STEEMCHURCH: Get Up After The Defeats

I will transform your "Valley of Sorrows" into a "Door of Hopes". (Hosea 2:15, The Bible a day).

It is not what we have, or what we are, or where we are, or what we do, what makes us happy or unhappy. It is what we think about it all. Thus, for example, two people can be in the same place, executing the same job, both can have equal sums of money and equal prestige and yet one is happy and the other is not. Why? Because your mental attitude is different. The nature of the rain is the same, and yet it produces thorns in the swamp and flowers in the garden.

Sometimes God allows us to walk in the dark to show us that he is the light. The following story about a man who had his life taken by the handle, but that eventually came off, illustrates it brilliantly:

Ladislao Vidal was born in Spain, from where he emigrated to Cuba. He lived in a port called Mariel where he became the owner of a clothing store and owned good capital in dollars. Members of a Christian church gave him brochures and books and invited him to attend church services; but Ladislao did not pay attention. Business was going well, he thought himself a safe, good, dignified and just man. I did not feel any spiritual restlessness. His business claimed all his attention. As he said, spiritual things were good for old people; but he did not need them.

Back in the years from 1930 to 32, a great economic depression was experienced in Cuba and the businesses of Ladislao Vidal began to go down in an alarming way. And in the end came the collapse and the ruin. Before the economic disaster, his wife left to his parents' house, and Ladislao sought refuge in the house of a brother who lived in Quiebra Hacha, near Mariel. When he saw himself homeless, without a wife, without work, in total ruin, he went every afternoon

To a hill from which the town of Mariel could be seen, and there sat down to contemplate the place where his fortune and happiness had been buried and as, there is no greater pain than remembering happy time in misfortune, one afternoon he lay down to cry like a child and his affliction was so great that he decided to take his own life. He returned to his brother's house, and when looking for a paper to write a note explaining the reason for his drastic decision, he found a New Testament; He opened it and began to read. The result was that this man opened the door of his heart to Jesus Christ, and with him came peace and joy, a new life and the hope of eternal glory.

Days later Ladislao prayed with a radiant face of joy: "I thank you God because I have lost everything I had in this world. The loss of material goods led me to seek spiritual and eternal goods. If I had not lost all my money, I would never have looked for you. Thank you dear God for all that you have given me, for all that you have taken from me and for all that you have left me! "

Do you see how the sun of hope shines better when it peeks behind a cloud of fears and afflictions?

The blows of adversity are very bitter but they are never sterile. Prosperity discovers our vices but adversity discovers our virtues.

Adversity is like a gale: it takes away everything, except what can not be pulled out, and thus we see ourselves as we really are.

Failure should teach us humility, because we are not as smart as we sometimes believe, and having to tilt our heads from time to time adds something to our personality. It is good to know our weaknesses, to learn our limitations. It is possible that we fail in what we do, but we can succeed in what we have learned. And that is already a real success! Remember: you are not finished when you are defeated but when you give up.

God would never allow evil if it were not powerful enough and good enough to get good from that same evil. Trust that he does not close a door without opening another. He knows how to take good from what seems wrong to us. If you believe in the sovereignty of God, as I believe, you know that God can make a bad decision result in good. He can make a miracle of a mistake.