when the trials keep coming.

Do you ever feel like when it rains it pours? Have you ever felt that trial after trial keeps coming your way? Just when you think the trials are subsiding, another one smacks you in the face! If you’ve been there, I feel your pain. I am currently in that spot.

These last few months have been a heck of a ride. Between an emergency kidney stone surgery (while on vacation at Disney World, I might add) to another surgery that is taking much longer to heal from than I thought to another kidney stone to a five-day stomach bug to learning that I am getting let-go and losing my job to my own inner struggles, it has been one hit after another.

I am not telling you this because I want you to feel sorry for me. I am telling you this to remind you that you are not alone in feeling like the trials are never going to end. I am also here to tell you that God is doing something in the midst of all the trials. He hasn’t left your side (even if you feel that He has). He actually tends to do the most work within the trials.

I have recently been reminded that I am not the author of my story. That God is the author of my story. As much as I don’t want to admit (my Type-A personality is speaking), I am not in control of my life. Yes, I have decisions to make, moves to make, and have to deal with the consequences of certain actions, I am not the one that ordains my steps. God does. I am needing to learn to trust God when He is writing my story. He knows what He is doing. He’s been doing it for a long time. I need to learn to hand Him the pen and let Him write it without me trying to control His actions (because that is going to get me nowhere).

God can do amazing things through trials. He shapes us and molds us through them. Romans 5:3-4, states that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” I like how one commentator, David Guzik, talks about these verses. He says “this is a golden chain of Christian growth and maturity. One virtue builds upon another as we grow in the pattern of Jesus.” We, as humans, tend to desire character and hope. However, Paul is saying that those won’t develop without going through trials.

Not only do trials and tribulations build our perseverance, character, and hope, they increase our faith and dependency on the Lord. God allows our trials to occur because it builds our spiritual growth if we allow it to. When I think of this, I think of Paul’s thorn in 2 Corinthians 12. Paul pleaded three times that God would take away the thorn, the torment. However, in verse 9, God says “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” God could have easily taken away Paul’s thorn, but He didn’t. God, instead, extended His sufficient grace to Paul. David Guzik puts it this way: “instead of taking away the thorn, God strengthened Paul under it, and God would show His strength through Paul’s apparent weakness.” Paul didn’t have a choice but to lean on God in the trials. Through his dependence on God, he was made stronger than if he was to have looked to himself for dependence.

God purifies and refines us, just as gold is refined in a fire. Gold is refined in high degree fires, removing impurities until the goldsmith’s reflection is seen. This is just as God refines us. We walk through fire (our trials) to remove any impurities (sin) to where we can see God’s reflection in ourselves (becoming more like Him).

If you think about it, at the end of the day, trials are a good thing. They might not present themselves that way, though. It is okay to say that the trial is hard, that it sucks, or that you don’t understand the reasoning. It is okay not to always be okay. We don’t have to have it all together. We aren’t perfect, but the One who is perfect can hold us together. This is why we can “count it all joy” (James 1:2-4) in any and every situation. There is joy because our character is being molded, and we are becoming more like Christ. There is joy because there is purpose in our suffering. We don’t have to have a smile on our face the entire time we are walking through hardship, but we can smile knowing that we are going to be stronger because of the hardship. And we can smile because we know that God has us in the palm of His hands as He molds us to become more like Him.