Encouragement from Discouragement

I spent the majority of this week speaking at a teen camp, and it was a fruitful time.  It was a blessing and privilege to have the opportunity to teach young people about God as we studied Psalm 1.  Much prayer and study went into preparation for the delivery of messages and answering questions.  The LORD didn't just speak through me but spoke to me, and told me exactly what I needed to hear when I needed it most.

The impetus for this post was born out of a discouraging situation.  During one of the talks I misspoke when talking about the boab tree and off the cuff related the tree's incredible ability to store water to a camel.  Of course camels do not "store" water in their humps and thus it was an awful analogy--one I would not be allowed to forget.  A camp film was made which one camper was asked about what he thought about the talks and he did not hold back:  "He botched the talk," he said with a frown.  "Camels don't store water in their humps.  It's fat."  When I saw the footage I was disappointed an off-handed comment would be so distracting and send the wrong message.  Everyone had a good laugh, and it was certainly awkward for me.

Later I was praying and a bit discouraged about my mistake, how it likely (at least for one person!) took away from the impact of the Gospel.  Before bed I felt led to continue reading through the scriptures and arrived at Psalm 7. Though I had read through this copy of the Bible many times I discovered something I never noticed before:  a typo at the end of chapter 7 that ended with a colon instead of a period.

Out of discouragement God brought encouragement!  I had not noticed the typo before and it took nothing away from the meaning of the passage.  In a similar way my error was not a hindrance in any way from people receiving the truth of the Gospel because God's word is living and powerful.  I also found encouragement that the publisher had made a punctuation error but God still chose to use them to print His word.  God chooses to use imperfect people like me who make mistakes and He is able to redeem even our failures for good, to humble us and instruct us concerning our need to rely upon Him.  Isn't it amazing God chooses to use flawed people?  We are all undeserving of the privilege to serve Him as He keeps refining and sanctifying us along the way.  Jesus doesn't wait until we attain an arbitrary level of skill before connecting us as a functional, fruitful member of His Body the Church:  by grace we are saved through faith, and we walk by faith despite our failures.

How glad I was to hear a report at the end of the week that many campers chose to follow Jesus Christ as LORD and Saviour!  All glory to Him who does wondrous things even when we miss the mark.  We are fools to place our confidence in ourselves, experience or preparation:  we are wise to continually rely upon God to lead us and make our feeble efforts fruitful according to His glorious design.