Overcoming Seasons of Disappointment
In order to build resilience and prevail, it is important that we learn how to endure seasons of disappointment. Yet seasons of disappointment are not seasons of failure. In fact, it is what we do in seasons of discouragement that often dictate our future more than what we do while enjoying times of success. If you are walking through a season of disappointment, here are five encouragements for you.
- The most important thing that is taking place in any group, team, church, organization, or family is what God is doing in the heart of the leader(s). We can often see where the whole community will be tomorrow by that God is doing in the heart of small group (even one) people today. Sometimes, success is not about what God is doing through us, but what God is doing within us.
- Sometimes it takes a breakdown in order to experience breakthrough. I “borrowed” this expression from Carey Nieuwhof, but I have lived it a million times. Many of us are unwilling to change who we are, how we relate and what we do until everything falls apart. Sometimes it takes that awkward moment, unexpected crisis, and unavoidable collision (in every area of life) to admit that something is simply not working. I have often noticed that the breakdown we have been trying to avoid is actually the path to the breakthrough we have been pursuing.
- It is in times of solitude (not necessarily isolation) where breakthroughs are usually discovered. Our ultra-connected world has caused us to forget that often our greatest breakthroughs occur when we are thinking about nothing or taking a break from thinking about something (or someone).
- God may occasionally bring us to the end our own resources (physical, spiritual, financial, emotional, etc.) in order to prove to us that we are insufficient and that God is all we ultimately need. Sometimes we can only learn that God is all that we need when God is all that we have.
- The majority of fruitful labor is not done during the harvest season. A good farmer will tell you that there are seasons to clear the land, plant seed, and then wait, wait, and wait. In fact, there is only a season of harvest if there have first been seasons of long of fruitful labor that did not show immediate results.
Photo by Jonathan Rados on Unsplash