God Was in the Workshop

Scripture: Acts 18:1–3

“There he met a Jew named Aquila … with his wife Priscilla. Because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them.” – Acts 18:2-3

Think:

Paul arrived in Corinth alone, carrying little more than the gospel and an old trade.

He had grown up in Tarsus, a region famous for a rough goat-hair fabric called cilicium, which was commonly used for tents. Long before Paul knew how God would use his life, he had learned to work with his hands. Now, in a city that hosted the enormous Isthmian Games—where thousands of visitors needed shelter—that seemingly ordinary skill opened the door to work, provision, and two people who would become dear friends and vital partners in ministry. 

God had been preparing Paul for Corinth before Paul ever knew he was going there.

And He had been preparing Aquila and Priscilla too.

They had not moved to Corinth because they wanted a new adventure. Emperor Claudius had ordered the Jews to leave Rome. They had been forced from their home, uprooted from everything familiar, and sent searching for a place to begin again.

Then Paul walked into their workshop.

Paul needed work; they shared his trade. Paul needed a place to stay; they opened their home. Paul needed people beside him; God gave him Aquila and Priscilla.

What looked like an old skill in Paul’s life and a painful disruption in theirs became the exact place where God brought their stories together.

We often believe God is working only through the obviously spiritual parts of our lives—the sermon, the prayer, the calling. But God wastes nothing. He uses the skill you learned years ago, the job you thought was ordinary, the move you never wanted, and even the interruption that made no sense.

The workshop became holy ground.

Perhaps you are frustrated by a part of your story that feels unrelated to where God is taking you. You wonder why you had to learn it, endure it, or start over because of it.

Do not dismiss what God may be preparing.

One day, someone may walk through an ordinary door and need the very thing God taught you in a season you thought did not matter. The wound may become compassion. The experience may become wisdom. The table you once sat at alone may become the place where someone else finally feels at home.

God is not only working in the places that look important.

Sometimes He is sewing lives together in a workshop.

Application:

What ordinary skill, experience, or difficult chapter have you assumed God could not use? Place it back into His hands and ask Him to turn it into a place of provision for someone else.

Prayer:

Father, thank You that no part of my story is wasted. Use even the ordinary, painful, and confusing pieces of my life to serve Your purposes. Make what I have lived through a place where someone else encounters Your grace. Amen.