Trials can make, not break you...
Think Moses and the 40 years as a shepherd, think Joseph and the jail, or just think YOU and what you presently endure...
Trials are not punishment. They look like it, and you might feel that way, but God is doing HIS work in you. Not that this helps in the midst of them. Those two great men did not think so either. Nor has a myriad of other saints along the way.
The outcome? Only He can say. He insists on being beyond our questioning at this point, as any reader of the Bible book of Job will grasp.
The process of that inner work, though, needs Him as well, if His purposes are to be attained. Sustaining strength and enduring hope, faith in His loving work despite what is felt, are the pillars of that inner cathedral. Job puts it best:
I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!
Job 19:35-27And Paul continues the theme at the end of his long service:
That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no cause for shame, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.
2 Timothy 1:12He will guard our entrusted life. If you have entrusted all that you are to Him, then He will bring you through, no matter what the outcome is called by the world or what it seems to your eyes.
Even death can then be glorious. Salvation and being in His presence!
To become of greater use in your world, the best option for our suffering in our eyes, is also a glorious gift. But we are not ready to occupy it for whatever reason the Lord alone knows. Thus, the preparation that this trial brings.
If you have yet to entrust yourself to Him, then do so now. He will lead you to Himself. And what greater good can there be than that...
If you have given your life to Him, then turn to Him now. He will lead you to Himself. And what greater good is there than that?
The answer is the same for us all. HE IS the greater good for one and all, and creates a greater good both in and through us. Trust Him, and trust this to be the outcome--His outcome.
About author
A retired teacher of English as a foreign language, she loves classical music, hiking in nature, reading, and writing.
She is married to her marvelous husband, Adam, and loves their two children, with two rambunctious toddler grandchildren completing the joy of family.
God has given her countless opportunities to see His goodness through the years together with the challenges life has brought. Those lessons are the subject of her writing.Show less