I met Tom and Lirio at a prayer breakfast early in 1979. Lirio was a short little woman with a very big heart. She was a bundle of energy. This couple befriended me, and I spent a lot of time with them. In August of that year, they introduced me to a certain woman, a friend of Lirio's from her homeland of Puerto Rico. Three weeks after meeting this woman I asked her to marry me, and she agreed. And that, as they say, is the rest of the story.

Often we take for granted the things that happen in our lives. Had I not been at that prayer breakfast, and had the Lord specifically directed Lirio to introduce herself to me, I may well have never met my wife. Going back further in my life, had I not attended the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill I probably would never have come to Pikeville. Some of my friends there in North Carolina made it possible for me to be here. All of us probably can look back on our lives and identify times when things happened because we were in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time, for that matter.

In David's case, he was in a place where he never should have been. At a time when kings were supposed to go to war, he stayed home and left the fighting to his generals. The results were adultery, murder, and a curse on his entire family. Abraham's servant, by contrast, was exactly where he was supposed to be, "in the way," at just the right time. As a result, he found a wife for his master's son, Isaac, and Rebekah became the mother of Jacob, whom God later named Israel.

How can we be sure we'll be "in the way"? By being obedient to God's will for us. How can we determine what his well is? Through reading his Word, through prayer, and through the counsel and guidance of the Holy Spirit and of other Christians. If God has called us to serve, we need to serve where he has called us, whether in our hometown or in some foreign land. If we unite with a particular congregation of the body of Christ, we need to be with them in times of worship, prayer and service.

We’ve all seen or heard stories of people who went out if their way because of some very specific leading from the Lord, or just because of a strong "feeling" that they should. Sometimes someone's life was saved as a result; in some cases, someone's very soul. Though time or place certainly doesn't limit God, they do pose limits on us. Although God will accomplish his purpose, we can miss our chance to be his instruments through disobedience. We should never ignore a specific leading to go somewhere, or be somewhere. We should also not insist on going where God specifically instructs or leads us not to go, even if it's for a good cause. Paul and Silas had a notion about making a trip into Bythinia, but God forbade it. Instead, he sent them to Philippi, at the invitation of a man who appeared to Paul in a dream.

Jonah is the most famous example in scriptures of someone who refused to go where he was sent. We all know the result of that; three days in the belly of a great fish taught Jonah he couldn't run from God. Even in obedience, though, he grumbled and complained. How many of us do the same, when we know the Lord wants us to be somewhere, but we'd rather be somewhere else? Sometimes when we look around in church on Sunday morning there a lot of people who look very unhappy because they have to be there. Some of them even sit in the choir!

I've been here in Pikeville for about 22 ½ years. It seems odd to me that I had to be here so God could send me back to West Virginia, where I came from, to minister. I don't believe, though, that the physical location is always important. What is important is that we maintain an attitude of obedience wherever we are. That is really the "way" we need to be in. If obedience means that we walk or drive a different way than usual, or that we go somewhere we had no plans to go, then that's what we should do. One of life's hard lessons, for me, has been to trust God when he sends me somewhere. Like Abraham, we may have no idea what we're going to do when we go where we're sent, but God knows. That's all that matters/

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JESUS IS the Bridge Ministries

Beneath His Wings Devotionals - Vol. 2