Have you ever felt like a fool? Have you ever had your world turned upside down? I’d bet that most of you have. I know that i have for sure. It’s a pretty bad feeling isn’t it? I know for me I kind of wobble between slight dizziness to queasy feelings in the pit of my stomach. The mind races as you try to make sense of what is happening and you have to deal with that pesky fight or flight thing to boot. Sometimes it happens slowly like the proverbial frog in the pot. Other times it happens all of a sudden like a sucker punch you didn’t see coming. The worst though is when it happens and you realize that you should have known all along that something wasn’t right and that you could have at least tried to prevent it.
No matter how it comes though your life will not go back to being the same as it was after an event of this kind. You have a window of opportunity to respond and how you do that will critically affect all of the people involved. Try to be thoughtful about the situation don’t trust your gut as it is likely that it was your gut that got you into this spot in the first place. Don’t go to your standard playbook either because that’s another place where you’ll find you’ve missed the mark. Get creative but don’t be foolish and for heaven’s sake don’t bury your head in the sand and ignore it.
I look in my Bible and I read about many moments where people had to respond to a quickly changing situation, to situations that were desperate or seemingly hopeless. Thankfully the reactions we can read about vary from the spectacularly successful to the completely disasterous so there is a lot we can learn by studying them.
We can read about Saul who was battling the Philistines and was hard pressed and looking for help and advice. So he turned to a medium to speak to the dead for him. It didn’t work out for him. Later on we read about Hezekiah when the city of Jerusalem was being besieged. He went and prayed about it. Things went a lot better for him than they did for Saul. Over and over we read about people who trusted their own counsel that fell while those that trusted God were successful.
Be mindful though of this. In personal situations, in times of personal distress you certainly ought to pray and seek God’s advice. Look for the power of the Holy Spirit to help you through your trial, but do something with the knowledge He gives you. In your own life prayer without action is powerless. If you pray for change but are unwilling to actually do the work of changing you will fail. God wants to help, he wants you to get through whatever is happening to you. He will never abandon you to your own devices but he expects you to participate in the experience. But not only that he expects you to learn from it, to grow from it, and to be able to use it to help others that may go through something like it. With God no experience is ever wasted if you are willing to learn.
Sometimes failure and pain are the very best teachers. I pray for you that when you experience these things that you will turn to Him for guidance and empowerment, I pray that you will put action to the answers that you get. I pray that you will seek out those that may have been through what you are going through and allow their experience to help you. I pray that you will be able to put your pain to good use on the other side of it because you will get there.
prayersandpowerchords 