All during my college years at Taylor University, I volunteered for Youth for Christ. The YFC director was a young man named Earl Bailey. He helped me in many ways in my personal walk with Christ. He and I became great friends and he was a big encouragement to me. When Rebekah and I got married, we asked him to perform our ceremony.
Earl had a desire to go to the mission field and felt specifically called to Borneo (a large island in Southeast Asia). He was excitedly preparing for this work. But something happened that hindered his plans and changed the course of his life. He was diagnosed with MS and became greatly incapacitated by this illness. For the rest of his life he would be limited in what he could do, and he was always in pain.
All the doors that had seemed wide open suddenly slammed closed. What was God doing? He didn’t know.
Though limited, there was still something he could do—he could preach. So, instead of going to the mission field, he started a radio ministry. Before long he was on a large network of stations world-wide. People would send him letters with questions or letters of gratefulness for his teaching. He would get letters from all over the world. He had so many letters!
One time when our family was visiting him, he painfully hobbled over to his desk and pulled a stack of letters from a drawer.
“Guess where these are from?” he said. “They are from Kalimantan.”
He went on to explain: “For the longest time I wondered why I got so many letters from this place called Kalimantan. I didn’t even know where that was. Then one day I was talking to a friend and asked if he knew anything about the country of Kalimantan. My friend said, ‘Oh, that used to be known as Borneo.’”
With tears in his eyes, Earl told us, “God did use me in Borneo, but by a different way than I ever expected.”
What Earl saw as a hindrance was actually God’s way of accomplishing something even greater. Through his radio ministry he was able to reach far more people in that country (and other countries) than he would have if he had actually gone to Borneo.
Earl is with the Lord now, but the Lord’s work continues on—in Kalimantan and around the world.
This story of my friend Earl reminds me of Paul’s words to the Romans, “Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you (but was hindered until now), that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles” (Romans 1:13).
It’s interesting to me that even though Paul had a good desire to establish the saints in Rome, he was hindered from actually getting there. (It makes me feel better that I’m not the only who gets hindered. I’m in good company with Paul.) Paul did eventually get to Rome, but in God’s time and in God’s way (arrest and a Roman escort). Nothing hinders God. God gets all His work done according to His perfect timing and in His way.
There’s a good side to Paul being hindered. It is because of this that we have the letter to the Romans! Paul never stopped praying for the Roman church to be strengthened in their faith (Romans 1:9-11). God answered Paul’s prayer, but He accomplished it in a different and better way. God used Paul not only to establish the Romans, but to establish us. Paul did get to go to Rome but not before he put the gospel in writing for Christians of all time to read. God hindered Paul for a reason.
Do you have goals that are being hindered, like I do? Let us move ahead with faith and prayer for the Lord’s time and the Lord’s way.
