Turning Troubles Into Opportunities

Turning Troubles into Opportunities

When troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. James 1:2-4

Troubles as opportunities? Once again, God is turning the “wisdom” of the world on its head. The apostle James says that trials should be embraced rather than lamented.

Don’t get me wrong. There were plenty of times when I wasn’t particularly keen about a loss we had suffered—especially those playoff losses—or a key injury that we sustained. But I also understood that God was using all that for good by helping me and the team to grow.

Maybe you’re someone who has followed your heart into something and it didn’t turn out as you expected. Tough luck or wrong choice, huh? Maybe not. Consider that you may be planted exactly where God intended for you to be in order to grow your faith in Him, even though the rain and wind are blowing so hard it may have clouded the broader, bigger, better vision He had set before you earlier.

So instead of turning around and retreating, why not pick yourself up and throw yourself back into the fray, trusting that He is with you and will use all of it to strengthen and grow you? God never wastes what you are going through for Him. He will use it to grow you more into the person He wants you to be.

Look at it this way. As that great philosopher Yogi Berra said, “The game ain’t over ’til it’s over.” A lot can happen in nine innings of a baseball game, four quarters of football, two periods of basketball, or every day of a lifetime. It’s not about things or troubles, but it is about following your heart, a heart aligned with God, over, under, around, and through any mountain, sea, valley, or storm.

It’s not about what you can get out of where you are, but what you can put into and do by enduring right where He has planted you.

Uncommon Key > When troubles hit, dig in deeper and grow—right where you are!