Learning From Disappointments by David Jeremiah

Wednesday, September 6

Learning From Disappointments 

I know, O LORD, that Your judgments are right, and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me. 
Psalm 119:75 

Recommended Reading Hebrews 12:10

British inventor James Dyson spent 15 years making 5,126 prototypes of a revolutionary kind of vacuum cleaner—all of them failures. The 5,127^th version was a success.¹

James Dyson learned about the mechanics of design from each failure, but learn is the key word. That is the benefit of disappointment or failure in life—the opportunity to learn. There are many things to learn, of course. Jesus learned obedience (Hebrews 5:8), which is another way of saying He learned about trusting His Father God. We have the opportunity to learn about God as well, with every disappointment. The psalmist wrote that his afflictions reminded him of the faithfulness of God. There is an infinite number of ways to learn about God from life’s disappointments.

If you are disappointed today, use it as an opportunity to learn more about God and His love for you. Don’t view disappointments as obstacles, but rather as gateways to learning.

What to others are disappointments are to believers intimations of the way of God. 
John Newton 

¹Olivia Fox Cabana and Judah Pollack, The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2017), 123.