Detour leads to unexpected discovery

Galatians 4:13 "As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you."

        In this small verse, Paul makes an interesting statement, that the whole reason the church at Galatia exists, the whole reason they know Jesus at all, the whole reason they have had thier lives changed, is because Paul's eyes got sick.

        Now, there's a good chance that when it happened, Paul's team was upset, they laid hands on him, prayed in faith for healing and were upset at changed plans. They probably even asked God why he would have allowed such a big detour to happen.

        But now we know why! Now we get it. First, there was a group of people that would not have been reached had it not been for the detour. Second, there was a book of the Bible that would have never been written. And third, there are truths that would have never been learned, by us and millions of others, had one guy not come down with a rare eye disease.

        It's so tempting to always see the negative side of pain and detours and perceived 'hindrances' in our lives. We curse them, bind them, run from them, pray over them, and want to get through them as quickly as we can, but the reality is God always uses them.

        "God, my I have the eyes of faith to see in the midst of a detour, what You're doing. And even when I can't see in the midst of it, may I know in faith that You make all things work together for my good. Amen."

So there's this verse in Proverbs that's been messin' with me...

Proverbs 24:11 "Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter."

It's our responsibility to actively and aggressively go after those who are headed in the wrong direction. We can't just sit by and let them fall off a cliff of sin or poor decision-making, or complacency. I recently had a friend who jumped off a moral cliff and blew up his family, his ministry and did permanent damage. The amazing thing is, when I was with him about a month before everything blew up, I sensed a distance in my spirit, and had this overwhelming burden to go and talk to him. But I didn't.

Instead, I excused it by thinking, "We're just not as close as we once were. I don't have the relational tokens with him right now."

I wish I would have said something, perhaps things could have been different...