“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
Grace can be uncomfortable. So often, in the middle of hardships, we long to know where grace is. But God tells us, ‘you’re right in the middle of it’. This is the grace of refinement. Do not make the mistake of looking at the storms of life as God’s negligence or absence, for it is quite the opposite. God is always in the storms. The storms will indeed come, James says “whenever” we face trials, not “if” we face trials.
Trials reveal what the foundation of out lives are built upon. What are the idols that we chase? What do we seek to bring happiness? When these idols and placeholders crumble under the storms of life, we have only our Savior to lean on and His grace is sufficient for us. The realization is that the steadfast love of Jesus is the only thing that we have and the only things that our lives should be built on and around.
The grace of trials and storms is not relieving or releasing, but refining. It is the grace that strips away all encumbrances and allowed us to purified in the Lord. This grace shows us our sins and shows even more clearly God’s grace to wash those sins away. But the process can be painful and long. Its difficult to find joy in these trials when the means are so painful, but we focus on Jesus who is with us in the storms, and the refining that will make us more like Him.
I have a hard time being able to focus on the good that will come out of the trials, because I’m so focused on myself. I tend to focus more on my pain and my suffering rather than the immense grace that will attend me when the clouds break. How blind am I, who have seen God’s graces time and time again, to again only see my suffering.
God does not minimize out suffering through the storms, but he maximizes who He is in the midst of them. And when the storms do come, we must focus our eyes on the Lord, on His steadfastness, His deliverance, and His constancy.
“There are some of your graces which would have never been discovered if it were not for your trials”. – C.H. Spurgeon
