WHEN HE HAS TESTED ME, I WILL COME OUT AS PURE GOLD.
JOB 23:10 NRS
Mega-church Pastor Rick Warren says: ‘God has a purpose behind every problem. He uses circumstances to develop our character. In fact, He often depends more on circumstances to make us like Jesus than He does on our reading the Bible. And the reason is obvious: we face circumstances 24-hours-a-day.’ We learn things about God when having a tough time that we can’t learn any other way. Tough times draw us closer to Him! ‘The Lord is close to the broken-hearted’ (Psalms 34:18). Problems force us to go to God and ask for His help. Paul writes, ‘we…saw how powerless we were to help ourselves; but that was good, for then we put everything into the hands of God’ (2 Corinthians 1:9 TLB). Giving the controls over to God and trusting Him with how it’s gonna turn out is hard for most of us to do. Why? Coz we’re not used to trusting others and it turning out well; so many of us have been let down by people we thought we could trust! Do you feel as if life is a test at the moment? This might sound a bit weird but have you ever stopped to think that God might somehow be in the testing? Listen: ‘the testing of your faith proves that it is genuine.’ Since God’s plan is to make us more like Jesus, He’ll take through some of the tough challenges Jesus went through. Like what? Temptation; rejection; putting others peoples needs first; criticism; and betrayal. None of these are fun, but if you let God help you through the tough times you will end up shining like gold! (Job 23:10)
