"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."1
In his book, Empires of the Mind, Dennis Waitley shared how "in the 1920s, when Ernest Hemingway was working hard to perfect his craft, he lost a suitcase containing all his manuscripts—many stories he'd laboriously polished to jewel-like perfection—which he'd been planning to publish in a book. The devastated Hemingway couldn't conceive of redoing his work. He could think only of the months he'd devoted to his arduous writing—and for nothing, he was now convinced.
"But when he lamented his loss to the poet Ezra Pound, Pound called it a stroke of luck. Pound assured Hemingway that when he rewrote the stories, he would forget the weak parts; only the best material would reappear. Instead of framing the event in disappointment, Pound cast it in the light of opportunity. Hemingway did rewrite the stories—and the rest, as they say, is history. He became one of the major figures in American literature."2
For those who daily commit their life to Christ, our disappointments, as another has said, are God's appointments in that he wants to use every adverse circumstance to help us grow and become more mature and better persons.
Speaking personally, in much younger days it was when I was lying on my back on a hospital bed following an accident on a construction site that I "heard" the still small voice of God calling me to the work I am still doing today. Years later, it was a family crisis that led me to leave my homeland of Australia—a situation that God has used to more than double my ministry. Like many of our readers, I could name many more disappointments to show how they were blessings in disguise and how God has used them to bless me more than I could have ever imagined.
He wants to do the same for you too. He will as you commit and trust your life and way to God every day for the rest of your life.
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, I commit and trust my life and way to you and ask that you will use every disappointment in my life as your appointment. Turn each negative experience into a blessing, and use each one to make something beautiful out of my life. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."
1. Romans 8:28 (NIV).
2. Dennis Waitley, Empires of the Mind (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1995), p. 122.
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