Form of our Test, Trials, and Temptations
James 1:2,3
I heard about a pastor who placed this sign on his door: "If you have problems, come in and tell me all about them. If you don’t have any problems, come in and tell me how you avoid them."
In my opinion, verses 2-4 are some of the most enlightening and encouraging words in the Bible for those that are experiencing trials in their life. The passage before us teaches us that trials should not be viewed as a foe but as a friend.
God chooses what we go through; we choose how we go through it. The trials work for our good and God’s glory.
As we journey through life we can expect trials or test to our faith. The Christian life is filled with the ministry of trials.
A boy entered a grocery store and asked the grocer for a box of Duz detergent. The grocer was puzzled and asked why he wanted a box of Duz. The boy said that he was going to wash his cat. The grocer said, “Youlg man, you shouldn’t wash your cat with this kind of soap.” However, the boy insisted that it would be okay.
A few days later, the boy returned, and grocer asked the cat. “Oh, he died,” said the boy. The grocer said, “Well, son. I warned you not to wash your cat with Duz detergent.” The boy replied, “The soap did not hurt him a bit. It was the spin cycle that got him.” It is the spin cycle of trials that often get us.
Trials are only passing experiences! The trials of our
pilgrimage only last “for a season”. Times of heaviness do visit us but they do not come to stay.
Trials are very purifying experiences! If we properly respond to God’s purposes for the trials, we can believe with the patriarch, “But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).
ADVERSITY IS THE DIAMOND DUST HEAVEN POLISHES
ITS JEWELS WITH.
Trials are always preparing experiences!
There is a reason for the trials. There is a need for the trial. See I Peter 5:12. The enduring of the trial makes you what you are. I hear people say that they hope their children don’t have to experience the hardships they went through. I don’t agree with that statement. Those hardships made you what you are.
Every trial that finds its way into our life came with intentional purpose.
Young Christian was attempting to get into the peach growing business. He had worked hard and invested everything he had in a peach orchard which had blossomed beautifully, but then came a
frost, and it destroyed his entire crop. He did not go to church the next Sunday nor the next. So his pastor went to see him to find out why. The young fellow said, "Pastor I’m not coming to church any
more. Do you think I can worship a God who cares so little for me that He would let a frost kill all of my peaches?"
The preacher looked at him for a few moments in silence, and then said so kindly, "Son, God loves you better than He loves your peaches. You see God understands that while peaches can grow
without frost, men cannot grow without trials. God is not in the business of growing peaches. He’s in the business of growing Christians.”
It takes the trial of faith to mature Christians. Trials / test are the very soil in which we grow!
I believe we can expect the trials or test to come in the form of one of three classes or groups. To know and recognize these will help us come out on the side of victory.
I. Trials / test of the marvelous
There will be trials or test that are resulted to the mountain-top experiences of great successes.
It takes special grace for those days because we tend to grow proud and drunken with the wine of our victories.
See II Chronicles 26:15,16 .
The trial of prosperity is too often overlooked. When a man is permitted to increase in wealth, what a trial of faith is hidden away in this condition.
Adversity has slain its thousands but prosperity has slain its ten-thousands. When a person has been blessed financially, I have yet to hear one request that the church pray for them that they might be preserved.
II. Trials / test of the monotonous
Trials of the daily grind of life. It takes great grace for the weeks and months when nothing much happens and life sinks into a routine. It takes grace to remain faithful in the humdrum.
There are trials / test of the same old same old.
Monotony - "Same old same old disease" kills more Christians than persecution. There is trials or test as to whether we will just stay faithful?
When I think of routine that which we are used to, I am reminded of a guy in a taxi who wanted to speak to the driver so he leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder. The driver screamed, jumped up in the air and yanked the wheel over. The car mounted the curb, demolished a lamppost and came to a stop inches from a shop window.
The startled passenger said, "I didn’t mean to frighten you, I just wanted to ask you something."
The Taxi driver said, "It’s not your fault sir. It’s my first day as a cabdriver. I’ve been driving a hearse for the past 25 years!"
There will be the trails of the monotonous and the mundane.
III. Trials / test of the mysterious
When things happened that just don’t make sense. Trials when it seems like God has forgotten us. There are trials when nothing works out according to all our little plans.
Instead of a storybook ending, all crashes in on us in an unexplainable confusion. Trials that happen and it seems like we just cannot find God anywhere.
Job experienced this time of trial. He just could not understand it what was going on.
Paul knew all three groups of trials. He had the heaven exaltation, the daily care of the churches, and the thorn in the flesh to try him.
Conclusion:
A preacher was delivering a sermon before a large congregation. He pointed out that believers aren’t exempt from trouble. In fact, some Christians are surrounded by trouble — trouble to the right, trouble to the left, trouble in front, and trouble behind. At this, a man who had served the Lord for many years, shouted, "Glory to God, it’s always open at the top!"
To improve your outlook in trials, try the up look.
May we always be looking to the Lord as we journey through this life with its trials and test.
