Originally published Wednesday, 20 January 2016.
Life is good.
Life is great.
Life is manageable.
Until it breaks down at it's core and the serial killer of joy, (aka your trial) comes back to haunt you again.
Ever noticed that what hit you yesterday,
still threatens to come after you today?
Same vein, different day, but all the same pain.
It threatens to hurt you like it did.
It threatens to arrive when you least expect.
It threatens you with the same feelings of yesterday.
It threatens you into fearing like you once did.
It threatens to pop right out of your bushes, saying "Now is the time to hit!"
Then you hear the smallest rustle of the bushes makes you think, "I am doomed."
A resemblance to his tactics of yesterday make you cower, "I can't."
The scars of past cut deep, making you say, "Why me?"
Why does God allow our beaten evil to return?
Why doesn't he annihilate them and say, "You can never touch my child again"?
Paul said, Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 2 Cor. 12:7
7 Likely Reasons Why God is Allowing your Trial
1. To keep you humble.
Pride goes before the fall (Prov. 16:8). If Paul had fallen, Christianity would not have risen. If Christianity did not rise, it easily could have meant our demise.
2. To keep you in training.
Olympic runners aren't built without sprinting through walls, forging through exhaustion and getting up again when they want to quit. It is in the pain that we find our greatest spiritual gains - to become more and more like Christ.
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Ja. 1:2-3
3. To gift you with the grace of God.
It often takes the face of crisis to see the smile of God's grace over you. It is here you learn to stop saying things like, "I oughta", "Why can't I?" and "I should have". Instead a quiet and gentle prodding arises within; it is one that begins to know "with God, all is possible", "no weapon forged against me shall prosper" and "I am a work in progress and I will get there".
4. To make you start thinking spiritually, not carnally.
When you have nothing left, you start to see all that is left - and all that matters - God. Sometimes the stripping, is much more about clothing you with Spirit things than it is about hurting your earthly things and body.
Strip yourselves of your former nature.… And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind [having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude]. Eph. 4:22-23 (AMP)
5. To show you growth.
When you hit bad, you can start to see the forming of your good. Meaning, you see how less anxious you are, how less worried you feel and how much more you know God will take care of you. It becomes a cause for praise.
6. To change things in your unseen.
We forget that while we are living our song, God is conducting a blaring orchestra with moving instruments around us. All rise up to sing, "Glory to God on the highest and peace to his people on earth"! Our sound may play odd, but in the grand scheme of his leading, all things are working together just as he wants them to. Things are being accomplished. People are being reached. Lives are changing. We just don't know what he knows.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. Is. 55:8
7. To develop you into eternal gold, not rotting dollar bills.
When delivered, what emerges from the rot of a once selfish body? Praise. Glory. Honor. Things that are worthy, valuable and eternal.
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 Pet. 1:7
God uses what is coming to get you, not to ruin you, but to make you.
Get all Purposeful Faith blog posts by email - click here.
Join Kelly on her blog, Purposeful Faith, on Twitter and on Facebook.
SHARE
