Trials Can Be Blessings

"But smooth living invaribaly, eventually, makes for sloppy spirituality."
~ Beth Moore
Get Out of That Pit

When trials come I think that sometimes God is just pulling our hearts closer to His. He is calling our names, trying to get our attention. Our God is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5) and He wants nothing in our lives to consume us more than He does. We should look at hard times, not as punishment or as some message from God that He no longer loves or cares about us, but as a message from Him calling us to allow Him to walk with us, and be our strength when we have none.

If you are speaking about parenting, true love for one's child demands you to discipline them (Proverbs 13:24). God's love is the purest form of love, if He tells us that true love requires discipline, then you can be sure that as His children, He will chasten us from time to time, because He loves us. I am not saying He won't, but whether He does or not hard times will come. It is just a fact of life, and when those rough times come to us we will likely long for instantaneous deliverance but God may not grant it. He longs for us to be draw closer to Him, whatever it may take. Even if this means that we must struggle for a while to overcome.

If we were to always keep Him first, perhaps the trials would not last so long and would be fewer, or at least we would not mind because our hearts would be so full and overflowing with love for Him that nothing else would matter.

Complaining when hard times, temptations, come is a natural occurrence to many, but if we look deep enough we will discover that we were tempted because we were weak, we were weak, because life had been going smoothly and we begin to think we could do it ourselves, and in failing to put God first, we fell. We hated our self, we were tempted to be angry with God for not making us strong enough, we were ashamed, hurting, and in time, crying out to God for forgiveness and deliverance. We cried out to God. We drew closer to Him. Think about it. If weakness brings you closer to God, than trials can be a blessing.