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Acceptable Losses

Today’s Scripture reading is one of my favorite passages about the need to bounce back after suffering loss.

A young king of Judah, Amaziah, was going to war against the Edomites. To prepare for battle, he hired one hundred thousand mighty men of valor from Israel to the tune of one hundred talents of silver (about $1.6 million in today’s dollars). A man of God came to the king and told him that hiring these soldiers was a very bad idea. But Amaziah had already paid the soldiers a lot of money and was having a hard time accepting that he would lose and that he should dismiss them from the battle.

Amaziah asked the man of God, “But what shall we do about the hundred talents which I have given to the troops of Israel?” (2 Chron. 25:9 NKJV).

The answer has helped me on numerous occasions to accept my losses and place my faith in a God who is ever willing to restore my deficits and give me full restitution. “The man of God answered, ‘The Lord is able to give you much more than this’” (2 Chron. 25:9 NKJV).

One of the great tragedies in modern-day Christians is that we are losing our ability to rebound, to summon the sheer determination to come back from defeat. Yes, we may suffer some setbacks, but we should never be defeated. If we lose faith in the fact that God’s love is perfect and His wisdom is infallible, and neither can be improved upon, we will never be able to accept our losses. We will ultimately doubt that what is happening to us in this season of loss is somehow all part of God’s sovereign plan.

When our faith is low, a high level of fear fills the void. Next, shame slithers into our thoughts and leaves in its wake confusion, humiliation, self-hatred, and self-loathing. Unending questions such as Why did I make that decision? invade our consciousness. We see ourselves as the proverbial village idiot and believe that others view us as the same or even worse.

When you initially suffer loss, a time of reflection is healthy, but endlessly second-guessing your past decisions will cloud your present decisiveness. If you see all of life’s losses as negatives—if loss is unacceptable to you—you won’t learn much from it.

Loss affects each and every one of us. The question is, can you accept it as a part of life and bounce back?