Setbacks
From the Series—Transitions
October 23, 2002Life is full of transitions. You move. You graduate. You go through puberty. You start a job. You end a relationship. You change majors. You get pregnant. Most of us are in transition most of the time. This series of evotionals is about helping you navigate those twists and turns of life.
Transitions are usually stressful and confusing and scary because you leave familiar structures and familiar surroundings behind. Alexandra Robbins and Abby Winter have written a great book titled, The Quarterlife Crisis and they talk about some of the transitions that twenty-somethings go through. One of them is the transition from the academic world to the work world. One of the twenty-somethings interviewed said, “When I graduated and wasn’t defined anymore by what I was studying and where I went to school, I was really struck by how much I didn’t have my ‘self’ figured out. Without the easy structure of school I’d been used to all of my life, I noticed how everything else was changeable in my life.”
When we go through a transition it’s unsettling--it feels like everything is up in the air. I think Job captures the feeling in Job 7:16. “My life makes no sense.” But what you need to see during this series of evotionals is that God uses transitions--especially the stressful ones and scary ones and confusing ones--to reveal himself in ways that He can’t during the normal “Monday to Friday, Nine to Five” routine of life.
Genesis 35:7 is a touchstone for this series on transitions. It says Jacob “built an altar and called the place El Bethel, because it was there that God revealed himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother.” Esau wants to kill Jacob because Jacob stole his birthright. So Jacob literally runs for his life. He’s in transition from one place to another place and in the middle of that transition God reveals himself to Jacob.
There is something about times of transition--you lose a job or move to a new place or end a relationship--that opens us up spiritually. Our spiritual antennas go up a little higher. We learn to lean on God a little bit more. You don’t have to tell someone who is in transition to pray. They can’t pray enough!
The question we need to ask during times of transition is this: what does God want to reveal to me through this transition?
A Theology of Transition
Transitions are God’s way of getting us from where we are to where He wants us to be. Sometimes they seem like setbacks. Sometimes they seem to make no sense at all. Sometimes they last longer than we’d like. But God uses them to strategically position us in the right place at the right time.
In his book Learned Optimism, Dr. Martin Seligman says that all of us have what he calls an “explanatory style” to account for life’s experiences. He says, “Explanatory style is the manner in which you habitually explain to yourself why events happen.” Genesis 50:20 is Joseph’s explanatory style. Joseph looks back over his life--all the dysfunction, all the injustice, all the betrayal, all the pain--and he says, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
Joseph could have come up with any number of explanations for his thirteen years in slavery and prision. “God has forsaken me.” “God is angry with me.” “God has forgotten me.” “God is punishing me.” But Joseph’s explanation is Genesis 50:20. That one verse summarizes him outlook on life. He realizes that God used all those experiences to strategically position him as Prime Minister of Egypt.
If you’re going to trust God through the transitions, you need to know that you know that God uses them to get us from where we are to where he wants us to be.
Setbacks
Transitions often seem like setbacks, but God uses them to set us up. One of the most important transitions in NCC history happened when we were still a small group of less than 50 people meeting in a DC public school. I was out of town and I called the office to check my voice mail. I got a message from the person in charge of leasing DC public schools. He informed us that our school was closing because of fire code violations. I wish I could say that I was full of faith and believed God was closing one door so he could open another one. But the truth is that I was scared and confused. We were about to become a “homeless church.” It really felt like the church could just fall apart and cease to exist. I wrote in my journal, “We’ve been backed into a corner.” That’s how I felt.
But sometimes God backs us into a corner or closes a door so we’ll consider other options! To make a long story short, we ended up checking into about 25 options for meeting space and none of those doors opened. The only door the opened up were the movie theaters at Union Station. I’m not sure there is a church that is as strategically positioned in the marketplace as NCC. Close to 100,000 people pass through Union Station everyday. We have our own metro stop and parking garage. What seemed like a setback was actually God setting us up for something bigger and better.
I’ll never forget the feeling as I walked out of Union Station the day I signed the lease. I can only describe it as an overwhelming sense of destiny. Before I left the Station that day I picked up a history of Union Station and the first page told the story of Theodore Roosevelt signing the Act of Congress to create Union Station. It said, “An act of congress to create a Union Station, and for other purposes.” That phrase--"and for other purposes"--jumped off the page and into my spirit. I don’t think Roosevelt knew he was building a church, but a hundred years later Union Station is serving God’s purposes through the ministry of National Community Church.
In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day
II Samuel 23 tells the story of one of David’s mighty men. Verse 20 says, “Benaiah was a valiant fighter from Kabzeel, who performed great exploits. He struck down two of Moab’s best men. He went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. And he struck down a huge Egyptian. Although the Egyptian had a spear in his hand, Benaiah went against him with a club. He snatched the spear from the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear.”
If you’re in a pit with a lion on a snowy day you’ve got serious problems! I’d call that a setback. But somehow Benaiah kills the cat. Verse 22, “And David appointed him as chief over his bodyguard.” Getting stuck in a pit with a lion on a snowy day is about the last place any of us would want to be, but you’ve got to admit that “I killed a lion in a pit on a snowy day” looks pretty good on your resume when you applying for a bodyguard position.
I can see David flipping through a stack of resumes. “I majored in security at the University of Jerusalem.” “I did an internship with the Palace Guard.” “I worked for Brinks Armored Chariots.” Those aren’t bad credentials, but then David reads the next resume. It says, “I killed a lion in a pit on a snowy day.” When can you start? This is the kind of guy you want in charge of your bodyguard. Do you see how God used that setback as a stepping stone?
Benaiah climbs all the way up the military ladder to become Commander-in-Chief of David’s army, but it all started in a pit with a lion on a snowy day. God used that setback to set him up. God uses our everyday experiences to build our resume--to position us where He wants us to be. That ought to give us a sense of destiny.
I love Winston Churchill’s response when King George asked him to lead the fight against Hitler during World War II. It was a “eureka moment.” Churchill said, “I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial.”
God uses all of our past experiences to prepare us for future opportunities. He is at work even when we can’t make “head nor tails” of it. In Exodus 4, God calls Moses to lead Israel out of captivity. And Moses says, “O, Lord, please send someone else to do it.” He felt totally unqualified. But here’s the amazing thing: God spent 80 years preparing Moses for this moment. God put him through 40 years of Palace 101--he knew the customs of the court. He was the Prince of Egypt. Acts 7:22 says, “He was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians.” Then God put him through 40 years of Wilderness 101--he knew the watering holes and weather patterns and wildlife.
God spent eighty years preparing Moses to deliver Israel and Moses didn’t even know it. The most qualified person for the job felt unqualified. Don’t be surprised if God opens a door that you feel totally unqualified to walk through.
Triumphal Procession
One of my heroes is a woman named Corrie Ten Boom. During the Nazi occupation of Holland, the Ten Boom family hid Jews in their house. Their home was raided on February 28, 1944, and Corrie was sent to a concentration camp. Though an amazing series of circumstances she survived and her story was made into a movie called The Hiding Place. I saw the movie when I was five years-old and afterwards I asked Jesus into my heart.
When Corrie Ten Boom spoke to audiences about her experiences she would often keep her head down. It looked like she was reading her notes, but she was actually working on a piece of needlepoint. After telling her story of the cruelty in the camps and the death of her father and sister and her miraculous release she would hold up the backside of the needlepoint. It was just a jumble of colors and threads with no discernible pattern.. And she’d say that’s how we see our lives--sometimes it makes no sense. Then she’d turn the needlepoint over to reveal the finished side. Corrie would conclude by saying, “This is how God views your life and someday we will have the privilege of viewing it from His point of view.”
Corrie could have questioned why she had to suffer in a Nazi concentration camp. It didn’t make sense. It was unfair. But somehow God used the suffering of a woman named Corrie Ten Boom living in Holland in 1944 to lead a five year-old boy named Mark Batterson living in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1975 to Christ.
In the words of II Corinthians 2:14, “Thanks be to the God who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ.”