Wake up calls & Grand Plan

I read something which rang a bell in me.
Really. Try not to be stubborn like I used to be.

Os Hillman ...
It appeared "everything was against me." I could not see that God was orchestrating a whole new calling on my life. At the moment, it seemed like the worst thing in the world. It seemed that I had been a failure. But God said, "No."  All the years before had been preparation for what God's ultimate calling would be.

One of God's methods for directing His children's steps is through drying up resources: a job loss, a career change, or a disaster. In these times we are willing to listen more intently, and to seek God in ways we would not normally do.

C.S. Lewis once wrote,
"God whispers to us in our pleasures,
speaks in our conscience,
but shouts in our pains;
it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." [C.S.Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1962), 93.] "