| The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.” |
| —Acts 23:11 |
As the events of their daily lives unfolded, even God’s choicest servants must have asked: “Who, What, Where, When, How?” Yet, God rarely answers these questions when He calls us to His service, or makes a promise to us, or places us in circumstances we don’t understand.
I wonder what Paul must have thought God wanted him to do in Rome? He certainly seemed driven to get there. Perhaps Paul looked back at the way God had used his preaching among Gentiles, but probably never considered that God intended him to spend years locked up and away from the crowds.
Paul did preach to a few individuals that were allowed to visit him. And, Paul also preached to the Roman leaders. During that time, Paul also wrote the letters we know as the Books of Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, First and Second Timothy, Titus and Philemon, encouraging and instructing all of us in God’s ways.
In the Old Testament, when Joseph, son of Jacob, had two dreams as a teen that his brothers would bow down to him, he got a verbal trouncing by his older siblings! The act of bragging, and his status with their father as favorite son, made the brothers intensely jealous and caused them to carry out a plot to sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt.
I wonder how many times Joseph thought of those long ago dreams and wondered if he had misread God’s promises. Now, he lived in Egypt, far from home and under the control of none other than Pharaoh himself. Even more confounding must have been his subsequent imprisonment because of a false accusation. He made a name for himself interpreting dreams for servants of Pharaoh, and of Pharaoh himself. But, what about his dreams?
But, after 22 years in Egypt, amazingly Joseph confessed to his brothers, in Genesis 45:7:
“But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.”
I wonder how many times the teen-age girl, Hadassah, questioned how and why she ended up in the harem of King Xerxes in Persia and eventually became known as Queen Esther. Certainly, she had heard the stories containing promises from God that He would take His people from the lands of their exile back to their home country. How did she fit into this plan, especially now as she held such a position of power and responsibility in this foreign country?
Only as her life played out did she realize that God had given her a unique place from which to save God’s people and literally change history. Not without personal danger did she agree to God’s plan. She heard God’s word through her faithful cousin, Mordecai, as recorded in Esther 4:14:
For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?
I wonder sometimes about my own pathway, and you must wonder about your pathway, as well. “What, where, how, why, and who”—God is at work in order to play out His divine plan in us, but what lies ahead? We can all take heart with these words from Isaiah 55:8-9:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
