“We overestimate the event and underestimate the process.”

A thought by John C. Maxwell (2000-03-08) from his book, Failing Forward: How to Makethe Most of Your Mistakes (p. 114). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

I don’t think in any way we could overestimate the event of Easter. I mean Jesus was resurrected, He came back to life. That has made all the difference in our lives, in our world and in our future. But the reality is, we wouldn’t have had Easter without Good Friday. He had to die first.

Oh how we would like to do away with the Good Friday’s of our life. We hate the pain of adversity. We in the middle of it have a pity party or even a life is not fair lament. But the Good Friday’s of our life can be our friend, not our enemy. It is in those horrible days that we will go through that something can be built into us that will make all of the difference in our lives if we chose to let them help to make us better and not bitter and draw us closer to God.

Now what if Jesus would have gotten into the middle of that horrible day and said, “This is way out of the line. Don’t they really know who they are dealing with here? I mean, I am the Son of God. I can just blow them all away.” But He didn’t do it because He knew in order for us to have life, eternal life, to live life in its fullest, He had to first die. There would be no resurrection without a death.

Please, please don’t waist the failures, the mistakes, the adversity of your life. They are there for a reason.

John says, “Nothing in life breeds resilience like adversity and failure. A study in Time magazine in the mid-1980s described the incredible resilience of a group of people who had lost their jobs three times because of plant closings. Psychologists expected them to be discouraged, but they were surprisingly optimistic. Their adversity had actually created an advantage. Because they had already lost a job and found a new one at least twice, they were better able to handle adversity than people who had worked for only one company and found themselves unemployed.”

John also says, “The problems we face and overcome prepare our hearts for future difficulties.”

So how are you doing this week?

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