Recognizing Opportunities vs. Disasters

On Sunday I came home from church feeling at the top of the world.  I had enjoyed a tremendous service and experienced a real sense of God's majesty and power in my life.  For several hours I enjoyed the quietness of my home,  my wife and sons had gone skiing and hadn't yet returned.  It was amazing so many wonderful things have been happening in the midst of the violent storms that had attacked my life so recently.  Having a great Sunday and some personal time was just what I needed!

Then within minutes of my family's return my son's were embroiled in an argument. As they often are, a silly argument that demonstrated just how immature they could be.  Suddenly, my mountain top high had vanished in an instant, in the blink of an eye.  Soon my wife and I were also upset and my first reaction was "why God, why did you let such an amazing day get ruined" then it dawned on me he hadn't allowed my day to be ruined, I had,.. because "while I felt my faith, I just hadn't practiced my faith".  I stopped grabbed my sons and said "we love each other too much to do this to each other" what I had failed to see was that it was an opportunity not a disaster!  It was an opportunity to demonstrate God's love and power if I was only mature enough to see that my faith was sufficient and God was providing an opportunity for me to grow my faith by living it! 

I thought about all the negative things that had been happening in our lives, all of the turmoil both at home and at business.  It dawned on me that "all my whining" as why was all this crap was happening to me was exactly that, a bunch of crap! I realized that each of these self described disasters was really an opportunity, an opportunity to trust God and to live out my faith.

Life will always have challenges and as a believer I am not immune from them, but as a believer, I also have a personal choice to see them as opportunities and to trust God for the strength an patience to conquer them or continue to feel like I am a powerless victim of disasters!

I choose Opportunity!