God Uses Your Mistakes, Failures For Good


You can learn a lot from your experiences — good and bad. To apply them to your work, you have to go back over time and ask, “Where was I successful and where was I not? Where was I fulfilled and where was I not? What got me excited about work?”

All of the lessons for your life are there in your experiences; you just have to spend time examining them. When you do, you’ll see that in every failure are the seeds of success — if you learn from them.

Galatians 3:4 says, “Did all your experience mean nothing at all? Surely it meant something!” (GNT)

Years ago I met an older gentleman who told me how getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to him. He was 40 years old and had worked his entire life in a saw mill when his supervisor came in one day and told him he was fired — no severance, no retirement, nothing. He had no other skills, no other job training. When he went home and told his wife what happened, she said, “What are you going to do now?” He responded, “I guess I’m going to do what I’ve always wanted to do. I’m going to mortgage our home and go into the building business.”

His first venture was the construction of two small motels, but within five years, he was a multimillionaire. The man was named Wallace Johnson, the co-founder of the Holiday Inn hotel chain. At one point, it was one of the world’s largest hotel chains.

Wallace told me that if he could locate the man who fired him, he would thank him for what he had done. At the time, Wallace didn’t understand why he was fired. Only later could he see that it was God’s unerring and wondrous plan to get him fired in order to get him into the career he was shaped to do.

Maybe God’s taken you through an unexpected failure that you didn’t understand at the time, but now you see that it shaped you into who you are today. Maybe you’re in the middle of something like that right now. Trust that God will use your circumstances to show you what He shaped you to do and how you can use your life to serve Him.

Talk It Over
  • What have you learned from the failures in your life?
  • Are you experiencing a failure right now? How do you think God wants you to respond?
  • Why do you think God allows believers to experience failure and not success all the time?


~ Written by: Rick Warren ~
~ Modified by: Oleg Fabyanchuk ~

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Obedience Without Anxiety

Image
“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7 NLT) If you feel overwhelmed or confused about a decision that you’re trying to make, you’re probably caught up in yourself and not God’s voice. The Bible says, “God is not a God of disorder but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33a NIV). He is not the author of confusion. So if you’re feeling confused, guess what? It’s not God’s voice speaking in your life. If you’re a parent, do you want your kids to feel pressure or confused when you ask them to do something? No. You want them to understand what to do and then respond in obedience. God the Father wants the same thing for and from us. The only time pressure could be legitimate is if God’s told you to do something, and you keep saying “n
Read more

Why Nagging Never Works

Image
Have you noticed how many difficult people there are in the world? Do you feel like you have to deal with most of them some days? You know what rude acts bug me the most? People who call me and then say, “Who is this?” People who honk their horns in traffic jams. People who cheat in the 10-items-or-less grocery line. People who steal your parking spot. The list goes on, and I’m sure you can relate. So, how should we respond in love to difficult people? Proverbs 16:21 says, “A wise, mature person is known for his understanding. The more pleasant his words, the more persuasive he is” (TEV). The more pleasant you are, the more persuasive you are. And, you’re never persuasive when you’re abrasive. Nagging doesn’t work. The way you say something determines the way it’s received. If you say something offensively, it’s going to be received defensively. That’s why love is all about your words. Love is truthful, but it is also tactful. Tact and tone always go together. It matters
Read more

The Light in the Dark Times

Image
“We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, Who raises the dead.”  (2 Corinthians 1:8b-9 NLT) Did Jesus suffer? Was He sometimes lonely? Was He tempted to be discouraged? Was He misunderstood, maligned, and criticized unjustly? Of course! None of us are exempt from suffering, loneliness, discouragement, or unjust criticism, because God is developing within us the character of Christ, and, in order to do this, He must take us through all of the circumstances in life through which He took Christ. Does this mean God causes tragedies? No. God is good, and He will not cause evil or do evil. But God can use dark and stressful times for good. He'll use them to teach us to trust Him, to show us how to help others, and to draw us closer to other believers. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 1:8b-9,
Read more