By Pastor Andrew Farland
We don’t draw closer to Christ when everything is going well.
That’s too easy.
We draw closer to Christ when things are complicated and seemingly impossible.
There’s a peculiar dichotomy that happens in seasons of trial. It’s the most beautiful time in your life. In the times of greatest tribulation and uncertainty, you are the most connected to Christ. You’re the most dependent on Him. You’re learning and growing, and you are receiving God’s love more than any other time.
When you find yourself in a storm, you are in a place where you can’t do it on your own anymore, and you need God more than ever.
The key here is that a season of trial and tribulation can do for you what a season of ease cannot do.
Seasons of trial develop character. They help you grow in empathy, and they give you deeper compassion for others. God uses these times to develop a ministry inside you so that you can help other people who suffer what you’re experiencing.
Trials force you to have a deeper life in Christ, one that’s rooted soundly in Him.
What happens to you is similar to the growth of a palm tree.
When the wind blows against the palm tree, it neither breaks nor uproots. The gales force the tree to dig deeper and push its roots far into the ground. The tree entrenches itself in a strong foundation of permanence.
Something similar happens during the most difficult seasons of your life.
When you face hurricanes in your life, your roots in Christ deepen. Difficulty sends the roots deeper into the soil. With Christ, you will bend but never break.
Easy times don’t do you much good for growth. You’ll never grow and never achieve resilience.
The seasons of difficulty and trial take us to a dark place in our lives, much like having to pass through a tunnel. The good thing is that we’re never alone in these dark moments. We realize God isn’t only at the end of the tunnel. He’s right there in the midst of it with us.
We cry out for God in the darkness, and we ask for His saving power. That’s when we see Him come through for us. Real faith and spiritual endurance grow when the storm hits and the sky is at its darkest.
It’s weird is that when you emerge from the storm, and you leave the dark and hard season behind you, you’ll feel like something is missing. You miss the intimacy and the close relationship with God. God came through for you. During your tribulation, He revealed himself to you.
Now, when everything is easy once again, you forget to pray to God. You forget that God is all-powerful because you think you can do it on your own. You let the close bonds slip a bit.
How beautiful to go through this tough season with God. Seek God and receive His blessings. See Him come through for you and with you over and over. His presence produces unshakeable hope.
God tells us in Romans 5: 3-5 that perseverance produces hope.
3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
If you need real unshakable hope in your life, you must go through the storm, the blessed storm. Most people want to cast away the wind and the rain, escaping the unpleasant times. You need the hard times to grow, get rooted, and trust in God.
You’ll want to get through the difficult periods in your life as quickly as possible, but you’ll also miss them. It’s like raising kids.
Raising two- and three-year-olds isn’t an easy job. You want your kids to grow up fast because you’d like to experience a full night’s sleep once again. You want to be able to touch a surface in your house that isn’t sticky, and wouldn’t it be great if you could go one whole month without anyone getting a runny nose or a fever?
Yet, when your kids grow up and move out of the house, you miss them so much. You realize the difficult years were among the most beautiful times in your life.
Don’t curse the difficult times.
Those difficult times in your life are pure joy. Welcome them by changing your perspective to see seasons of trial as an opportunity rather than a challenge. They make you stronger emotionally, spiritually, and in your relationship with God.
If you are to experience suffering and God’s glory, be willing to open your heart to whatever God wants to give you. The Lord gives and takes away. Like Job says, “Blessed be the name of the Lord. Naked I came and naked I will go.”
God blesses you in every season, but you’re even more blessed in difficult seasons because you’re growing and maturing. Continue to push your roots deeply into the foundation that is Christ.
Colossians 2: 6-7
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Be encouraged today because God is with you.
