Reaching and Developing People for Jesus
Trials
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Trials
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Trials typically bring about groaning and complaining – prayers for relief, healing, comfort. Mature Christians see trials as tests. Job went through some serious trials – it was a test of his faith. It was not due to anything he had done, as opposed to what his friends kept telling him. In fact, in the end, God poses a list of questions that man has no answer to. This is to show Job and us that there are a lot of things that we don’t know or understand but God is doing something for His greater purpose. Pure joy – not some joy and some grief or a lot of joy and a little grief, but full complete total joy. Hebrews 10:36 1 Peter 1:6-8 Even gold will perish in the fire, but not true faith. When faith perishes because it has gone through some tough times, then there was not true faith. There may have been a seed of faith, faith like that of the seed that grew but was on rocky soil. When that person had troubles in the world, they fell away. But true faith is able to last regardless of how hot the fire – it does not perish. In turn, perseverance develops complete maturity. This should be the goal of every Christian. Maturity means knowing that your faith is full and that God is pleased with you. Why does God begin talking about wisdom? Because He knows that most of us are now thinking – yeah, I get what you’re saying hypothetically, but it doesn’t make sense that we should be joyful when we are going through trials of many kinds. What God is saying here is that He knows that often we don’t have the Godly wisdom it takes to see Gods hand in these difficult times. “God, why are you letting this happen?” “God why does this have to hurt so much?” These are the thoughts of those who are thinking in their human wisdom. But God has a different wisdom. When we might say, “I don’t get why God would allow Satan to destroy everything that Job has” God is saying, “I wish you would understand how this makes sense from my perspective.” God’s wisdom is different than our wisdom and He knows that. So when trials occur and we’re sitting there saying, “I don’t know why God is doing this”, He says to ask Him for His wisdom. And He will give us that wisdom without finding fault – so we don’t have to worry about looking stupid in front of God. He actually appreciates that we want to have joy through the trial and that we are turning to Him for understanding and hope for the future. But when we ask, we cannot go to God as if we are not sure that He really does know what He is doing. If we do, we go with doubt in our hearts and we now are unsure whether God really is in control or whether bad things are happening to us by chance or fate. If we don’t know that God is in control, then we are like a boat in the water without a rudder. We can’t direct ourselves and we find we are being tossed back and forth in whatever direction the waves and the wind decides to blow. People like this will not learn the lesson that God is trying to teach them in their trials and so the trial will be for no reason and will bring about other trials. A person going through all these trials and yet is not learning from God and maturing through these trials, will not receive anything from God. Because God is trying to give you something – deeper faith, maturity, the ability to persevere – but you aren’t getting it because you are not able to stand through the trial. |
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