Trials Are Good

Quite often, when we ask the question “Why?” we imply that something hasn’t gone the way we expected or the way it should have gone. We imply that a mistake has been made, and we need an explanation. 

We don’t direct our “Why?” questions only to each other. We direct them to God as well, and that is okay. He has the answers for all of them. We might not agree with His answers at the time, but He helps us see things His way eventually.  

Let us consider this: if, without asking God, we always had what we needed, and things always went our way, when would we express dependence upon Him for anything or express faith in Him? After all, He admonishes us to “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28 NIV). When would we ever ascribe our successes to His power and grace? Success would be all about us. All the glory would be ours and ours alone. We would claim, “I did this,” and “I did that,” and “I did the other, too.”  

If we didn’t have issues we could take to God, how would we know He could fix them? Had He fixed them before we ever asked Him, He would not receive any glory from us for fixing them. So, God allows trials in our lives to direct us to Himself and His awesome power. In fact, down here on earth, we will have troubles again and again, but they are good for us.

When things get rough, let us go to Him, not to ask why, but to express confidence in His ability to take charge, and work them out for our good.   

Rough times are God’s invitation and reminder for us to trust Him and lean on Him. Those hard experiences are times to be still and know that He is God (Psalms 46:10). When we lean on Him, He intervenes in unimaginable ways to demonstrate how much He cares about us.

God does not take pleasure in our pain, struggles, hurts or difficulties. Rather, He uses these situations to redirect us to Himself, because He is interested in a deeper relationship with each one of His children. May God help us to see suffering, pain, disappointments, and the like from His perspective, and to be thankful. Job did!

Things will not go smoothly all the time. Otherwise we would try to claim for ourselves the glory that is due Him. He has already said “I will not give my glory to another” (Isaiah 42:8 NIV84). NO EXCEPTIONS!