trials

Life with our Lord is a life of blessings interspersed with trials. We know He tries our hearts so that they will become pure, like refined gold (Job 23:10; 1 Pet 1:7). But our trials are about more than our hearts.


What we do reveals what is in our heart. That is why the Lord spoke in His parables about what His servants did. If they did good, they received a good reward. And if they did bad, they received a bad reward. In fact, when Jesus returns He is coming to reward us for what we did in our body (Mt 16:27; Rev 2:23), not for what we thought in our heads nor what we believed upon or felt about in our hearts.

Our trials perfect us in works, in thinking, and they purify our hearts. Though Job was a righteous man, the Lord tried him in the furnace of affliction and adversity. God trusted His work in Job, and Job said that, though God slay him, he would put his hope in Him (Job 13:15). All that Job’s trials brought up in him God covered in His love when Job humbled himself.

We can do the good things that come across our way and think well of ourselves. But when the fire of affliction is turned up, we see that we are not so good at all. We wrestle with bad thoughts, and it becomes harder to do what is right. God, in His love, is preparing us little by little for the big tests to come. He lovingly brings out our weaknesses so that we may ask Him for His strength. He brings up sin so that we may ask anew for grace. He brings up pride so that we will return to true humility.

God is faithful to bring up every sin and wrong attitude in us, bit by bit, so that we will overcome our enemy, the flesh, and the world. He is not trying to defeat us. God’s plan is to make us more than conquerors. He knows us through and through and is aware of what will cause us to stumble before we stumble upon it. Does He make clear the rocky path before us? Yes, by turning the fire up in our souls . . . by forcing impurities to the top where we can see them . . . and by giving us the spirit of repentance to turn our hearts to Him and thereby find that our souls have become sealed in His grace. That is how He removes the things that will cause us to stumble, for they are inside, not outside. We overcome by that preparation which lives in us, Jesus Christ the Righteous.

What shall we do then when we have come through our trials, but glory in the preparation that lives in us. Our works will become His works, and we shall receive our reward. Amen.