Why Good People Suffer - Part Three
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Patricia Jones, M.A.
Articles by Patricia Jones, M.A.
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God will be 100% with you during the trial
Some of the trials and tribulations that you may have to face may have some duration. These trials and tribulations will obviously vary in how long each of them will last. Some will only last a few days, others a few weeks, some even longer at several months, and then you will have those on the more burdensome side that can last a certain number of years.
No matter how long each of these trials will end up being, these next set of verses will really drive home the point that God will be with you from the very beginning of the trial to the very end of it. He will stick with you through thick and thin. He will totally be by your side no matter what goes down and no matter how ugly things may get from time to time.
If your trial is going to have any considerable duration, you will really need to have faith and believe on the verses listed below, as they will help you stay the course to the very end of it.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me." (Psalm 23:4)
"Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me! For my soul trusts in You; and in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge, until these calamities have passed by." (Psalm 57:1)
"The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. And those who know Your name will put their trust in You; for You, Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You." (Psalm 9:9)
For true Christians, this verse has major meaning, as we all know that no matter how bad and dreadful the valley is that we are walking through, that our Lord will always be there with us and will help comfort and take care of us as we walk through this valley.
Notice the last two verses are telling us that God will also be our refuge as we are counting the hours waiting for the trial to end.
Waiting on the Lord
As a result of some of these trials and tribulations having some kind of considerable length to them, there will be many times that the only thing left for us to do after we have done all of the battling that the Lord has wanted us to do, is to simply wait for Him to finally end it.
"The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord." (Lamentations 3:25)
"I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord!" (Psalm 27:13-14)
"For evildoers shall be cut off; but those who wait on the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while and the wicked shall be no more ..." (Psalm 37:9)
"Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy." (Psalm 126:5)
O Lord my God, I cried out to You, and You have healed me. O Lord, You have brought my soul up from the grave; You have kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit ... For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning." (Psalm 30:2,5)
As the last two verses are telling us, you may start the trial up with tears and mourning, but eventually you will end up reaping joy in the morning if you hold fast to the Lord and wait for His deliverance.
God Will Eventually Deliver You
Most trials and tribulations will have to last for awhile, otherwise they would not be real trials. As a result, you will have to hold fast to the Lord for a certain length of time.
If you are thrown into any type of waiting mode with the Lord while going through a trial, the one thing you will have to hang onto is that the Lord can and will eventually deliver you if you continue to put all of your faith and trust in Him to do so - and hold that faith and trust in Him to the very end of the trial.
First, that absolutely nothing is too impossible for God to deal with or handle - no matter how grave, no matter how hopeless and no matter how severe your present set of circumstances may be. These are the kinds of verses you will really need to believe in when faced with trials and tribulations that are on the more severe side. Remember - God can eventually work all things out for His and your own good, which will include handling any severe trials that may have come your way.
Second, the other set of verses will tell you that God can eventually deliver you from the trial if you hold fast to Him. Though you may get really impatient while waiting for your deliverance, remember that God is working patience and other godly qualities and traits into your spirit during the course of your trial. As a result, He will be the One to decide how long the trial will last - not you or the trial itself. God has full control of every little thing on this earth, including you and every little detail of your life.
"For with God nothing will be impossible." (Luke 1:37)
But He said, "The things which are impossible with men are possible with God." (Luke 18:27)
But Jesus looked at them and said to them, "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:26)
Then Jesus said to him, "If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes." (Mark 9:23)
"Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble, and He brings them out of their distresses. He calms the storm, so that its waves are still. Then they are glad because they are quiet; so He guides them to their desired haven." Psalm 107:28)
"You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself." (Exodus 19:4)
"For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us ..." (2 Corinthians 1:8)
"And the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before ... Now the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning ..." (Job 42:10,12)
The last verse is talking about what God did with Job. This man probably had one of the most severe testing's any man could possibly go through in this life. And yet he held fast to the Lord with his faith and in his personal relationship with Him. As result, God ended the trial and gave him twice the amount of blessings than what he had when he first entered into the trial.
Notice verse number six, where it says that the Lord can deliver you out of "all" of your troubles, not just some or part of them.
Two types of Trials that can come into our lives.
There are two types of trials that can come our way in this life. The first kind are those that are being "allowed" by the Lord to come our way for our own sanctification in Him and for the testing of our faith in Him as all of the above Scripture verses are telling us.
The second type of trials are those that are not coming from the Lord. These are trials that are coming our way as a result of something that we may not be doing right in Him. These we bring on ourselves and they are not from God.
Knowing that we sometimes can cause our own trials in our lives, it would be prudent to not go out of our way to tempt God to see how far we can push Him. Thinking that he is not serious about what he has identified for us as SIN is a huge mistake. You cannot mock God. We will sow what we reap, etc.
Again, God does not like to use these kinds of extreme measures, but if that is the only way in which He can reach you and wake you up, He will do it. As a result, you will always have a certain number of Christians who will push the envelope way too far with the Lord and as a result, will force Him to release unnecessary trials and tribulations down on not only them, but sometimes on those that may be close to them, like immediate family members and close friends.
How do you handle these trials?
With all of the above verses telling us that we will all have to face a certain amount of trials and tribulations in this life, you will now have to learn how to deal with them.
The Bible tells us that God's people can perish for having lack of knowledge - and not having the right kind of knowledge on how to deal with trials can cause you to get into major trouble and possibly extend the length of the trial longer than God intended for you to.
Many, many trials and tribulations can easily be avoided and stopped right at your doorstep if you can just learn to say no and refuse to get involved in some situation at all.
2. Hold your position - God will fight the battle for you
The second strategy is that at times you will have to do absolutely nothing. All you will have to do is just stand still and God will fight the battle for you.
A perfect example of this is what happened to Moses and the Israelites in the parting of the Red Sea. No sooner does God get them delivered from the Pharaoh and free them from Egypt then they find themselves before the Red Sea with nowhere else to go.
Many times, you will find that "waiting on God" will be the hardest thing you ever had to do. Because you can think of all kinds of ways to end your trial. And many times we say "the heck with it" and either give up or try to take matters into our own hands, and that is when we can REALLY mess things up. When we do this we interfere with God's plan and what He was trying to teach us in the trial that we are in the middle of.
This is when you have to be very discerning and learn to listen for His guidance and His voice so that you don't lengthen the trial and make things more worse for yourself. Most of the time we realize when we have come to a "dead end" and nothing works to take away our pain. When you reach an impasse, that is when you are "To stand still and wait on God." This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible because when we come to this point in our trial, we finally realize that ONLY GOD can fix this, or get us out of it.
So learn to "Stand still" and wait for God to work on your behalf. I have found that when I can do this, God does something much better than I could have ever thought of to solve the problem. It is amazing to watch God in action and miracles can happen this way if we can just learn to stay out of God's way and watch Him work. It is called "Trusting God" to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
This is why it is so vital that you learn how to be led by the Holy Spirit, so that you can know when to refuse to engage, when to just stand still and let God make the next move, or when to directly engage with the trial.
3. Directly engage with the trial you are facing.
Though there will be plenty of times that God will either have you totally evade and stay away from the problem attempting to come against you, or simply stand still and do nothing while He takes complete care of it for you - However, there will be other times that He will have you face it head on yourself, operating under His guidance, His power and His anointing to be able to do so.
In other words, you will have to directly engage with the trial head on as a brave and courageous soldier of Jesus Christ. And as you are directly engaging with the crisis then God will fight the battle through you while you are fighting it.
Remember the story of David and Goliath. God is the one who led David to directly engage with Goliath. God gave him the direction, the courage and the method to do so. The result was that God, through David, was able to slay the giant with one sling shot.
Many of the times, you can quickly end your trial and tribulation if you will be courageous enough to directly engage with it operating under God's guidance and power. But again, you have to totally rely on God's guidance through the Holy Spirit as to when to engage and when not to engage.
No matter how big your "mountain of a problem" may be, or how big and severe a trial it may appear to you to be in the natural, realize that absolutely nothing is impossible with God. There is nothing that He cannot totally defeat or take out, including any crisis that may be getting ready to come your way.
Sometimes God will be able to end the trial in a matter of hours or days, but there will be other times that some trial you are experiencing can take weeks, months and even years.
Again, God is the one calling all the shots, so He is the One who knows just how long your trial will last in order for him to purify those parts of your spirit, as part of His sanctification process with you.
Conclusion
When you look at the total picture of why God allows good people to suffer trials and tribulations, you realize that they are for our own good. We cannot share in God's Kingdom that is soon coming to this earth unless we are purified and sanctified.
He is getting us ready to be with Him for all eternity in Paradise. So if you are suffering greatly, know that you are being made ready to live with Christ in Heaven. And he promises us a "great reward" for those who suffered here on earth for righteousness sake.
He is also testing our faith in Him, hoping that by doing so, as we pass each test our faith becomes stronger and we develop those qualities that lead us to perfection with Christ as
part of our sanctification process. He is restoring us back to what we once were in the Garden of Eden.
So we can either accept trials and tribulations as part of a necessary process to get us ready to go to Heaven, or we can resist them, fight them on our own terms without God's help, or simply become severely depressed and just give up.
So we have two choices. Either become a soldier for Christ, or loose our faith and our hope in God, and pledge allegiance to the Devil.
This is a spiritual battle being fought in the heavenlies.
We have all been born into a real war zone as a result of the Adamic curse that is still in full operation on this earth, and as a result, we will all have to face and fight a certain amount of battles in this life. Our very lives depend on it.
And until that day comes, put on the whole armor of our God - and take on your enemies, your trials and your tribulations as a good and mighty soldier of Jesus Christ.
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If you are struggling with trials and temptations and need some help and advice, please don't hesitate to contact me by following the directions below.
Patricia Jones, M.A.
Ephesians 6:13-17: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
