I feel like there are many people in this phase of their development. I can’t imagine what Paul, Joseph, Moses, or David felt during their years of waiting. Being separated from our support system added additional stress. With God changing so many things around and rearranging our plans, it was difficult to keep focused on whatever He was doing. I have been thinking about this because of my time in China. When God gives you a destiny to pursue, He is the One who makes it happen. The timing of each of these men coming into their divine calling was seemingly out of their control. David gets into the royal throne room by coming a trusted military warrior “killing his tens of thousands,” but then spent around 10 years running from the guy holding the position he was promised. Joseph experiences success as a slave and then sent to prison.
Jesus goes into the wilderness to pray free#
Moses spent forty years in the desert after trying to free Egypt by killing a soldier. This seems to be a common development strategy of the Lord’s. Seven years after his calling, he is still not seeing the promises come true. We don’t know what he was doing or what he was feeling, but up to this point, he only had brief glimpses in what God called him to do. This time when the believers protected him, they sent him off to his hometown of Tarsus (Acts 9:26-30).įor four years Paul was away from all the leaders of the early church. Paul again began to preach the gospel freely and again the Jews tried to kill him.
Barnabas convinced them of Paul’s true conversion. They had not heard of his conversion, even after three years, so they were still afraid of him. Eventually, he did go to Jerusalem in hopes of meeting Peter ( Galatians 1:18). His time is cut short as Jews there planned on killing him ( Acts 9:23).Īfter moving in his calling, Paul ventures off to the Arabia and into obscurity for three years ( Galatians 1:17). Immediately after he receives back his sight, Paul spent several days in the city preaching that Jesus is the Son of God ( Acts 9:20). When Paul was blinded on the road to Damascus, God told Ananias that Paul would be called to the Gentiles ( Acts 9:15). However, one thing that happened was we started to feel alone and forgotten. Some things were going great others were not. Sometimes that worked to our advantage – sometimes it didn’t. This past year, we moved to a village in China where we were the only foreigners. It has its perks because we get to see so many places and people. God seems to like to move my family around.
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