Written by Pastor Jack Wellman– Peter Marshall
7 Ways Disasters Lead to Blessings
Suffering, from a biblical perspective, must be looked at in context. If you believe in Jesus Christ, suffering always has a point.
There’s always a meaning to every difficulty. Above all else, God wants only the best for us. Indeed, according to the book of Jeremiah, God wants to prosper us and not to harm us. Here are just seven of the many ways disasters lead to blessings:
Blessing #1: Setbacks give you an opportunity to lean on Jesus
Let’s face it: most people develop a sense of pride whenever good things happen in their lives. In fact, if enough good things happen to a person, that person may start believing that all these blessings happened because of that person’s own strength, own ability, and own goodness. We tend to become proud.
When we experience failures and setbacks, it gives us an opportunity to lean on Jesus Christ instead of always leaning on our own strengths. This leads to a blessing of greater humility on our part by reminding ourselves that Jesus is the true source of our strength and power.
Blessing #2: Living through disasters strengthens your faith
When you are going through a disaster and you feel that everything is spiralling out of your control, these all can be part of a powerful blessing. Why? Challenges and disaster give you the opportunity to strengthen your faith. It gives you the opportunity to say out loud, “I may not know what’s going to happen, things may look bleak, but I know I have a powerful God and I know that God has the best in store for me.”
You have to remember that faith is like a muscle. It only gets bigger and stronger if you exercise it. In many cases, living through a disaster and going through challenges are great ways of exercising your faith.
Blessing #3: Setbacks reduce your ego
As I’ve mentioned earlier, it’s easy to become prideful especially when everything’s going your way. It’s easy to come to the conclusion that all your blessings were the results of all your effort, willpower, discipline and focus. In other words, it’s very easy to crowd out and push God out of your life.
When we see our dreams crushed, or our best-laid plans amount to nothing, we are given a great blessing. Why? These setbacks reduce our ego. They remind us that we need God in our lives. We need God to drive us to where we need to go. We need God to remind us that He has a plan for us and that plan might not necessarily line up with our own personal plans for our lives. For these realizations to take place, our ego has to let go. Our ego has to decrease for God to increase.
Blessing #4: Failures give you perspective
When things are going wrong in your life, it’s easy to feel that you’ve lost something very important. or that your world is falling apart. However, there is a blessing behind all this because maybe that is not the world that you should have constructed for yourself in the first place.
Maybe your life has developed in such a way that that’s not the picture God had planned for you. You may have lost all perspective. In the big scheme of things, salvation and abiding in Jesus are the only things that matter because these are the things that will take you to the ultimate reward of salvation. In many cases, it often takes really big disasters, really big failures, or really big setbacks to bring back the proper perspective; to help us remember that it is our relationship with Christ that must trump everything else.
Blessing #5: Disappointments remind you of what’s important
If you suffer enough big failures in your life, you begin to realize what’s important in your life. What is important is salvation. What is important is that your relationship with God is mature enough that you are able to abide in Him and to fully have faith in Him. Because let’s face it, it’s your faith that will save you. It’s not your good works; it’s not how good of a person you are; it’s your faith. Disappointments and failures can help remind us the importance of faith in our daily lives.
Blessing #6: Failure develops discipline
In our modern world, it’s too easy to focus on what’s convenient and easy. Unfortunately, this doesn’t give us the strength of character that we need to deal with temptation effectively. When failures and disasters happen in our lives, they help remind us that we need to be disciplined. They help remind us of the power of resisting temptation. Oftentimes, failure and disaster happen because we were unable to resist temptation. By suffering the consequences of lack of discipline, we are reminded of the value of this powerful character trait. This in itself is a blessing.
Blessing #7: Disasters distil your inner strength
It’s easy to feel strong when things are going your way. It’s easy to feel you have what it takes when everything that you try seems to work out. However, when disaster strikes and you feel that you’re not empowered and you feel that you’re not in control, it’s easy to feel weak. In truth, this is a great blessing.
Disasters give you to opportunity to dig deep inside to realize that your strength is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the ultimate source of power. He is the ultimate source of strength. You can do all things if Christ strengthens you and this involves living through disasters and catastrophes. This powerful reminder is a powerful blessing and it usually happens when we face failures and catastrophes in our personal lives.
