Bottom Line:
You will be temporarily harassed by trials and troubles, this isn’t an accident, it helps to prove and show your genuine faith, which is more valuable than gold.
What this means to me:
The trials and troubles I face won’t last forever and they don’t just happen by accident. They exist so that I can build and exhibit a genuine faith, a faith that is more valuable than gold or money.
What I’m learning is that life is not a series of random, freak accidents. Life is not totally unplanned. Life is not without meaning. God knows what’s going on. I don’t know how he does it, but he weaves the tapestry of my life, and it has light and dark threads, happy and sad times, to give richness and texture and color to my life. Nothing can come into the life of a child of God without God’s permission. Everything is Father‑filtered.
This doesn’t mean that everything that happens to me is God’s perfect will. There are a lot of things that are not God’s will. If I go out and sin, that’s not God’s will. If somebody sins against me, that’s not God’s perfect will.
But God does have a permissive will. For instance If I go out and I overeat, I pay the consequences. If I go out and wreck my body, I’ll pay the consequences. God does not cause evil and God does not cause suffering. But he does allow them because they have a purpose. God permits them, and then he uses them.
God is an expert at bringing good out of bad. He could have kept Paul out of prison in Philippi, but instead he let Paul go to prison, and the jailer became a believer as a result. God could have kept Jesus from the cross, but he let him go. He let his own Son suffer and die. He brought a lot of good out of that!
God loves to turn crucifixions into resurrections. The things I wish were most removed from my life are often the very things that God is using to shape me and make me into the believer he wants me to be. He wants to use a problem for good in my life. There’s something more important than my pain. It’s what I’m learning from that pain. God is in control.
My response should be to look past the pain. That is why I should never give up. “Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever” (2 Corinthians 4:16-17 NLT).
In summary, the trials and troubles I face won’t last forever and they don’t just happen by accident. They exist so that I can build and exhibit a genuine faith and trust in Him. It is a faith that is more valuable than gold or money. I know from my own experience that God will take the troubles and problems I face and use them to build my faith. This verse reminds me that my faith is more valuable than any high valued object, such as gold. Thank you God for using the things I face for a purpose. The big medical problem I faced last year allowed me to feel your protection and build my faith that you would take care of me and see me through it, and you did. Still I find it interesting that you take a life threatening illness and heal it quickly, but still leave me with psoriatic arthritis to work through probably the rest of my life. I’ve come to accept, like Paul had said that you will use this situation in my life to keep my faith exercised and to do things in your strength and not my own. I need to continue to look at whatever trial or difficulty I face as an opportunity to shape me and make me into the believer and representative he wants me to be. He will use whatever problem I have to teach me and allow me to remember the He is in control.
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