It was an insignificant comment spoken by our Creative Team Director, Josh Engler, during a vocal rehearsal when the decision was made to scrap a vocal solo that wasn’t quite working out. It wasn’t spoken during a time of prayer or during a worship service. It didn’t have any spiritual purpose behind it. At the time, I thought nothing of it. I didn’t see any real significance in those words, but throughout the rest of the rehearsal and all the way home, that comment kept popping up in my thoughts. And over the next several weeks, God unpacked that insignificant comment into something significant.
“There will be other opportunities.”
At the time they were spoken by Josh, he had made the decision to take out a vocal solo part from the worship set. The vocalist who had been looking forward to singing it would no longer have the opportunity to use their talent at that time. I don’t know how much time and effort was put into fine tuning that part. I’m not aware of how much anticipation that vocalist had built up about having the opportunity to sing that solo. But it didn’t work out. The opportunity in that moment was gone.
But in that insignificant comment, “There will be other opportunities,” Josh unknowingly revealed the heart of God towards us.
Josh Engler – Creative Director
I’m just going to be real and let you all know, that I know the sting of disappointment that we can feel with a missed opportunity. I understand all too well what it feels like when you think you’ve been looked over or thought less of or not good enough or not worthy enough… not pretty enough, not thin enough, not smart enough…
We begin to ask questions like: “What about me?”, “Why wasn’t I chosen for that?”, “Am I not good enough?”, “Am I wasting my time on this team?”, “Do I even fit in here?”
The thoughts begin to swirl in our heads and we start answering those questions by ourselves from a place of hurt. The people God has placed around us to collaborate with, we begin to see as competition. Instead of focusing on God, we focus on our flaws and start to compare ourselves. Our hearts harden and we become cynical. It happens so inconspicuously many times, because instead of taking that disappointment to God, we let it fester.
We can forget in the moments of a missed opportunity, that God’s timing is perfect. His placement is perfect. For us, it’s a missed opportunity, but perhaps for God it is not. For God it could be a perfectly timed opportunity for us to TRUST in Him and His timing and His placement. To believe that He who has gifted us, placed us and determined every step of our existence has every opportunity under His control.
When we take a missed opportunity as an opportunity to rest and trust in God and confide in His plans for us, we can be glad for others who get the opportunities that we do not, because we understand that man did not give them that opportunity, GOD did. You see, just like God has a perfectly timed opportunity for you, He also has a perfectly timed opportunity for others. Just like He wants to use your gifts and talents, He wants to use the gifts and talents of others. The way those gifts and talents are used and displayed are at HIS disposal. Not ours. And no man on this earth can ever stop God from giving us the opportunity to use them.
A missed opportunity can be disappointing, yes. It can be disheartening and discouraging. But we can go to God with that and unload it onto Him and He will gather us close and let us know that He’s got it under control. The door has not been shut on us. When we fully trust in God that HE is the giver of opportunity, we can change our mindset of competition and comparison into a mindset of collaboration and celebration.
You ARE good enough, you ARE useful, you DO have purpose, you ARE chosen and…there WILL be other opportunities.
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