“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28
Take # 4 – God uses “bad” things to accomplish even better things.
One last take on the disagreement between Paul and Barnabas.
When they had their disagreement, they parted ways and started working in two separate teams. While that looks bad on the outside (they can’t get along), there was really a huge benefit to the split.
Twice the work was being done.
Because Paul and Barnabas had gone their separate ways, they could now reach twice as many people as they would have otherwise. This was not a “first string” vs “second string” kind of outreach. Both men were strong in their faith and ability to accomplish the job. They were able to reach twice as many people. They were able to start twice as many churches. They were able to spread the Gospel twice as fast as if they had one team.
Their disagreement and separation also built the structure of doing good Christian ministries – train others to do the job and then send them out to reach even more people than they could have done in one team.
We at Lincoln do this a lot. How many people have we sent out into the mission field from our congregation? Several. If they had stayed here at Lincoln, they wouldn’t have had as much of a world-wide impact as we do now.
The challenge for us:
God will often use “bad” situations in our lives to create circumstances that might not have occurred had we kept going on the same path we were.
Use those circumstances to look for where God is taking you. I’m pretty confident that the end of the road will be much better than the original road would ever have been.
As I look back through my own life, I see fork after fork that I never would have taken had it not been for that “bad” thing that happened. Now I am grateful for all of them. My life is so much better because I allowed God to lead me onto the right path. Let Him take you down your right path. In time, you’ll see that God was always right.