Ever Feel Stuck? Don’t Miss Your Opportunity

Ever felt so stuck you can’t help but think you’re missing some great opportunity someplace else, in some other situation, with some other person, in some different experience, in some other circumstances, in some other anything at all, anywhere but the very place you’re utterly convinced you’re STUCK in?! Did you ever consider that the very place you’re feeling so stuck might be exactly where a great opportunity lies? This thought came to me thanks to a totally unexpected prayer I found myself praying to God after I happened upon a totally unexpected, and unusual, STUCK situation.

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I couldn’t for the life of me understand as I traipsed through the yard in my pajamas, winter coat, and big rubber boots, picking up endless dog poop alongside the numerous dogs as they took their first bathroom break of the day, why a massive, noisy, truck had parked itself virtually right in front of my yard. It was too early in the morning for workmen to come out to someone’s house, I thought. And the garbage truck hauls off as soon as it gets everyone’s garbage. Unless –

The man sitting way up high in the garbage truck rolled down his window when he saw me.

“We’re stuck,” he essentially told me, explaining the problem.

Nothing like being stuck in a truck, huh?

“I’ll pray for you,” I said before I walked off.

As I walked off to begin the feeding of the 16 dogs I had yet to feed, and what a challenge that can be with all their excitement and noise, my stress and impatience, their medication and different diets and foods, ugh, arg, sigh, I prayed for the men in the truck. I prayed for the obvious – that God would get their truck going. After all, I am sure they had better things to do than be stuck in a truck all day.

But then I found myself a little while later praying what to me was an unusual prayer – not the kind of prayer most would think to pray. Yet given my heart and calling as an evangelist, it should not have surprised me to pray as I did.

“Please God, if one of them knows the salvation message and one of them does not, please have the one who does know it share the Gospel with the other one,” I prayed.

Then, some time afterward, after I had attended to more of my sometimes seemingly endless morning chores given the ongoing needs of the ministry’s dogs in my care, it dawned on me. These men really had the perfect opportunity, as they sat in the early morning stuck in their truck, to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with one another. Though surely they must have been eager to get on with their work day and get done what needed to be done, though surely they must have thought the last thing in the world they needed was to be stuck, they had an amazing opportunity to make the Lord’s work their priority.

And then I thought, how often do we find ourselves “stuck” in places and situations, in relationships and circumstances, in cars and trucks and challenges and scenarios when we might love to be anywhere but there, with amazing opportunities to share the Gospel, to pray for someone, to listen to and encourage someone, to minister to someone in need, to talk to someone about the Bible, to do anything at all for the glory of the Lord? And how often do we find ourselves griping, moaning, complaining, pitying ourselves that we are “stuck” where we don’t want to be instead of opening our hearts and minds to the will of the Lord right there in our “stuck” places?

We all find ourselves “stuck in a truck” at one time or another in our lives, so to speak, don’t we? But how often do we miss our opportunities?

The next time you are “stuck in a truck”, finding yourself in a situation where you are focused on the temporal, wishing you could get out of wherever you are, why not look for the opportunity and see how God might want you to take advantage of it?

Someone might just end up spending eternity in heaven instead of hell because of the opportunity you took to share the Gospel while you were “stuck” in your so-called truck. Or someone might get healed because you chose to pray for someone in your stuck situation. Or someone might find the hope that can only be found in Christ because in your stuck circumstance you took the opportunity to minister to that person. Or the very person who is stuck in the same scenario with you might return to the Lord because you took the opportunity to help lead the person back to Him.

The next time you find yourself “stuck in a truck”, seek God’s face and see what He has to say about it. He might well have something for you to do in the very situation you feel so desperate to get out of. Please don’t miss your opportunity.

Please visit Walk by Faith Ministry at https://www.walkbyfaithministry.com.