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"Here’s the deal, when things happen in our lives that are jarring or disorienting, a shipwreck or a snakebite, it rattles the cage. You get a bad diagnosis or a pink slip or divorce papers and what happens is those things cause the compass needle to spin in our lives and we’re wondering which way is up? What is God doing? But I think it is in those situations that we need to realize that the Bible says it rains on the just and the unjust. Bad things do happen to good people, but here’s the good news, all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose. It is not that we are immune to all these things that happen, it is that God can use them for His purposes and that’s what we hang onto. In a sense, I have this mental picture of Paul hanging onto driftwood in the Mediterranean until they finally make it to shore. And by the way, sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is hang in there. If you are at that place, hang in there! I believe you are going to make it to shore, and here’s what I’ve discovered in my life, sometimes the worst thing that happens to us can turn out to be the best thing that happens to us because God has a way of using those things to lay a foundation in our lives and to prepare us for what He wants. And I might suggest that sometimes we get so focused on getting where God wants us to go that we totally forget that God is far more concerned with who we are becoming in the process. Listen, God is going to get you where God wants you to go, that’s His business! But He’s not going to get you there until you are ready to get there, and who are you becoming is far more important than where you are going. So it is in these situations that God is working His purposes in our lives." - Mark Batterson (The Cage of Failure)