Facing Trials                                                         Kim A Goodin

We faced many trials in our marriage and God brought us through each of them victoriously. Yet sometimes we wonder why God doesn’t just step in and protect us from these trials instead of allowing these trials in our lives to start with.  

God tells us in James 1:2-4 that, “Whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy.  For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.  So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything.”  

On our farm we raise chickens and ducks. As I am feeding or tending to the flock, I am returned to an earlier time in my childhood when my grandfather used to raise chickens. There is a lesson to be learned from watching a baby chick as it works hard to break free of the egg. 

The mother hen keeps the egg warm until the chick is ready to break free. But once she hears that first tiny tap of the chick as it starts to peck on the eggshell to be set free the mother hen must allow the chick to do it on its own. She can’t interfere even though it would be easy for her to just break the shell open for her chick.  

The little chick must peck and push its own way out of the shell.  It is important for the chick to work hard at getting out of the shell so that his body would later be strong enough to survive outside the shell.  Leaving him alone and letting him work his way out was actually an act of love. 

That is the way our heavenly Father feels toward us.  He sees the many challenges which we face.  And all He would have to do is just speak a word and all our problems and challenges would be solved.  But He knows best.  He knows that allowing us to work through them, and "peck our way through our challenges," so to speak, will enrich our lives in the long run. 

God is in the character-developing business, and our trials help develop us into what he wants us to be. 

James refers to this process when he says, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything" (1:2-4, NIV)

Peter speaks of the same thing, referring to your "...inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade -- kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith -- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire -- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:4-7, NIV).

Because of God's loving and benevolent plan and purposes for us, Paul could write, "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus" (1 Thessalonians 5:18, NIV).