We don’t often think like this, do we? I got this email from someone recently and I loved what they had discovered:
We have been in this area for about 9 years now. I really felt strongly that the Lord had spoken to my heart about coming here back in 1998, and we made the move in 1999. I always assumed it was to start a church or to be on staff at a church or something along those lines. I’m not saying that God still won’t use us in a way to minister here, but wow, how our view of things has changed. I think it was about relationships, all along.
My biological dad (who did not raise me, I had no contact with him at all) contacted us shortly after we had decided that it was God’s will for us to move to this area. I agreed to meet with him, probably early in 1999 before we moved. I always had a dad growing up, so I didn’t resent him or anything like that. Turns out he is a heck of a nice guy. Anyway, he lives about 30 minutes south of where we live now. We have developed a great relationship with him and many of my family members that I never knew growing up. He told me later that him and his wife had been praying for years for our relationship to be restored.
Here I was thinking that God sent us here for some great ministry, but all along He was answering the prayer of a father wanting to get to know his son.
We’re always so conscious of trying to get God to answer our prayers, that we rarely think how we might be an answer for someone else’s. Maybe what’s going on in your life isn’t about you? Maybe God is making you a gift for someone else…
And on that premise, true community thrives!
