The Various Trials Part 2

It is quite possible that a trial which might serve to make you stronger and more dependent upon God would fell me to the ground with minimal effort. The reason our trials vary is because we as human beings vary. In His love and all-knowing wisdom God does not send the same trials over one and all, because the purpose of the trials He allows in our lives is not to tear us down but to build us up. Trials come upon us to make us stronger, to teach us dependence upon God, and to show us that we can overcome through He who promised us victory.

God knows every single one of us intimately. He knows what we can endure, He knows how much heat we can take, and He brings us to that point wherein we are refined, tested, and purified, but not destroyed, broken or disillusioned.

God does not give us trials equal to our strength or ability to overcome them, He gives us strength and ability to overcome equal to the trials we are facing.

To some God gives strength to overcome financial trials, others He gives strength overcome physical trials, others He gives strength to overcome family trials, trials on the job, traitorous friends, and the list goes on. Whatever trial we are facing, we must acknowledge the strength to overcome comes from above. Our strength comes from God, not of ourselves, and so when we do overcome, when finally we’ve come through the valley and out the other side, we cannot glory in our own strength but rather glory in His strength.

Another universal truth concerning trials is that they are passing. ‘For a little while’ we are grieved by various trials, but just as the sun rises every morning and sets every evening, our trials will pass eventually. Granted, when you are in the midst of a trial it seems as though no end is in sight, and each minute seems like an eternity, but the nature of trials is that they come and that they go. Yes, new ones will come, but those too will pass, and every trial becomes a memory sooner or later. With each trial, with each hardship, with each testing we will be all the more refined, all the more mature, all the more rooted in our God and Father and that is God’s intent in allowing these things to come upon us.

Another great benefit of the various trials we are called upon to endure, is that what we thought of as insurmountable as little as a year, or a few months ago, now seems easily scalable, and beatable. Looking back on the trials we’ve had to endure, looking back on the trials we’ve had to get through, we realize that they seemed much bigger as we were going through them than they were in reality.

At the time we could not see our way out, at the time we could not see how we would be victorious, at the time we could not see how we would endure to the end, yet we did, and when the next trial comes, when the next tribulation begins, we will remember the previous trial and realize we will get through these as well.

When our faith is small, our trials seem to be on par and of the same scale. When our faith grows and matures, out trials likewise seem to grow, because they have to keep abreast of our faith, or our faith needs to keep abreast of our trials. Either way, live with the expectation of an increase in the intensity of your trials as you mature and grow in God.

I must confess I used to be one who did not welcome the notion of trials in my life. That is until the day I had an epiphany of sorts and realized that the greater the trial, the greater God’s trust that you will not break beneath the weight of said trial. When I realized that my trials are God’s way of entrusting me with more of His grace, when I realized that my trials were God’s way of telling me He sees the growth and the maturing, I began to welcome my trials knowing their good end.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.