977) As I look back over the 57 years I’ve been on this earth, so far, it’s easy for me to conclude which of these years have been productive and which ones haven’t. For example, I spent four years in Bible college, learning how to “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Did I spend much of that time teaching others? Did I work full-time in Christian ministry? Yes, and No. I may not have been a Bible teacher during that time and I was not a published Christian writer, so were those years a waste of time? Of course not. But what if I were like Paul awaiting a trial for two years as recorded in Acts 24? I might have felt these years were a waste of time, but were they?

The Bible doesn’t tell us specific things that Paul said and did during this period, and even if he could only just read and study on his own, it would not have been a waste of time.

God can give us periods of time when we do less than what we think we need to and I want to challenge you to consider that this time is not a wasted time if this is what God calls you to do. God works when the time is right. We need to trust him with this, along with everything else.