Making the Most of Your Mistakes

Even though we don't like to think about it, God often gives us our trials, mistakes, and painful times to teach us something or to grow us in some fruit.  Maybe you're lacking in love.  God will give you an opportunity to grow in that area.  Maybe you're lacking in patience or self-control. God will give you plenty of growth opportunities.  Other times He allows us to go through the storms and process of the mistake instead of taking away the pain.

Some of the storms in our lives are simply out of our control, but others of them we have caused ourselves.  What we do with those hard times is how we can learn to make the most of our mistakes/trials/troubles.  What we do with them can become our ministry.

In my Wednesday night ladies' class, we have been studying how our mistakes can be used to minister to others.  Although I had written last week and studied the lesson both last week and this week, it wasn't until looking at it for the final time yesterday that this verse seemed to jump out at me. I've enlarged the part that jumped.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 

Do you see that?!  God comforts us in our troubles SO THAT we can comfort others in the same way.  There's another reason for the trials we go through!  It is so that we can help others!  It's so that we can share His love with others!  It's to bring us closer to someone!

Yet, often times we're afraid to use our trials for good.  Sometimes we don't want to bring up those painful times because...well, they're painful.  Maybe we still feel guilty about them. Maybe we don't want to think of the rough times.  Maybe we're content just in our own little world where we don't have to acknowledge the past.  But sometimes God wants us to get out of our comfort zone. Sometimes someone else needs us to share.  Sometimes we are missing out on an opportunity to share Jesus with others because we're afraid.  Let's get bold! Let's get brave!  Let's comfort others with the same comfort we, ourselves, received!

God wants us to make the most of our mistakes.  That's the end goal - to learn from them, to grow because of them, and to help others.  In doing so, our mistakes will become our ministry.  That's how we make the very most of those mistakes, troubles, and trials....using them to help others.

Thinking Things Through

I'm not always good at thinking things through, but this latest "non-thinking-it-through" episode may rate as one of the very worst.

You may remember that a few weeks ago the transformer near our house got struck by lightening, causing a lot of damage to several things in our house.  Our dishwasher was not working well before the storm, but after the lightening storm, it didn't work at all.  Dishwashers don't last long in Tipton anyway, because of the hard water.  I researched dishwashers for over a week, then finally decided I was ready to order a dishwasher.

Before it was ordered, I showed my husband the dishwasher I wanted.  It had a handle on the front and the controls were along the top of the door, instead of on the front, where they're typically found.  I liked the way it looked, but also liked the idea of hanging a pretty dish towel from the handle.  My reasoning was two-fold:  decorative and useful.

This past week the new dishwasher came in.  It was partially installed one night and the completely installed the next morning.  I was so excited about the dishwasher, but before it was totally installed, I realized that the handle I was so proud of would probably make it impossible for the drawer to the left of it to open.  Sure enough - I was right. It wouldn't open!  In order for it to open, the door of the dishwasher has to be opened first!  I should have thought about this before, but I didn't.  It did make me feel better when I was telling a friend about it and she said that their builder did the same thing when he built their house!  If a professional could make this mistake, it didn't make my mistake seem quite as big. (at least in my mind, it didn't!)

You know?  I put a lot of thought into purchasing this new dishwasher.  I read reviews, looked at different models and brand names, compared prices, and finally, looked at several dishwashers in the store before ordering.  I thought I had done extensive research on the product.  My husband even measured the space to make sure it would fit with the new specifications.  After all of that, I still made a mistake.  It's a mistake that we will adjust to, but it was still a mistake.  There was more to know and more I should have known.

There's a lesson here about life.  No matter how much we "think" we know - there's always more to learn.  We can learn by reading.  We can learn by hearing.  We can learn by seeing.  We can learn by sharing.  We can learn by doing. We can learn by living.  And, we can learn by our mistakes.

Have a great Memorial Day!