I was looking at a blog I'd written from a couple of years ago and saw the prayer request of a friend. So I emailed and asked him, "How did this turn out - did God answer your prayer?"

He replied that although God had, they'd been through a series of job changes that had left he and his wife wounded. I reflected on that and wrote him the following.

You know it took me a while to get over my feelings of being fired from a ministry 21 years ago. Then I felt the Lord asking, "Would you want to still be there?" Of course my answer was "no." And he showed me, "That was your internship. You were there to be prepared for your next stage and assignment."

When I saw it through the lens of rejection, I was aggrieved and wounded. When I saw it from God's perspective – it was a training ground; I stopped taking it personally and was able to see that God had used the brokenness of others to complete the job of training that I needed.

Almost all of us in the working world have had a few upsets - people who didn't understand us or who treated us poorly. Have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps that phase of your life that felt so hurtful was actually God preparing you for the next phase of life?

Consider the possibility that you may have been looking at your circumstances like a near-sighted person. Step back a few paces and you may be able to better perceive the way God used difficult circumstances to answer your prayers.

When I look at the big picture of my life, I see God's hands on me all along the way - I see him using obtuse people and the pain they caused to shape my character.

If you think about, nothing has happened to you that hasn't first pass through his hands. Seeing that should help us respond to even the toughest of tests with gratitude.