Warren Wiersbe said, “A realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned.”
What makes the difference?
It’s not the fire, the heat, or the duration. It’s the attitude you choose to bring out of it.
When you look back on life’s unpleasant events, you can choose to see what you learned from the ordeal, or you can just see it as a bad experience and get nothing else from it.
In every trial, every problem, every difficult situation, God is seeking to teach us something new, seeking to take us to a higher place.
Maybe it’s a chance to exercise a bolder faith. Maybe it’s a chance to identify bad behavior that we must abandon. Or maybe it’s an opportunity to practice perseverance.
The lesson is always there in difficult circumstances; we can choose to be purified and made holy, or we can just allow ourselves to become burned and bitter.
Daniel wrote…
Many will be purified, cleansed and refined by these trials. But the wicked will continue in their wickedness, and none of them will understand. Only those who are wise will know what it means. (Daniel 12:10)
