A few months ago, my parents went on a trip for work. Because they were gone overnight, a couple from our church came to our house to spend the night with my sisters and me. Earlier that same day, they told us, a friend of ours had interviewed one of them for a college class on missions that she was taking. She’d recorded the interview on her phone.
While we were talking with the couple, the woman who’d met with them earlier called. She said that she couldn’t find her phone, and she asked them if she’d left it at their house. They promised to look for it the next morning.
Unfortunately, when they got home, her phone was nowhere to be found. She’d lost it, which meant that she’d also lost her interview, as well as all the other information she’d put into her phone.
If I had been in her place, I would have been devastated to lose my work. She was frustrated, but she had a unique perspective on what had happened – she believed that God had used that experience to take her focus off material things, like her phone, and put it where it should always be: on Him.
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We have a tendency, when things don’t go our way, to adopt a “woe is me” attitude. However, in James 1:2-4, God shows us a different way of thinking:
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
We “face trials” often. In the situation I explained above, our friend could have lamented her misfortune without anyone blaming her. But she was able to see that God was using the bad experience of losing her phone – and all the information on it – to bring her eyes back to Him. As the above verse says, trials, even small ones, produce perseverance in us, which leads to maturity. God puts hard things in our path to help us grow in our Christian walk, to sanctify us. Praise be to Him for this!
Pray that God would help you to turn to Him in hard circumstances, and that He would open your eyes to see how you can know and obey Him better through trials. Thank Him and praise Him for His wisdom to work through problems for His glory and our sanctification. He truly works through our trials for our best (Romans 8:28).
PHOTO CREDIT: dreamstime.com
Cuando descubrí que me robaron, la verdad sentí mucha pena porque eran tres entrevistas y varias fotos de un viaje que hice hace unos días atrás.
Que aprendí con esta experiencia nada agradable:
Que uno debe disfrutar los momentos especiales que solo Dios te da, con fotos o no Dios traerá a mi memoria esos momentos únicos y especiales. Debo resaltar que no me gustan las fotos, pero en ese viaje me hice tomar varias fotos que disfrute y las perdí.
Que las cosas son mejores en el tiempo y a la manera de Dios, yo le pedí a una de las parejas misioneras repetir la entrevista, aceptaron, pero tuve que esperar como 20 días porque tenían su agenda ocupada,…
This is very true. I often do what Philippians 4:6-8 says in situations that I find troubling: Pray, Thank the Lord for His guidance and think on things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, praiseworthy. Be positive, not negative!
Amen. Growth is done in the valleys.