Last Lessons #8 – PREPARATION

 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:10

“Beforehand” means that before we were even born, God prepared good works for us to do. Think of that! Not only does God prepare the works for us to do, he prepares us to do them. He trains us and gives us the desire to do that which is good. But what I have learned is that we usually don’t see how God prepared us until we look back.

I remember that as a senior in high school, I had an English teacher who gave me a love for literature (especially poetry) and grammar. That motivated me to earn a college degree in English education and then to teach high school English in Florida. Then when I decided to go to graduate school, my counselor at the University of Florida said I should study administration and supervision of secondary schools. Why in the world would I study that? I had no desire to be a high-school principal. However, what I did not know then was that years later I would be instrumental in starting Christian classical schools in Africa. There you go!

Definitely the most wonderful preparation for good works in my life was marrying Bob Jensen. I came very close to marrying someone else a few years before I met Bob, but God stopped me. I look back now and almost break out in a cold sweat when I think what would have happened if I had married that guy.

Bob and I were both in the military when we met. Bob was a major in the Army Medical Corps and I was a second lieutenant in the Women’s Medical Specialist Corps. Since Bob outranked me, he ordered me to marry him and I said, “Yes sir”. That marriage lasted for 60 years and ended only when Bob died at age 88 in 2014.

The amazing part of this story is that we were in love and engaged before we discovered that both of us wanted to become missionaries. God had prepared us by taking his man from Minnesota and his woman from Florida and having us meet in Texas so that we would serve him in Africa! All according to his plan.

I am a “look forward” person, but sometimes I look back and say, “Ohhh, that’s why!” as I see a tiny piece of how God prepared me for the “good works” he wanted to do through me when I had no idea what he was doing.

Haven’t you found that true for you? If you take the time to look back at what the Lord saved you from and what he prepared you for, you will be encouraged in all the works God planned for you beforehand. That’s what keeps me going.