Blaine Smith of Nehemiah Notes writes in a recent article about the principal of inspirational dissatisfaction. Inspirational dissatisfaction is when your frustration with a situation serves as the impetus for you to make a positive change to your life.

Smith offers an example from his own life of how inspirational dissatisfaction lead him to a revelation about his own life. He worked as a pastor for a few years in the 70s, and while he liked some parts of the job, he was dissatisfied with the requirement of pastors to dabble in so many different skills. He found that he would much rather focus on improving a few skills, and that lead him to become a “resource pastor,” a role in which he feels much more satisfaction. However, without having had that dissatisfying experience, he would have never had that insight into his personality.

The following is a brief excerpt from “Welcome Guidance from Unwelcome Circumstances” that describes how God uses inspirational dissatisfaction to teach us and guide us:

Inspirational dissatisfaction … is the positive role that our experiences of frustration play—both in helping us understand important steps we should take with our life, and in finding the motivation to take them. We may be unhappy in our job, for instance, because the work doesnt fit us well, or because coworkers are not supportive or have unreasonable expectations of us. Frustration can be our ally in such cases—a red-alert that we need to seek a change.

I love this concept, as simple as it is, for it provides us a basis for seeing a silver lining in adverse circumstances, which we can easily miss. Some Christians view all frustrating situations fatalistically and hopelessly. They assume that God is punishing them through these circumstances and that they shouldnt strive to change them.

On a more healthy level, we may recognize how such situations help us grow, but we assume the silver lining comes only if we stay in them and allow God to stretch us there. That conclusion is often justified, and we can be too quick to run away from challenges, to say the least. Yet Scripture gives about equal weight to the other possibility—that God may use our frustration in such cases to enlighten us to the fact that were not where we should be. Healthy thinking requires that we give fair consideration to both possibilities, and feel permission to think in both directions.

Unfortunately, our Christian teaching usually gives far more attention to the former possibility than the latter. We also have elaborate vocabulary for talking about the one (pick up your cross, accept your lot, be a living sacrifice, lose your life in order to find it), and little in the way of convenient language to speak of the possibility that an unwelcome situation simply isnt right for us.

“Inspirational dissatisfaction” fills this gap wonderfully well and can make a redemptive contribution to our Christian vocabulary. We shouldnt underestimate the role that language plays in our ability to reason effectively and make sound decisions, given the extraordinary level of self-talk that we engage in constantly. I agonized over the question of whether to leave conventional church work for a specialized ministry far more than I should have, due especially to guilt-ridden self-talk. Simply knowing it was permissible to think in terms of inspirational dissatisfaction, and having that term available, would have made a big difference.

Read the rest of the article at nehemiahministires.com.

Are you currently in frustrating or dissatisfying situation? What do you think God might be trying to tell you through that situation? Have you ever experienced inspirational dissatisfaction?

By: Chris. This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Devotional, life, People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.