Has Life Surprised You?Sample

He Always Comes Through

I’ll be honest. It took me a while to get on board with God’s plan. But He kept prodding, and eventually I had my sons (who were 16- and 17-years-old by that time) pray too. As they listened to God, they agreed that the move was God’s plan for us. So, long story short, we sold our house, turned the church over to the associate pastor, and moved to Tulsa.

Following this part of God’s plan was just about the scariest thing I’d ever done, and it took all my faith. To make a long story short, I ended up getting a job as a writer at Oral Roberts University, and my job there enabled both my sons to attend almost for free.

If you’d told me five years earlier that I would be able to put two boys through a private university by myself at almost no cost, I wouldn’t have believed you. Yet God did that for us, because we chose to trust Him.

The years that I worked at the university were hard on me. I had been in the ministry full time, and I had to go back to work as a writer, punching a clock and writing on demand for forty hours a week. It felt like a demotion, not a promotion!

Going backward can really mess with your mind. It certainly wasn’t what I expected for that season of my life. It seemed that I had been forgotten, left behind. While all my ministry friends continued to preach, travel, lead churches, and change lives, I was stuck behind a desk again.

I call those four years “the cubicle years.” I enjoyed the people I worked with, and my children greatly benefited from my time there by getting an almost free college education, but it was hard. I had to constantly keep my eyes on God’s Word in order to keep from getting discouraged.

Based on Jeremiah 29:11 and Romans 11:29, I made this confession every day: “Father I know You haven’t forgotten about me or changed Your mind about me for one moment. I will fulfill Your plan for my life.” I worked hard, stayed faithful in my church and at my job, and in the end God came through – as He always does.