Last September, Chip Ingram was the guest speaker at our staff devotion at work. I have thought about his talk often since that day. You see, the conference center where I work, was coming into our busiest months of the year while being significantly understaffed. How did we make it through? We made it with God’s divine protection over employee’s heath, time and energy. We all pulled together, we made it work, and God gets the glory.As we finished all of our events for the year and took a collective sigh of relief when the last guest left the property, none of us could have imagined what happened that night. A small fire in the Training Center, which set off the sprinkler system, which worked exactly as designed, interrupted the peaceful end of the season.
The subsequent renovations have created an adversity that we never expected. However, this did not take God by surprise. In fact, he had prepared us for the impossible situation to come by the special guest speaker back in September.
While our true adversity is yet to be fully realized. We wait with bated breath for the good that God will bring from this moment of trial.
As we look forward in this New Year, I like many of you, have chosen a word and corresponding scripture verse to guide me. My word, “Vision.” My verse, Habakkuk 1:5.
Habakkuk 1:5 (NASB) 5 “Look among the nations! Observe! Be astonished! Wonder! Because I am doing something in your days— You would not believe if [a]you were told
While our true adversity is yet to be fully realized. We wait with bated breath for the good that God will bring from this moment of trail.
I had many distractions and challenges last year, and I will be the first to admit, on occasion I cried in frustration. I knew my impossible situations that God allowed, would turn into a vision for the new year and a knowledge that God would work in me something above all I could imagine. I eagerly wait for all that God will bring through me and to me in the year to come.
What impossible situations has God placed you in that you can clearly see how His hand worked things for your good and His glory?
Are you in the middle of an impossible situation and you wonder how anything good could ever come of the mess?
Is there someone you know who is going through an impossible situation? Share this quote with them. Hopefully it will encourage them as it encouraged me.
Multi award winning writer, Patty Nicholas-Boyte lives with her Husband Brian in the mountains of North Carolina. She is a busy event planner for the Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove, and is a member of the Blue Ridge Writers Group. She is a mother of two grown daughters and grandmother of three. She writes Bible studies and devotionals as well as contemporary romance. Devotions are published in compilations by Lighthouse Bible Studies.
