Detours: Lessons From JosephSample

Under Construction

Part of my role as pastor involves mentoring and counseling. With a fairly large church, you can imagine the number of calls I get. I can honestly say I enjoy this aspect of being a pastor immensely. Not too long ago, one of the men from the church came over to my home to meet with me. He had been going through a rough time.

As he sat in my family room, head hung low, he lifted his eyes to mine and said, “Pastor, I feel as if my detour has met another detour and they got married and had a baby detour.” In other words, he felt as he were running into detour after detour after detour and that the detours merely kept replicating and multiplying rather than taking him anywhere meaningful. 

It is easy to feel that way when God is taking you to your destiny. This is because before you can ever get to where God wants you to be, He has to do some twists and turns. In life, as it is often on the road, detours exist because construction is taking place. When you are on a highway and there is a detour, it is usually because workers are trying to fix, build, correct, or improve something. 

Similarly, God will take us on a detour because He is constructing something in our lives as well. Granted, detours are anything but convenient. They take you out of the way. They are longer than you originally had planned to travel. But they are necessary. God is more interested in your development than your arrival. He cares more for your character than your comfort, more for your purity than your productivity.