By: Pastor Jarren Rogers

“God is using you in your present circumstances to make you more useful for later roles in His unfolding story.”

– Louie Giglio

It seemed like just a normal day for Wesley James Austrey, a construction worker from New York. He was standing on the subway platform waiting for his train when a man in front of him begins convulsing and falls onto the tracks below.

Wesley, standing there with his two daughters, has a choice: to jump down onto the tracks and help, or stay with his family.

He hears a voice in his head say, “Don’t worry about your own, don’t worry about your daughters. You can do this.”

Without a second thought he jumps down on the track and runs to the man. He’s unconscious, so moving him proves difficult. Every time Austrey grabs his hand, they slip apart. Again, he grabs for his arm to lift him up, but their hands slip away.

Meanwhile, the train is barreling towards them. With the train only feet away, Austrey makes the decision to grab the man in a bear hug and flatten himself against the ground between the tracks.

The train flew over the two men, grazing Austrey’s calves. The train came to a stop and both gentlemen were still below. Austrey yells up to his daughters on the platform to tell them that he’s okay.

When asked why he chose to put his life on the line to save someone he didn’t even know, Austrey said, “He was a total stranger. But you know what? The mission wasn’t completed. I was chose for that.”

He recalled a time earlier on in his life, when he was supposed to die, but was spared. Moments before his feet left the platform, a memory, some twenty years earlier, flashed to his mind.

A gun had been held to his temple and the trigger was pulled. But the gun misfired. Ever since that moment, Austrey believed that he was meant for something. “I was spared for a reason,” he said.

When I first heard Wesley Austrey’s story, I couldn’t get past what he said – that he was spared for a reason. From the time that gun misfired until that day on the train platform, he was waiting for the moment that he was spared for. He was waiting for God’s plan to be fulfilled in his life. He was waiting to see the reason for his life being pardoned.

I believe that God has a plan for each and every one of us. There is a reason that we have been given life. There’s a reason that air flows through our lungs. There’s a reason that we are walking this planet.

God has a plan that is meant specifically for you. It isn’t anyone else’s plan. It’s yours and God’s partnership that will bring it to fruition.

Just like Austrey, you were spared for a reason. Christ died on the cross so that you could have life, for a reason.

Don’t waste your life. Seek God’s plan and follow it wholeheartedly.