Throughout my life, I’ve always wanted to make sure I knew exactly when and where something was going to happen, especially if I was involved. In fact, I remember going into my fifth grade class with my parents a week before school started in order to learn everything about that class so that nothing unexpected would happen. I was happy to find out that the teacher was going to write what we were going to do each day on the board. In a perfect world, everything would be like that. The future would be written down on the board and we would know exactly what was going to happen. But this isn’t a perfect world and many times the things God allows us to go through are unexpected. In fact, many times the roads God puts us on are no where close to where we thought we’d be.
After my eighth grade year, I had a humongous desire to learn how to build webpages—this was an urge that I never had before and I certainly never thought I’d ever do anything with computers. There was a problem though; in order to take a Webmastering class at my high school, you had to be a junior or a senior. My father, who encouraged me to work toward my goal of learning how to build websites, contacted the principal and asked if it were possible for me to take the class as a freshman. With some thought, the principal told my father that he would allow me to take the class but I would have to pass the keyboarding exam which was the prerequisite class for Webmastering.
At the end of my eighth grade summer, I worked hard at learning how to write business letters and mastering my skills of typing so that I could pass the exam. After much preparation and prayer, God helped me pass the exam and during my ninth grade year I was bussed from the ninth grade campus to the main campus in order to take a Webmastering class with juniors and seniors.
After my freshman year in high school, I had gained the knowledge required in order to build websites. The story doesn’t stop there though; God was not done preparing me for what He had in store. My sophomore year I joined a student organization called Future Business Leaders of America and competed against students across the nation in multimedia design. The project that I was given was to make a presentation using an animation software called Flash. Not only had I never thought about animation, I had never used this software before. It turns out that, once again with much preparation and prayer, God helped me win third in the nation.
The success that God gave me during that time spurred me to work more on my computer skills. During my sophomore, junior and senior years in high school, I worked hard to learn computer programming. With much preparation and prayer, God allowed me to pass the Advanced Placement test for computer science. At that time, I knew that I was interested in working with computers, but I had no idea why God allowed me to do what I’d done.
I am currently 19 years old and I work at
You may be thinking, “Collin, you’re just rambling on in order to brag about your success” but that’s not true. I tell you none of this in order to brag about where I am or what I’ve been through; I tell you this in order to boast of the awesome power and wisdom of our God!
When I began to realize that God had prepared me to do the job that He has put me in, I was surprised! But why was I surprised? As Christians we constantly tell ourselves and others that God can do all things, we boast to others about His awesome power and we rely heavily on His wisdom, but many times we ourselves are surprised when we see the works of God.
If we truly believe that the Bible is God’s word then there is no reason why we should be surprised when we see a display of God's power. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will direct your paths.” I had no idea why I had the desire to learn how to build websites or to learn computer programming or even why I joined FBLA, but now I see that what I went through was God’s way of preparing me to do the job He designed for me to do.
Do you sometimes feel that what you have gone through in your life is just a jumble of different events that amount to nothing? Do you feel that the things that you have gone through in your life are in no way preparing you to do what you feel you were meant to do? Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” Even though you may not know it, God has a plan for you and no matter the situations you are currently in, no matter where you live or what you know, when the time is right, God will place you where He wants you to be. Live your life for God, work at everything as if you were working for the Lord (Colossians 3:23) and when God’s plan for your life is revealed to you, don’t be surprised by how much God has prepared you to do what He has entrusted you to do.
1 comment:
I have pondered this very thing myself many times. It truly is amazing, even things/times that seem awful and horrible in your life add to some greater purpose that God has in store for you.
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