Trust the Giver

Remember this, the next time you're tempted to be anxious or impatient or resentful over the timing or circumstances of your life:

"Like an astute coach or a gifted teacher, God prepares his saints for the tasks to which he has appointed them before he uses them.

Moses, for example, spent forty years in the desert, herding sheep, before God called him to lead his people out of Egypt. What better preparation in patience could there have been for his assignment of leading an equally stubborn flock of people through wilderness for forty years?

Similarly, David learned courage from his own experience as a shepherd. Later the one who had learned how to take on wild animals in the defence of his flock would be called upon to take on the biggest wild animal of all, mighty Goliath, in the defence of God's flock.

God knows how to prepare his people for the tasks to which they are assigned."

(from Living in the Gap Between Promise and Reality by Iain M. Duiguid).