When Grace Moves In

                                                 

Set up by God (1)

You have hedged me behind and before, and laid your hand upon me. ...Ps 139:5

If you’ve ever had any interaction with God at all, you must have experienced being set up by Him.

He loves to take the initiative, and He only has good things in store for us. Much too often when something happen to us we attribute it to luck or coincidence. But when we look at them from the eyes of faith, we could often see His fingerprint all over the place.

Towards the end of February I was jobless. I had resigned from my last job in K.L. late last December to come back to Ipoh, having had a three-month stint there. Primarily it was because I didn’t want to be away from my wife and my daughter anymore; so again I took a step of faith. While working in K.L. I often thought how good it would be if the job was in Ipoh. However, there weren’t many openings for my position in Ipoh, and pay was also generally lower.  Well, I did have something that I could work on - some friends have entrusted me with a few plots of land to develop and sell, although I couldn’t expect any income in the short term. By the end of February I had done the ground work and had begun marketing work. 

I wanted very much for it to work out; I didn’t want to go back to K.L. to work. But it wasn’t easy. Property development takes time, and I had run out of reserve - having no income in four of the previous seven months. I tried to get some contract works but couldn’t. Finding myself in a tight spot financially, I grew increasingly frustrated. I even began to doubt if I had heard God correctly in the first place when in last July I resigned from the company that I had worked for seven years. Until and unless I clinched some sales, and it needed to be fast, my work was like grasping thin air. I told the Lord I needed something concrete to work on that provided income immediately.

One Sunday evening I listened to a message by Bill Johnson. He made a statement that caught my ear. He was concerned about people having no job, but his concern was far more than about the need for survival. This is the way he put it: if anyone is denied a job he’s denied a means to worship God. Our work is not only the means to an income, but in giving our life to it it’s also the means by which we expressed ourselves in what God made us to be. And that is worship. We cannot be denied our right to worship God. And God cannot be denied worship due to Him.

I pondered over it, and my desire to work on something concrete immediately took on a different dimension. The need for survival was still strong, but more importantly I decided that I cannot be denied the right to worship my Creator!

That was a Sunday evening. And on the following Tuesday, I received the phone call.

I had not heard from Yee for about three years, but I immediately recognized his voice. He is a good brother in Christ, and in the same line of work as I am. We have known each other for more than ten years but had no contact for the past three. He sounded real happy to connect up, and in no time told me why he did so: he was looking for someone to work with him! He thought I might fit the bill and asked me to go see him. To cut the story short, within a week I met him and his boss and was offered a job! And the offer was better than my previous employment in K.L.!

What is the chance that some friend you have not seen for three years call you up and offer you a job when you need it? I knew I had been set up by God.

Take heart, you could be next!

Photo Credit: dan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net