Today’s Trials are Tomorrow’s Victories

Romans 8:28-39

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. 

31What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

 

We often struggle with why the people of God go through so much suffering and trials.  Some might say it is because they don’t have enough faith or they must have sin in their lives.  I tend to believe that it is often the sweetest and most precious grapes that make the best wine, but in order for them to offer up their vintage taste and sweet fragrance they must first be crushed.  Suffering and trials have been the plight and portion of many a saint.  It is not a new concept.  We struggle with that because we think in our hearts, even if we don’t outwardly say it, “God if you are sovereign then why don’t you deliver the afflicted and the suffering, especially those who are calling out to You?”  The victory of life in the natural and fleshly man is not always living in health, wealth and prosperity.  It is not about what we have in the good times of our life.  The true metal of a godly nature is tested in the fire.  All of our works will be tested in that fire at some point.  Some may be going through that fire right now.  Perhaps you are very weary; the enemy has assaulted your faith and your God.  Your friends may be like those that Job had, only content on you confessing your sins or shortcomings.  It takes a tremendously faithful person to go through the fires that God sometimes allows in our lives.  The real victory is not in whether or not we see our earthly deliverance; it is in how we live our lives in the midst of those trials.  God’s Word says in 1 Peter 1:7-9, “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see [him] not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, [even] the salvation of [your] souls.”  It is not the suffering and trials that God rejoices in, it is the faithfulness of His saints in the midst of it.  That faithfulness and praise in the midst of suffering is the sweet aroma and incense that rises into the heavens.  It is a sweet smelling savor unto the Father’s nostrils.  Nothing can speak louder to God that we love Him for who He is and not just what He can do, than our faithfulness in the midst of our suffering and trials.   

We know in our hearts that God’s arm is not short that He can not save, but nothing torments and discredits satan more than a Christian who will only honor and praise His God even when satan is twisting his arm behind his back.  What focuses us more on God’s grace and strength than our trials and tribulations?  In those places where we have no further human resources or help in the flesh to lean on, we learn to take hold of the grace of God.  We learn the patience to enter into His rest and know that these earthly vessels of clay and the very life that they we breath are in His hands.   Deuteronomy 32:39 says, “See now that I, [even] I, [am] he, and [there is] no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither [is there any] that can deliver out of my hand.” We have offered ourselves up into God’s hand to do as it pleases Him.  Our lives are for His glory and not for our own.  We struggle with the perspective of suffering and trials because we see it from a human standpoint.  Our view is the preservation of the natural life.  God’s view is not in the importance of the outward haul of the seed, but He is looking to the life within.  The threshing floor was a place of separation between wheat and chaff.  The outward man with this body is like the chaff.  The separation is really a claiming of the Christ nature and a revealing of it.  No one has the goods like the one has passed through the fire.   Their testimony is not one borne out of head knowledge; it is a witness of experience.  Before Job went through his trials he knew a lot about God and had a relationship with Him, but it didn’t compare with how he knew God when he went through the fire.  In the conclusion of what Job went through and after his discourse with the Almighty he says this in Job 42:1-6, “Then Job replied to the LORD: 2 “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. 3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. 4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ 5 My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. 6 Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.””  Many of us know about God, but it is only as we have gone through the fire that we come into a place where we have seen Him.  When we have seen Him, all foolish doubts and questionings cease and we repent in dust and ashes.  

God loves us.  We have been called out and set aside for a purpose.  He has predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son.  His Son learned obedience through the things that He suffered.  If you are in that place of suffering then God is only proving your faithfulness and your faithfulness is a mockery of the enemy.  He is raising you up in LIFE even when your body only seems to be experiencing death.  Lay hold of the resurrection and the Life within you and live out of Him.  His grace is sufficient and He will raise you up to the praise of His name.  Hold fast your faith, you are more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus!

 

Blessings,

#Kent

 

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Jesus Understands Your Humanity

Hebrews 4:14-16
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. 16Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Jesus Understands Your Humanity

The wonderful thing about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is that He doesn’t ask of us what He hasn’t been willing to walk out Himself as a man. He emptied Himself of glory so that might experience and walk in the weaknesses and the infirmities of our flesh. He knows what pain feels like. He knows what it is to have passions and longings for another person. He knows what it is to be rejected, ridiculed and be mocked. He knows what it feels like to be tempted and feel the urgings of the natural man. In every area Jesus was tried and tested so that He might thoroughly understand and identify with our infirmities and weaknesses.
Now that He has come back into His glory, who could be a better high priest to represent us before the Father. He who was tempted in every way and yet without sin. He knows perfectly both the God side and the human side of every thing that we face. Jesus doesn’t justify or condone our sin because we have been weak or have failed, but He does understand and sympathize with the struggles that we deal with. He stands as our high priest, not to condemn, but to reconcile us to the Father and His righteousness. His own righteous blood is what prevails as our righteousness when we confess our sin and turn our hearts toward Him. We have confidence before God because we are in Christ and His blood is reckoned unto as righteousness. Just as He once came to identify with us in our weakness, now He is bringing us to identify with Him in His strength, so that by that strength we might overcome and prevail.
Are you struggling in areas of your life today? Are you struggling with your trials, your temptations, your relationships or your own worth? Perhaps you’re dealing with strong feelings of condemnation and unworthiness because of the failures in your life. Jesus isn’t seeing you as a failure. His heart is tender toward you and His arms are open for you. The enemy uses our sin and shortcomings to convince us that God could never love us or accept us the way that we are, but that is the lie of the enemy. Jesus says, “ Come to me all of your who weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” Jesus is the merciful and compassionate One. He will give you grace and help you in your time of need, but you have to invite Him in. You have to open the door of your heart and come to Him just as you are. He is that master physician who is able to heal the wounded and broken hearted. He is the great psychiatrist who is able to minister to the mental torments and anguish you experience. It is by faith in who this Jesus is that you invite Him in and relinquish to Him your every struggle, failure, heartache, torment and sin. He is able to bring you rest and peace like none other and He is able to restore unto you the boldness to approach the throne of His grace with confidence and assurance. He is our great high priest and He loves us even where we are. His desire is to restore us to wholeness and righteousness in Him, so that we may know this ministry of His priesthood whereby we can have compassion and mercy on others as we lead them to Christ so that they may find mercy and grace in their time of need.

Blessings,
kent

Be Content

Hebrews 13:5
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

Be Content

The Lord was showing me something in the weather that pertains to our lives. We often think we want more of what we don’t have. With covetousness, the more we have the more that we want. Wealth and earthly provision is like the elements that come down from the heaven. When the earth is thirsty and dry, it needs rain. Often the best rain is a slow soaking rain that gives the earth time to absorb and take it in. If we need rain and get a huge down pour, we get more than we needed and it causes as much or more destruction than we had in our lack.
God brings the rain that we need in His season and His ways. Sometimes it might seem scarce and have long stretches in between, but as sure as He is God, it will come. Should we think that God cares any less for our earthen vessels? We see similar seasons in our lives; times of abundance and sometimes lack. The earth doesn’t fret over whether it will rain or not, but it learns to adapt to the season and the state that is in. The earth has yet to not have a seed time and harvest. Genesis 8:22 says, “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” …
God has never intended that we should be consumed with the love of money, wealth, power or fame. Our truest state of contentment is when we are walking in faith and trust in Him. That is not dictated by our bank account, our promotion or lack of it, our popularity or position or any other circumstance. Even Job makes the statement as tribulation rains down upon him, “shall I receive good at the hand of God and not evil?” Jesus says that God rains on the just and the unjust alike. We are a heavenly people waking and living in an earthly state. While in this state we are subject to the laws and the state of affairs that happen in our natural world.
Jesus said in John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Jesus was an overcomer. He overcame His natural circumstances by His faith and obedience to the Father. Likewise, He has told us that we also are overcomers and you can’t be an overcomer unless you have something to overcome. We might visualize overcoming as emptying hospitals of the sick, raising the dead, bringing great deliverance and saving the nations. You may think, “I am not overcomer because I have so many trials, problems, sicknesses or bills that I may question if God even still remembers me.” The truth is, that is exactly what you are if you are keeping your eyes upon Jesus and continuing to walk in faith and trust in Him. Sure you are not seeing great miracle in and through your life. In fact, your physical state may be testifying against God being in your life, but before an overcomer can manifest into the fruitfulness and fullness of the seed within them, they first must be as the seed that is hidden in the ground and dies. You are the caterpillar that has ceased to devour and partake of this earth. You entered into your cocoon stage where you are hidden and dormant. As far as the outside world is concerned, you might as well be dead. But wait……….
You not dead, you are in a state of transformation, changing from the earthly to the heavenly state of being. There may well be no fanfare or outward evidence. When, in due season, you emerge from that difficult state of faith and obedience in the face of multiple difficulties, you shall spread your wings and fly, whether in this world or that to come. You will no longer be bound to earth but when you touch earth it will be for the purpose of perpetuating and cross-pollinating the life of God in Christ Jesus. When Job emerged from his season of tribulation, through his faithfulness, he came into a double portion of all of the greatness and riches that he had before.
Let us not set our affections upon the things of this world, for they are soon to perish and pass away. Let us, with diligence and faithfulness, pursue Christ, which is our life, our peace and our power to overcome in this world.
“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” — God

Blessings,
kent