlier event had prepared them for something that came later. That they had gone through something, often something hard or painful, that prepared them for a moment, a situation, a job that was coming later.
This is one reason why it is critical to not run from the current situation of your life. My own life is a testimony to this. When I completed my Master’s Degree in History, I knew then that pursuing a PhD was not what I wanted to do. As I headed to the Mission field, I wondered why I had felt so sure that God wanted me to get that degree. Years later, God used it to open a door for my current job teaching at Valencia College. I didn’t think I would ever teach a college class, but I did know that God wanted me to get that degree.
There’s more though—not only should I not become angry about what I am currently going through, I must also not miss the chances to learn in the moment. Often, I run into students or people who are in a situation, and rather than focusing on the learning at hand, they are in such a hurry to move on, the lessons are missed. They simply don’t want to learn, whether it is learning a life lesson or learning some skill or material. They erroneously think “oh, I will never need this later.”
They often have stars in their eyes, really dreaming of some great future success, yet in this very moment, they can’t focus. The allure of the future reward has blinded them to the fact that now is the moment to dig in deeply to the task at hand. Abraham Lincoln understood this fact. As a young man with limited educational opportunities, Lincoln took it upon himself to read everything he could get his hands on. He had no way of knowing that he would become President one day, yet he was determined to learn. When he turned 20, he determined that he could not read or write well, so he spent a significant amount of money to gain access to an English grammar book.
Years later in a letter to his former law partner, William Herndon, Lincoln wrote, “the way for a man to rise is to improve himself every way he can.” You have no idea where your life is taking you. You simply can’t see it. No human can. Thus, look at your “Now” to see how you can learn. Work today to prepare for that thing you can’t see that is coming in your future.