Can bad things actually happen to good people?

When my wife and I first started thinking about entrepreneurial ideas while I was still in the corporate world before launching out on my own, we read a lot of books about entrepreneurs and starting your own businesses.

And in almost every book we read, it seemed like the author (entrepreneur) went through periods of business failures, huge setbacks, even bankruptcies.  They all were saying that it took them to go through such deep struggle and failure for them to really learn about running businesses and becoming largely successful. 

Some had millions, lost it all, and then regained it back and learned through the process so they didn’t lose it the second time around.  It was uncanny at the common theme of failure and then comebacks that ran through all these lives.

I remember my wife reading one of these books, and with uncertainty in her voice, she looked up and asked me, “Are we going to have to go through this kind of failure in order for us to succeed?”

You want to know what my answer was?

Being a man of faith, I said, “Of course not, we’re believers.  We’re children of God, we’re not of the world, so we don’t have to go through that.”

I then went on for probably fifteen minutes about the favor of God and how He is on our side.  Now, of course, all of what I said was true (except for the part that we wouldn’t have to go through any struggles).

I’m saying I was being a man of faith, but in reality, I was being presumptuous.  I was thinking that just because we were Christians, we wouldn’t have to go through the same things that people of the world do.  The Lord loves us too much to make us go through such things, right?

Don’t get me wrong.  God wants to bless us, but if He has to use circumstances in our lives to get our attention, then He has the prerogative to do so!  I didn’t say God causes the situations, but He can certainly use them.

Remember, bad things can happen to believers.  Jesus himself told us (believers) in John 16:33, “In the world, you will have tribulation.”

But just like all the entrepreneurs with the failure/success stories, the setbacks and the failures teach us and better qualify us to really achieve God’s best in our financial lives.  These situations build character, prepare and equip us for the blessings to come, and allows us to share with others so they don’t make the same mistakes.

So as hard as it may be, we should be giving thanks for all of the preparation many of us are going through so that we may get to where He wants us to go!

Let this be an encouragement to many of you reading this today.

As always, please let me know your thoughts by commenting below…

Blessings!

Mark