How Do I Handle Trials

“A faith that cannot be tested, cannot be trusted!”

We all will face our fair share of trials in life.  As a child of God, I believe that I can face my trials with a great deal more boldness since I know they come from my Heavenly Father.  Trials are not trivialized simply because we are Christians.  Neither are they any easier to face.  When we trust God to intervene or to prove Himself strong and faithful, that is when our faith is proven for what it is, and God is proven for Who He IS.  At the end of Job 1, when Job and his wife received news that they had lost their children and basically all of their financial wealth and possessions, in Job 1:20-22 we see Job’s response, 

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

Trust God Through The Trial

Job was trusting in the Lord.  He prayed intercessory prayer on behalf of his family every day.  He spent time alone with the Lord every day.  Then Satan, who had taken his children and his wealth, went after his health and attacked Job’s body physically.  It was at this point after Job’s wife had lost all of her children in one fatal incident, all of her financial security, and now looking at the possibility of becoming a widow too, that she speaks to her husband.  Job 2:9-10 reads,

Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.

While they feel the same, a trial is different than God’s judgment.

Job recognized the difference between a trial from the Lord and God’s judgment.  He endured it.  Notice that his friends, who were looking at Job’s experience from the outside, they were throwing rocks at Job’s glass house and telling Job that he was being punished for sin in his life.  God did not say the same thing about Job that Job’s friends said.  Job simply wanted God to tell him the answer to the question: “Why?”  God didn’t answer Job’s question.  God did end the trial and God did bless Job.  Job had to trust God.  Job did trust God.  It’s evident that Job’s wife trusted God too, because she is the one who stayed by Job’s side and gave birth to the children God blessed Job with at the end of the book of Job. Job 42:12-13 reads, 

12 So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. 13 He had also seven sons and three daughters.

God doubled the amount of children that Job and his wife had, by adding to the ones who were already in Heaven.  

Blessings follow Obedience

The blessings followed the obedience.  For Job, his test of his faith, meant going through loss without knowing or understanding why, then moving forward with God.  Of all the steps that God chose, it was simple, “Pray for your friends.”  Those very men who had ascribed Job’s losses to Job’s sin (in their minds) causing Job’s grief to penetrate his heart even deeper, were the key to his blessings. Job 42:10 states, “And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.”  

When Job obeyed the Lord and prayed for his friends, God blessed Job. The test of our faith is remaining faithful during the test and moving forward, obediently to the Lord’s direction and command.

Daniel went through the Lion’s den and came out.  The three Hebrews went into the fire and came out. What trial are you going through that God is going to bring you out of?  What is it that He has told you to do?  Remember, God’s ways are not our ways.  We have to submit ourselves to Him and His path to receive His blessing.  Think of your trial as His shortcut to the blessing you desire.