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“God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons we could not learn in any other way.”*

A thought by Les Parrott, (2012-08-02) from his book, You're Stronger Than You Think: The Power to Do What You Feel You Can't (p. 72). Tyndale House Publishers. Kindle Edition.

There is something to be said about self-awareness that shows us that we may need to change some areas in our self. 

I had just turned on my laptop to start writing and looked away and then looked back and it was shutting down.  I then realized that is was updating some program and it needed to shut down for a moment in order for the change to happen.  Last night as I was plugging in my iPhone before going to bed I saw that it had a couple of apps that needed to be updated.  So I took the time to do it.  The laptop and the smart phone have within them the capacity to get better.

But we as humans believe that we have arrived and don’t need to change.  I mean we don’t even want to be honest enough to believe we may have weaknesses and therefore need to do something about them.  But that is one of the purposes of difficulties, of low points in our lives.

One of the great privileges of being a 65 year old man is the opportunity to look back at the low points of my life and to see how they have made me to be the person I am today.  I wish I could have learned the lessons without having to go through my 3 year jerk time or Margaret, my wife’s cancer and diabetes but I went through them and have grown through them.

I remember the time that a man decided to start a church out of my church and the discouragement that I felt.  God helped me through that time to grow through the injustice of it and to learn so many lessons from it.  And I was shown this week that God was also protecting me from a greater danger that I could never have imagined.  He used that low point to teach me that He had my best interest in mind.

In other words, we also need some updating and we need to let God do it through our low points.  So don’t waist them, learn from them. 

None of us have arrived yet and there is a lot of updating that needs to be done in each of us.  We need Him and we need others in this process of life.
 
So what have you learned from your low points?

*This was a quote by Stanley Lindquest in Dr. Parrott’s book.

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