A.W. Tozer once said, "When I understand that everything happening to me is to make me more like Christ, it resolves a great deal of anxiety."

There was a year and a half period in my life where I really felt called into ministry. I didn't know what that looked like but I had been working at a country station here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and I just knew that wasn't where God wanted me anymore. So my husband and I agreed that it was time for me to step back. In that year and a half where I was only working part-time, I had this really intense period of study and what I mean by that was that God gave me the grace to get up at 4:30 am every morning. Each day as I would start, I would journal, study the Bible, get my daughter off to kindergarten, I would get my son off to preschool, and then I would spend those three hours with my nose in the Bible. Then, when my son napped in the afternoon, I would write and that year and a half of study served as the bedrock for what I do now.  That built this foundation that has made everything else in my life possible.

I thought about Paul when it came to circumstances like these, but this kind of period in my life was voluntary. I stepped down deliberately from the radio station where I had been and took a part-time job at KCBI and that was all voluntary. However, Paul was thrown in prison a couple of times in his life. During one of those imprisonments, he wrote four letters of the New Testament: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Later he wrote a letter to Timothy from a prison cell and these are texts and scriptures that we cherish and draw life from still to this day. In fact, one of my favorite few verses in the New Testament comes from Philippians 1 starting in verse 12, Paul said:

"Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel." (Philippians 1:12)

So his quarantine, if you will, his imprisonment, had a purpose. It served to advance the gospel and he says later: 

"As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear." (Philippians 1:13-14)

What is our quarantine serving? Can we say that we are in quarantine for Christ? Can we give this season of our life to the Lord in such a devoted fashion that the people who know us would dare all the more to share the love of Christ?