When bad things happen to people, some people get better, and some people get worse. It’s not the things that cause it, it’s the people who are already confirmed in who they are who reflect their true self in and through the things that happen to them. We are all being shaped by the events around us, but we are not passive to the process. We seem to always want to blame our reactions on the things that happen, but our reactions are just that — they are our reactions. Our reactions are what we are responsible for. Who we are and what we are becoming are confirmed by our reaction to the events that happen to us, they are not created by them. They are just events. We are not responsible for the events that happen, but we are responsible for our reactions to these events. Life can break you down, or life can make you stronger — depending on how you react to it.

We often take issue with God over natural calamities over which we have no control like earthquakes, fires and hurricanes — we even call them “acts of God” — and though we can blame God for the calamity, we can’t blame Him for our reaction. We are, in fact, becoming who we are by our reaction. And if we have the Spirit of God indwelling us, He will rise up in the circumstances and sustain us. The circumstance doesn’t create that, but it brings it out.

How am I reacting? Is it in keeping with who I am becoming? If it is not, what went wrong? Maybe the events are just showing up the fact that I am still angry, or I am blaming God for the way my life is going. If bad things make us worse, that may be pointing out something wrong with us that we need to look at.

Bad things happening will make us better if we are truly relying on the Spirit of God for everything.