Isaiah 49:4-I replied, “But my work seems so useless!
I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose.
Yet I leave it all in the Lord’s hand;
I will trust God for my reward.”

I truly believe, that the only way you can have hope in the midst of failure, is that God is our ultimate reward! That even if we don’t get what we had hoped for, we can have faith that what God is doing, is good for us and our character. We fail to look at that naturally, because we like to measure our identity by our successes, not what God is forming in us…

I had the opportunity to encourage my son, who is on a soccer team and though he is the youngest, he is used to starting and playing a whole lot. But earlier this year he was sitting the bench and of course didn’t like it! But I told him that he can respond one of two ways. 1) Either feel sorry for yourself, and pout about why you should be starting. 2) Or play so well that the coach has no reason to leave you out!

It was exciting to see him respond to the latter, and play so well his last 3 games he is automatic to start now! But I was able to later help him understand that “not getting your way” or failing, is not the end result when you know God. Because the issue was not sitting the bench or starting in a soccer game. The big picture was his character developing, and learning how to respond when things don’t go how we expect or want them to. Then our character is exposed, realizing that the point of life for the Christian, is not what we accomplish, but who we are!-(Romans 8:29)

This is a hard lesson to embrace, but I think it is vital if God is the real reason you strive in what you do. If we live for God’s glory, then we can’t possibly define and dictate what should happen for the best. The best could be failure, and us learning like the prophet, that our reward is in God, not what I accomplished outwardly. I think God at times allows things to be unfruitful outwardly, to prove our hope doesn’t rest in outcomes that we define as “successful”, But in our development of hope and faith, like Jesus defined as successful!

In His Love, Ld