There are times in everyone’s life when God uses adversity to force us to make a defining decision.  Adversity is necessary because without it we gravitate to what is comfortable and predictable.  And if we never venture beyond that we will never discover God’s progressive will for our lives and experience the fullness for which He has created us. 

One of the great studies of how God connects the dots of adversity and uses them to direct a person’s life is in Genesis 26.  This chapter chronicles a tumultuous period of time in the life of the patriarch Isaac, following the death of his father Abraham.  Isaac, the child of promise, who had been placidly floating down the river of life, suddenly hits a series of rapids.

First a famine strikes, bringing severe economic hardship to this agrarian herdsman.  Not unlike the effects of a modern day loss of employment Isaac is forced to pull up stakes, leave his life long home and move to a foreign land to survive.  But ironically, he finds God there and the encouragement he needs to stay and decides to make the most of it. (1-6) 

As promised, God blesses him in this place of exile.  And contrary to conventional wisdom, he experiences greater success there than if he would have remained on the homestead.  His crops yield a hundred fold, his livestock multiply and he becomes a “very wealthy” man.  Isaac even taps into some of the wells his father Abraham dug years earlier during a similar period of exile in his life.  Those wells provide the life giving water needed to sustain his burgeoning operation. (12-13)  What a great time for Isaac to write a best selling reversal-of-fortune book entitled “Famine, the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me!”

But wait, don’t get too comfortable Isaac!  Just around the bend there are more rapids.  This time he hits the churning waters of opposition.  His growing economic influence stirs up the envy of his hosts, the Philistines.  One after another they stop up all of his wells and then he is nearly capsized when the king issues an edict that he must leave.  God’s blessing upon his life seemingly evaporates and once again he is unsettled.  (14-16)

Under pressure, he reverts back to the familiar and chooses to live at another place where his father once had some wells.  He proceeds to reopen Abraham’s wells and even gives them the same names. (17-18)  But through all of this, God is continuing to work in his life.  Like a mother eagle de-feathering the nest of her eaglet, God is pressing Isaac to spread his own wings and fly.  It is a defining moment in Isaac’s life.  He has a choice.  He can either continue to rely upon the identity and achievements of his father or he can launch out and begin to establish his own identity by digging his own wells. 

Clinging to the predictability of the past and relying on the work of another is never fully satisfying.  Living in the shadow of his father is limiting his potential and ultimately compromising his own unique calling.  Isaac is in the land between his past and his future, between promise and fulfillment.  Through this turmoil of soul, God is producing a battle hardened faith and persistence within Isaac that is necessary to propel him through the waters of adversity into blessing.

He finally steps out in faith and begins digging to find his own well of water.  Like an eaglet nudged from its nest into free flight for the first time, it can be both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.  And that process is not without its struggles.  Sometimes it takes repeated efforts before someone can truly fly on their own.  It took Isaac three successive attempts at digging his own wells before he finally found a well that he could call his own.  The first two wells he found he named “opposition” and “dispute” because of the major resistance he met from the Philistines.  They claimed the wells were theirs and would not let him settle there. 

Finally on the third attempt, he finds a well that no one quarrels with him over.  It is a defining breakthrough in his life.  In fact he names it Rehoboth, which means “room” and declares “Now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land.” (22)

Was this where God wanted him to be all along?  Probably.  Did God use adversity in his life to get him there?  Definitely.  Did God protect and provide for him along the way?  Most certainly. 

A number of years ago, God used this passage of Scripture as encouragement for me to step out in faith and make a career change.  I was going through a season of discouragement in which everything in my life and ministry seemed like drudgery.  The description of Isaac being relegated to keeping someone else’s wells open in order to maintain his livelihood fit me to a “T” as in Tom.  The vision and mission of the church where I was serving had been well established long before I arrived.  Although I was reaping its benefits, it was someone else’s well.  My formative years in ministry were spent there and I loved the people.  But, like Isaac, I was very unsettled with my lot in life and realized that God was pressing me to venture out and begin to dig my own well.

All that led to my digging the well that became Bridgewood Community Church.  The Bridgewood well became my Rehoboth.  It gave me breathing room and opened up new horizons of ministry.  Looking back I can say that leaving the home church well, although a challenge, was one of the best decisions I ever made.  It is eclipsed only by my decisions to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior and to marry my wife.

Is adversity in your life pressing you to make a defining decision?  Is God speaking to you about digging your own well?  To listen to a message I gave on this topic click here:  Connecting the Dots.

Comments, reflections and personal stories are always welcome.

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It is my conviction based upon the Scriptures that God’s hand is upon every individual even from before their birth. (Psalm 139:13-16)  Our parentage, given name and early childhood all have the imprint of His loving intention and care.  In my last blog I posed a question to help each of us begin to connect these early dots of life and shared some of my personal reflections as an illustration.

Here now is a second question to help serve as an aid in connecting the dots of adversity in our lives.

2.  Looking back can you think of a time when you were forced to do or experience something that you would not have chosen but in the end it turned out to be a great blessing?  Given some time to ponder this question you are likely to discover some amazing ways in which God’s hand has been upon your life when you least expected it.  This is what it means to connect the dots of life.

Gaining such a perspective usually requires the passage of time and prayerfully asking for God’s help. 

For instance, it wasn’t until just a few years ago that I realized my suffering a broken leg as grade schooler is what God used to pay my way through college.  Easter weekend of my fifth grade year I severely broke my right ankle climbing over a picket fence.  I thought the world had ended with my having to endure the summer hobbled with a hip to ankle cast.  I hated using crutches so spent most of my time hopping around the house and yard on my left leg.  Healing finally came and two years later I was excited to go out for the junior high track team.  Initially I was frustrated as I tried and failed at all the different events from sprinting to the shot put. 

But then I was relieved to discover that I had talent for the high jump.  My coach was relieved too and marveled at the unusual ability I had for jumping over the bar by leading with my right leg and jumping off my left leg.  Long story short, four years later I ended up setting the state high school record and was offered a full track scholarship to attend college.  Looking back now I can see how all that hopping while carrying a heavy cast was the perfect exercise to produce a high jumper.  It is a hallmark illustration in my life of God proving Himself faithful to me through hardship. 

I hope that as you take time to think of difficult circumstances in your life that God transformed for good you will also be coming up with your own connecting the dots stories.  When I polled the congregation in my Connecting the Dots sermon last Sunday, 87% indicated they could remember a time when a bad experience turned out to be a blessing.  What about you?

I would love to hear your hallmark story.  Please post it as a comment.

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The older I get, the more I realize that the secret to living both an overcoming and a purposeful life is in maintaining a Godly perspective.  In that regard it might be said that seeing things from God’s perspective is everything.  Having God’s perspective enables us to connect the dots of life in a way that give our lives meaning and purpose.

I’ve found that when I lose sight of God’s hand upon my life and am unable to connect the dots, I begin to founder in unbelief and sink into the depths of doubting God’s faithfulness.  

Contrary to what they say – hindsight is not always 20/20.  Truth be told, without God’s help, it is sometimes impossible to connect the dots of life. The busyness of life blurs it.  Adversity and failures in life obscure it. And even our successes can distort it.  And being a victor or a victim and living above our circumstances or under them teeter-totters in the balance.

But when a person can look back and see God’s hand at work, even in the midst of adversity, they can often begin to connect the dots of their life.  And that ability to connect the dots gives confidence for both coping with the present and facing the future.  Such confidence is based in the fact and reliance upon God’s faithfulness.  He is who He says He is, and will do what He said He will do.

In Genesis chapter 26 we are given a glimpse into a tumultuous period of time in the life of Isaac.  It chronicles his sojourn immediately after his father Abraham’s death, through famine and exile, blessing and prosperity, rejection and loss, dispute and opposition, into a final breakthrough that opens new horizons for him.  It concludes with God’s healing of his past and establishing him as a patriarch in his own right, beyond the shadow and influence of his father.  This past Sunday I gave a message drawing lessons from Isaac’s life titled “Connecting the Dots.”

Observations from this slice of Isaac’s life give us insight into how God connects the seemingly unrelated dots in our lives.  God’s intent and purpose for Isaac is the same for each of us.  He wants us to know that we are children of promise, chosen and named before our birth for His eternal purposes. (Genesis17:19 & Ephesians 1:5 & 11)

He wants us to know that our lives have meaning and significance in His grand plan. (Ephesians 2:10) 

Here are several questions to consider that will help give perspective to your life and enable you to connect the dots.

1. Can you think of circumstances surrounding your birth, name and/or childhood that give an early indication of God’s hand upon your life from the very beginning?   When I polled the Bridgewood congregation with this question last Sunday 64% indicated “Yes” they could.  20% said they were “Not Sure” and just 16% answered “No.”  How would you answer this question?    

Isaac was the long-awaited son of promise, given his name which means “laughter” before he was born.  He brought great joy to his parents and his life was marked by joy triumphing over sorrow.  In many ways he was a little prince, born with a silver spoon in his mouth.  His appears to have weathered his near death experience as a teenager at the hand of his father without great trauma to his soul (Genesis 22) and later is the appreciative beneficiary of a beautiful bride through an arranged marriage. (Genesis 24)

For me, like Isaac, I can see God’s hand on my life from conception.  My parents wanted to have children, but it was not until seven years into their marriage that my mother finally became pregnant.  After my birth, they were never able to conceive again.  My sister, three years my junior, was adopted. 

Added to that, several days after my birth I had to be re-hospitalized because of a life threatening ailment keeping me from taking nourishment.  That scare and my survival was a story my parents often recounted to me as I was growing up.

Our given names are also significant and it is worth taking time to explore their meaning related to our life.  They not only give insights into Godly traits to be developed but also can add meaning and direction to our life.  My name, Thomas Lee Stuart II has done that for me.  Named after my father, Thomas means “seeker after truth.”  That trait has marked my life.  My life-long search for truth was not fully satisfied until at age 25 I finally met Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and discovered that He is The Truth. (John 14:6)  It has also been a prime motivation throughout my Christian life and ministry fueling my passion as a teacher of the Bible.

My middle name “Lee” means meadow or pasture.  Little did I know that one day God’s calling would lead me to be a pastor/shepherd and that my life would be spent in God’s pasture with His flock which is the church.  

“Stuart” of course means to be a steward and that also has great significance for my life in my calling as a “faithful steward of the mysteries of God.” (1 Corinthians 4:1)

Connecting these dots surrounding my birth and name serve to convince me that indeed God had a purpose for my life from the very beginning.  They have been foundational in convincing me of God’s faithfulness to guide and support me in my calling.

What about your birth, name and/or childhood?  What can you discover about God’s purpose for your life as you seek to connect the dots of your early years?  What do each of your names mean?  How might they be messages from God about His plans and purpose for your life?  You can look their meaning up on any good baby name website.  Check several sites to get a well-rounded perspective.

To be continued on the next blog…

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