I spent my seventeenth birthday in a hospital bed waiting for an appendectomy.

Actually, the appendectomy didn’t bother me. I was ready for it. A night of terrific pain had convinced me this was a good thing.

Of course, it really wasn’t a good thing.

Two weeks to the day before, I had an accident on our farm where my arm was crushed between a gate post and a Ford Pickup Truck. As bad as the arm was, the pickup looked even worse.

It was a disastrous month of August. When I had my accident, my mother was in the hospital recovering from major surgery. She had to get well really fast to handle all of my calamities.

I thought my world had ended. It was my senior year in high school and my last chance to play football. I was the captain of the team, and I assumed my team needed me.

After my surgery, I felt I had lost it all.

At that point my mother gave me a verse of Scripture. She quoted Romans 8:28 from the King James Version of the Bible: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” I have carried that verse with me since that time.

Over the next few months of my senior year in high school, that promise played out in my life.

God used my difficulties to open my heart and mind to what God wanted for me. Until that time, football in particular and sports in general consumed my life. The troubles let me hear God’s voice and understand that a person’s life doesn’t consist in possessions (or football).

As I look back over my life, the scars on my arm are barely visible but the work of God in my life is strong. God took my troubles and used them for good. From them, I heard God calling me to preach.

Did God cause my problems? I don’t think so. The farm accident was my inexperience and carelessness. If God caused anything it was to preserve my life–a split second later and my chest or head would have been crushed instead of my arm.

No, I think God took the hurts and turned them into His triumphs.

God will do the same with your hurts as you look for the good He can bring from your difficulties.

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