Daily Encounter: A Week-day Devotional by a staff of ACTS International.

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose."¹

In his book, Empires of the Mind, Dennis Waitley shared how "in the 1920s, when Ernest Hemingway was working hard to perfect his craft, he lost a suitcase containing all his manuscriptsâ€"many stories he'd laboriously polished to jewel-like perfectionâ€"which he'd been planning to publish in a book. The devastated Hemingway couldn't conceive of redoing his work. He could think only of the months he'd devoted to his arduous writingâ€"and for nothing, he was now convinced.

"But when he lamented his loss to the poet Ezra Pound, Pound called it a stroke of luck. Pound assured Hemingway that when he rewrote the stories, he would forget the weak parts; only the best material would reappear. Instead of framing the event in disappointment, Pound cast it in the light of opportunity. Hemingway did rewrite the storiesâ€"and the rest, as they say, is history. He became one of the major figures in American literature."²

For those who daily commit and trust their life to Christ, our disappointments, as another has said, turn out to be God's appointments in that he wants to use every adverse circumstance to help us grow and become more mature and better persons.

God can take even the hardest of circumstances in our lives and use them for our good. It is not always easy to understand in the moment, but we can trust that He loves us and holds our future in His hands. 

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, I commit and trust my life and way to You and ask that You will use every disappointment in my life as Your appointment. Turn each negative experience into a blessing, and use each one to make something beautiful out of my life. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus's name, amen."

1. Romans 8:28 (NIV).
2. Dennis Waitley, Empires of the Mind (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1995), p. 122.

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