“Count it ALL JOY, my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
This past season of my life I feel like myself and many around me have met multiple trials of various kinds.
I personally have had a mix of perspectives on each trial. Sometimes, it’s easy to look at them and feel like you’re not growing because of this something that seems like its holding you back.
But that’s not the perspective the Bible seems to have.
Count it ALL — all the trials, all parts of the trials, all of it — JOY. Joy? Why?
Because you can KNOW that the testing of your faith DOES PRODUCE steadfastness.
There is growth.
And LET — allow the growth don’t stunt it — steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Those things don’t happen naturally. My moping around not pressing on or not falling at the feet of Jesus is not going to grow me.
It’s a work. It’s a process. However, those results are possible.
I know that I needed to know this. I needed to know that the purpose of my trials are not to hold me back or down forever. The purpose of my trials are not to drown me. Maybe they’re there to help me realize who I am and Who I need to run to. They’re to make me perfect and lacking in nothing.
What an unbelievable hope to have through the hard times in our lives.
Not only is it a hope, but a command. It isn’t a good suggestion for how you should face trials but rather the best way to face them, THE way to encounter them. The other ways that seem so natural to us, so evident, sometimes so justified don’t make the cut here.
I am determined, by the strength of CHRIST ALONE, to grow from trials.