Trials.
To our error we are quick to replace this word with false meaning. When we are
tried in our lives we can come under the illusion that we need reformed
circumstances. God’s end goal for the trials we face is not perfect
circumstances, for He is not especially concerned with our comfort. His desire, first and foremost, is to change what is within us, not around us.
At
the point of greatest intensity in the heat of the Refiner’s fire our true
perception of God makes its way to the surface. We will begin feeling anxiety, stress, or fear if our view of Him is not Truth, or in line with His Word. We make the mistake of trying to fix the
problem instead of fixing the perception we have of our God.
We
must draw near to the Father so that He may replace our faulty view of Him with
His redeeming Truth. We must ask Him to reveal the way we truly see Him, so that He
may correct it. When we have revelation of who He is, by it we see everything
else. His truth completely transforms the way we view our world and all that it holds.
This includes our trials.
It is not about our circumstances. It is about our relation to Him in the
midst of them. We see this so clearly in the life of Job. Job
loved and feared the Lord. Yet, God saw within his heart the way Job actually
saw Him. The Lord allowed the enemy to work against his life, with restrictions.
As
Job’s fiery trials raged against his life, the beliefs in his heart began to
rise to the surface. He cried, “It profits a man nothing that he should delight
in God.” God
replied through His servant Elihu and says,
“Job
speaks without knowledge, his words are without wisdom. Oh, that Job were tried
to the utmost, because his answers are like those of wicked men!” Job 34:35-36
The
fire had revealed a false perception of who God is. And through his distorted view of God, Job saw all things. Then,
God revealed Himself to Job. He challenged Job’s perception of Him and replaced
it with Truth. Job cried out, “I have heard of You by the hearing of
the ear, but now my eye sees you.” Job repented and the Lord restored to
him twice what he had lost.
In
First Peter, chapter one, it says,
6In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have
had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7These have come so
that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined
by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when
Jesus Christ is revealed. 8Though you have not seen him, you
love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are
filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9for you are
receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
In
verse one of this chapter, Peter refers to his audience as ‘strangers of this
world.’ When we renew our minds so that they are set on the eternal, the
unseen, then our circumstances are irrelevant compared with the revelation of
who He is. Thank God He is more concerned with our eternal well-being than than the temporal!
17For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
pray that we as the body can be content in all things, trust in all things, and
put our full confidence in Him, because we know who our God is. I pray that our
eyes, like Job, see Him. And that we are able to rejoice, that through trials and tribulations, we have greater revelation of the person Jesus Christ.
