Purpose In Our Trials

I had a chance to lead our staff devotional time yesterday morning here at CIY. That's always a challenge for a guy who is not a preacher to prepare something for an audience of preachers and people who hear a lot of good sermons. My approach is generally to loosen them up with several good one liners that only make sense in context (hence I won't bother sharing them here), then go after 1 or 2 hopefully clear points. They are a gracious bunch - both for laughing at my jokes and staying engaged in the whole thing.

I've been reading a book called Knowing God by J.I. Packer. It's an old book that was updated in 1993 (originally released in 1973). The author devotes several pages to discussing God's wisdom and how it plays out in our lives. He then moves on to talk about what it means for us to be wise.

A few things that he brought out that I found interesting were:

1. God's wisdom doesn't always make obvious sense to us. If you read scripture, God often chose unlikely people to do great things for His Kingdom. Examples abound, among them are Abraham (often dishonest and lacking faith early in life) and Jacob (deceitful and very self-reliant as a young man). Over time, God did things in their lives that would lead to huge things in the history of God's people.

2. Something that I often catch when I read something in scripture, but fail to recognize in my own life is that God often has a dual purpose in the things He does. When He allowed trials to come along for Abraham or when He wrestled with Jacob and left him walking with a limp those things were there to bring about a change in their lives, but also so that something greater for God's Kingdom could be accomplished later. It's easy to see looking back at it, but much harder when I'm the one going through a painful trial of some sort and can't see the purpose in it.

3. We are not generally privileged to know God's purposes at the time of the trials we face. In most cases, we don't know until later - and sometimes never - why God allows us to face the trials we do. And we're never promised by God that He will reveal those things to us - though I believe in some cases He does, mostly after the fact. If you think about Paul and his reference to the "thorn" in his flesh - II Cor. 12 - you can get a sense of a couple of things. First, Paul didn't understand why it was there at the time and wanted it gone - wouldn't we all. Second, when God answered his prayer to remove it not only did God tell him that it wouldn't be taken away, God didn't tell him why it was there. Though later, Paul realized the purpose it had served - which clearly had an impact on his life and the lives of many others that Paul preached to.

Finding purpose in trials and difficulties can be tough, but in a world where we are sure to face difficulties part of finding hope in Christ in those times is realizing that there is a purpose though we may not now see it. I hope that as you face difficulties, you will find hope in Christ and the knowledge that while we have no promise of being taken out of the trial, we have the assurance that Paul was given - "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."