Set Back Or Come Back?

What we see as setbacks are God’s way of setting the stage for a comeback.   ~~~   Have you ever experienced what you thought was a set back? When I was in the midst of finishing up school, I was in the final stages, writing the big thesis, the big project. When it came time to start submitting portions of that book for approval, we were leveled with a setback. The seminary emailed to tell me that there had been a new system of writing put in place, a new standard, that my current work did not fulfill those requirements, and that I had only a short window of time to get it fixed or I would have to start the program all over. I was upset, confused, stressed. I had put spent many late nights away from my family working on this thing, only to be told, “It doesn’t meet our new standard.” I wanted to quit. Write it all off as loss and just move on from there. But from great counsel from my wife, we stayed the course, and the set back really proved to be a refining moment in my life. It helped sharpen my focus on the project I was working on, and in many ways in the way I went about ministry. Many times, what we see as a set back is really God setting the stage for a comeback. Perhaps you have experienced something similar. Looking backwards in time, you see what was once thought to be a set back as a way of God orchestrating a come back. In Psalm 57, which is David’s looking back on the events of 1 Samuel 22, David prays in Psalm 57:4 “My soul is in the midst of lions; I lie down amid fiery beasts—the children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are shard swords.” And then he says, “Be exalted O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth.” It is a prayer, a cry, that comes from looking back into the past, and seeing that the enemy was fierce and had designs against David, yet God was glorified through it all. Perhaps you can look back over events in your life and see the same thing. The design and attack of the enemy was fierce, even successful, some might say, but now, from this perspective, you see it completely differently. You see God being exalted and His glory and plan coming to fruition. You couldn’t see it then, but you surely see it now. But if we have eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hearts and wills ready to conform to God’s word, then we will see that what we think of as set backs, even in the present or in the future, attacks of the enemy, are really God’s way of setting the stage for a come back.