Setbacks Are Building Something

I want to carry on with yesterdays topic. I'll be the first to admit it. When a setback hits, my first reaction is usually not, "thank you Lord, I can't wait to see what you're building in me." It's more like frustration, maybe a little self-pity, and a whole lot of "why now?" I think most of us are wired that way. Nobody signs up for hard. But the longer I walk with God, the more I'm convinced that setbacks are doing something in us that easy days never could.

Paul put it like this in Romans 5:3-5, "we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." Read that again slow. He's not telling us to grit our teeth and white-knuckle our way through. He's saying there's a chain reaction happening under the surface. Something's being built in you when life knocks you down.

Think about it. You don't build perseverance on a good day. You build it when you want to quit and you don't. You don't build character when everything's easy. You build it when you've got every reason to cut corners and you choose not to. And real hope, not the wishful thinking kind, that shows up on the other side of all of it.

Here's what gets me. The stuff you're walking through right now, the setback that's got you stuck, the closed door, the disappointment you didn't see coming, God's not wasting any of it. Not one bit. He's using it. He's shaping you into somebody stronger than the person who walked into this mess. You just can't always see it while you're in it. I sure can't.

That's why Paul could say he gloried in his sufferings. Not because he liked pain, nobody does. Because he'd been through enough to trust what it was producing in him.

So if you're in the middle of a setback today, don't just try to survive it. Let it do its work. Perseverance, character, hope, in that order. That's the path. And the person you're becoming on the other side of it is somebody God's been getting ready for a long time.

Be Nice. Grace Wins.

FMJ