Actual Benefits from Life's Trials

As Christmas came and gone. We are heading to a NEW YEAR and that people will start thinking of their own "resolutions" that often fail every year. Any self-efforts kind of resolution in your life, you will find it more easy to be entangled by the world's sin. In this world, we are to arm ourselves spiritually to wrestle against the world, the devil and the flesh. God is asking Christians to surrender their own selfish little kingdom and look on His eternal Kingdom. No matter "what" a person have, the key is knowing "WHO" you are "inside" as Christ see you as you are eternally (spiritually).

This sinful earth is characterized by what is temporal as people can "see" that fulfills their desires, but what is for time only, what is physical, what is passing, what ultimately will be destroyed. I have learned to understand that while God wants me to be Spirit-filled that God's desire that I should reflect His own holiness and goodness (not my own flesh's efforts). My own effort is connected with the flesh, while spiritual effort is connected with the Spirit. As the Spirit moves and leads, we are to respond moment by moment, step by step, and day by day, relying on His power and direction by faith through His grace.

We can answer like Joseph to his brothers who sold him into slavery, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” Even though I was legally disabled (deaf since birth by nerve damage in the inner ear),and I also have Relapsing-remitting Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS) (Diagnosed in April 2002). The trials that the Lord allows into our lives to strengthen us can also become temptations, which, rather than being a means to spiritual growth. Every act of giving on God's part and every gift He gives is sufficient, lacking nothing, beneficial, and complete.

Trials come to us to teach us to value the blessing of God from His perspective to enable us to help others in their suffering and to make us better able to assist others in their own suffering. In the book of James, the entire letter is about living faith during trials and list the tests intended to reveal the legitimacy of someone's faith. The VERY first test is the test of severe trials which means that we need to understand the strength or the genuineness of our own faith. Trials cannot destroy true faith; they only put it to the test and strengthen it as in spiritual training. True "sanctification" is only through the Holy Spirit who produce the evidence of my own true spiritual condition, humility and intimacy with God that my flesh CANNOT DO. You only can get true sanctification through God's GRACE. Jesus said in John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. Christian faith is inward, not outward because we are in the spirit and not in the flesh. I don't have anything to spell the "entail" of my spiritual effort except grace. God uses suffering to perfect His "Power is perfected (grace) in weakness". Grace of heart is a gift from God and this has nothing to do with the thorns because God is changing me internally so that He to lift me above my present thorns and He will lead me into His will.

I am going to have to start with King David, learning from King David's experiences, God met David in his heart. So, we need to focus on the "heart of the matter". "David son of Jesse is a man after my own heart, for he will do everything I want him to do." Acts 13:22 & 1 Samuel 13:14 (NLT).