2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever
you face trials of many kinds, 3 because
you know that the testing of your faith produces
perseverance. 4 Let
perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and
complete, not lacking anything.
James 1:2-4
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3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his
great mercy He has given us new birth into a
living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and
into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This
inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who
through faith are shielded by God’s power until
the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the
last time. 6 In all
this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may
have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These
have come so that the proven genuineness of your
faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may
result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
1 Peter 1:5-7
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What do you do in times of
trial? I can tell you one thing. The last things on my list when I face most trials
are joy and praise. It is true that we
as Christians face many trials in many different shapes and sizes and colors
and nastiness. Today I was faced with a
trial that I never thought I would have to face. Everything in me wants to write down the
whole account and tell you how the other person was wrong and I am right but
that isn't what matters. I am not
writing this because I want to redeem myself, I am writing this because through
the pain and heartache of this particular trial I learned something. First I remembered that I am not a perfect
person (actually I remember that on a daily basis), I saw how my sin affected
someone else, I saw how Satan takes little bitty things and makes them explode
into a nasty nasty ugly mess. As I was dwelling
on how hurt I was by the situation I realized that this pain was good, but dwelling in it would not help anything. God was using this incident to refine me in
the fire. He was using this pain to
clean out the sin in my life and make me pure.
I never fully understood the verses in James and 1 Peter until now. I can consider this trial pure joy because
while yes it still hurts and it isn't even over yet, I know that as long as I
pray before I act and seek God's will I will come out of it refined, the genuineness
of my faith will be proven and for that I give God all the praise, glory and
honor.
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