Bad Decisions, Good Decisions
2 CORINTHIANS 12:9
He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. A young banker made an appointment to meet with the bank president, who was soon to retire. The younger man was in line to be the new president, and he was seeking advice as he prepared for his new responsibilities. He had one basic question: How had the older gentleman become so successful? His predecessor looked at him and said two words: “Good decisions.” The young man, wanting more detail, pressed further and asked how one could come to make good decisions. “Experience,” his predecessor said. The young banker continued his line of questioning. How could someone gain experience? The older man replied, “Bad decisions.” Along the path to discovering your destiny, you are going to make some mistakes. You are going to suffer some setbacks. There will be times when you pause for a moment and say, “Why on earth did I do that?” Life is not perfect, and neither are you. There will be failures along with success. But how you respond to your bad decisions, mistakes, failures, and the like will determine in large part how well you achieve success. If you let setbacks discourage you and allow doubt to seep into your thinking, you will postpone your future success.
If you focus on the problems rather than the purpose to be learned from the problems, you may have to repeat those problems until you finally learn. There is a learning curve to life, and it often includes experiences we would rather not have. But you can speed up that learning curve simply by viewing everything through the lens of God’s purpose—and by trusting that God truly can work all things together for good if you will seek His heart in the midst of those experiences.
I want to learn from my failures, Lord, and not just dwell on them. Help me to see the wisdom to be gleaned from each one, and make me more Christlike through what I learn and apply.
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