Friday Devotional...11/18/11

Unexpected Modes of Transportation

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

 neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are My ways higher than your ways

and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isaiah Chapter 55

verses 8 and 9

(Amplified Bible)

While on a cruise with my husband, I found that we had to board “tender” ships to get to some of our land excursions. Tender ships are the smaller boats that would transfer us from the cruise ship to the shoreline. Often they were necessary because the cruise ship was too large to pull into port. Other times the shore was too crowded, too rocky, or perhaps too steep for us to enter into it safely by way of the cruise ship. This was when the Captain would anchor the large cruise ship offshore and instruct us to board the smaller boats as our mode of transportation to the shore.

I have found there are times like this in our spiritual lives as well. At times the Lord will use “unexpected” circumstances in our lives as a way of “transporting” us from one place to another. I believe that He is intent and focused on “positioning” us into where He desires us to be. Just as the Captain of the ship oversaw our “excursion” to land, so it is that our Lord in Heaven “oversees” our “excursions” here on earth. I am convinced that this not only pertains to our spiritual “positioning”, but to our mental, physical and emotional “positioning” as well.

Sometimes He needs to use different “vessels” or circumstances because He knows there is no other way for us to get us into the place in which He desires us to be. What place in your own life do you believe the Lord desires to position you into? Is it a position of deeper trust and faith in Him? If so, could He be using the “vessel” of an undesired diagnosis in order to transport you into that place? What about His desire to teach us more about His grace in our lives? Could it be that He would allow us to be “transported” to that place by an area of our life which is filled with the deepest of failures and the most heart wrenching of regrets? Could it really be possible that He would even use the unexpected death of a loved one in order to “transport” us into a deeper place of comfort, reassurance and trust in Him?

Are you “seeing” the picture? I am not talking about the situations that we can easily walk in and out of by ourselves here. I am talking about the most difficult places in our lives. Again, I firmly believe that at times the Lord will take these unwanted, undesirable “modes of transportation” in our lives and use them as a vessel that will transport us into the place where He desires us to be. He doesn’t allow these things because He wants to see us suffer, but just the opposite. He allows these things in our lives because He loves us very deeply. He is the only one who knows just what it will take for each one of us to arrive at His appointed and desired destination in our lives.

Taking a look back over your own life while applying this concept, can you see how the Lord has used an unexpected or an undesirable “mode of transportation” in your own lives? As you reflect, can you see how He was able to bring you into a place of deeper understanding through it of His ways and of His love? I hope so. I pray that as you continue to reflect, that you will not only be better able to understand what took place there, but that you will be made even stronger in your commitment, your desire and in your ability to “walk out” the deeper purposes that were born there.

Written on November 16th, 2011 by
Beverley A. Napier