for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Philippians 2:13
My boys were doing an experiment today where they each had to make an aluminum foil boat and see at what point their boats would start to sink after adding pennies. After the experiment, they needed to evaluate the results in order to improve the boats to make them better the second time. They reflected back on what they believed worked and what went wrong. Then, they went back to the drawing board.
On their second try, one of my sons saw total failure. His boat sank before he got the first penny into it! How did that happen when he got several in the first time? Since he didn’t have anything to compare the first boat to, he didn’t really know what was making it work. When he did the second experiment, he was seeing the differences that would cause one design to work over the other. What really helped was looking at even more designs and their results.
From the first to the last experiment, they had a deeper understanding of how to make things better and were able to come up with better solutions. You see, the boys were quick to make their first boats without a whole lot of thought going into them, but as soon as they received more information, they slowed down and were able to discover ways that led them closer to success. They used their previous knowledge before putting a new plan into place.
I found that as adults, we’re often afraid to try something that might fail, but kids are much more willing to take that chance in order to reach success. We’re more likely to stay at the starting line instead of getting more insight with each journey we’re on.
We ask God why He gives us a certain problem when we don’t have all the answers or even the ability to come up with the answers. I believe He’s trying to get us to understand that although we don’t have the solutions, He does. He can see clearly enough for both of us. He wants to partner with us so that we’re never on our own again.
Don’t you think we need to understand that if we never go through the journey to solve a problem, we’ll never have experience to start out further ahead of where we are now? We’ll constantly be like my boys making those first boats…completely in the dark.
If we don’t ever try or go through something, there will never be any results to evaluate. The second time or third time will never be better because we’ll still be stuck at square one. The third boat that my son made was able to hold ALL the pennies plus a bag of nickels. Talk about success!
Those boys now have new insights on problem solving from their experiment, so they’ll be starting ahead of where they did today the next time they face a new challenge.
Don’t you want to be growing in wisdom? How will you do that if you haven’t learned anything on the way? It’s on the rough journeys where we learn and grow. My boys don’t learn as much with the easy problems as they do the hard ones. We’re the same way. The more we struggle, the easier the next challenge is.
Why are we so fearful of the struggle? We have a partner much more knowledgeable than us. He has the answers when we don’t. We don’t want to remain ignorant and not have any wisdom! That means we need to take a chance and not see problems happening to us, but see challenges that are happening for us. We’re getting wisdom and new insights!
I challenge you to accept that partnership, let God work in you, and allow Him to fulfill his good purpose. Let that dare be the one that floats your boat today!
