Ole Bill’s Perspective – “Divine Disappointments”

Divine Disappointments often precede Divine Appointments!

Disappointments are ‘divine’ because they are the methods God uses to bring us face to face, in full surrender to the only one who is not a disappointment! We try in our own strength to find and perform the will of God, but like Abraham going in unto the handmaiden Hagar only produced an Ishmael, which was a curse there and ever since! Oswald Chambers reminds us of the important truth! “Waiting on
God for His instructions, then obeying those divine orders implicitly produces the Isaacs of holy purpose in God’s grand scheme of redemption.” Oswald Chambers underscored this great truth, “That our way is the way of the flesh and brings forth the Ishmaels’ of failure or second best, while obeying and waiting on God for the divine miracle, which truly happened in the loves of Abraham and Sarah when Isaac was born; that our God is glorified and the work of the kingdom is enriched beyond measure!”

So God lets us fall on our faces and this is ‘divine’, for it is His way of getting our absolute attention so He can really help us help others. How many times did we fall as babies in our attempt to walk instead of crawl? The mother eagle lets the eaglets plummet nearly to their death before breaking their fall by her powerful talons and wings. Oh, how helpless and how powerless we feel when we have fallen short of the mark of God’s first and best plan! Romans 8:28 kicks in which reminds us, “All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.”

Thank God for the ‘all things’ that He has used in my life, even the failures have been transformed from stumbling blocks to stepping stones that have led me higher and closer to Him. Thank God for the ‘divine disappointments’ that have preceded His ‘divine appointments’.

Like Abraham of old, who had his ‘Ishmael experience’ of the fleshly second best, we cry out in desperation and total obedience to his word of promise, and by faith there emerges the miraculous Isaacs of ‘divine assignment’.

My mother, Frances, used to say, “Self-sufficiency is insufficiency! Christ-sufficiency is all sufficiency!” She found it true, and I did, too! Now how about you?

All for Jesus,

Ole Bill