Learning To Be Truly Glad

So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world. [1 Peter 1.6-7]

Ah, the elephant in the room for most people of "faith" - trials.

Back in 2018, I wrote on this same passage from 1 Peter, Strong Faith. Looking back at that post and reading it today only assures me that we need to remain steadfast.

Look at the last part of this passage from 1 Peter: So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world. We all have a testimony. While most of us think of the events leading up to and including our submission to Christ as our testimony, that is only the beginning. Our testimony should speak right up the present day and so that is what I wish to offer here and now.

As I look back at what I wrote in 2018 (5 years ago today) much has happened in my life. In fact, much of what has happened has been very difficult: my career hit and remains at rock bottom, my health has become increasingly more challenging, and the world has gone insane. But, I am better for it all. I am not better because of the "hard times" as if they are the end, but better in these hard times because they have pushed me to look at myself and most always to repentance (death, theft and destruction are the work of Satan given leeway by sin - see Deuteronomy 28). In the faith exercised in repentance, I remain steadfast in the resurrection power of Jesus that quite literally enforced His forgiveness of me. My testimony is this: "Watch me believe when every circumstance says otherwise!"

God is my Provider. God is my Healer. God is my Peace. In the five years prior to this writing, I have been challenged to stand on my faith in each of these three characteristics of God. I have begun to learn that the world offers all kinds of substitutes for these characteristics - some even claiming to work alongside God - but I have seen that nasty idolatry lurks in all these substitutes. My personal growth has been to identify and eliminate idols so that my faith is purely in God and God alone. And, oh the pushback I have received - and most commonly from other "believers"!

I am learning in my trials that death or loss are not my enemies, but unbelief is. I have become increasingly more confident in saying, "Give me pure unadulterated faith in God or give me death!" In one writing some time back, I coined the phrase, "faith to the death." I have become increasingly more aware of my testimony which is NOT about whether I live or die, but instead about whether I believe or doubt! The ONLY consequence of death for me is if I die in unbelief (reader, please take some time to think about this statement).

I am learning to be truly glad as Peter instructs above. Every idol I identify and deny predictably lashes out with devastating threats and consequences. But these threats and consequences are temporal at best and at worst only result in death to which if I succumb to in faith, I win eternally anyway!

It is worth noting at this point something else seen in today's OYCB reading:

Give honor to marriage, and remain faithful to one another in marriage. God will surely judge people who are immoral and those who commit adultery. Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.” So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper, so I will have no fear. What can mere people do to me?” [Hebrews 13.4-6]

In a perfect world, trials would not be necessary! But IN a fallen world, trials will be many - and justifiably so. In our trials, whether we need to get right or get rid of idols, the bottom line is that we need to humble ourselves before God submitting to Him alone which is the baseline definition of faith.

Faith is our testimony. Hebrews 11 confirms this. Nothing else pleases God but faith, so nothing else really even matters... The trials we face, although we have an enemy who would destroy us in them, serve as our "stage" before the watching unbelieving world (not to mention the unconvinced 'Church') to show our faith and thus to glorify God. Gaining or losing or living or dying are only circumstantial - what matters is the demonstration of steadfast faith in God through it all.

I will end with the 'three Hebrews' response when faced with the monumental trial of a fiery furnace:

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your power, Your Majesty. But even if he doesn’t, we want to make it clear to you, Your Majesty, that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up.” [Daniel 3.16-18]

Father, my Father, may I be found faithful in every trial! I know I have complained and I know I have doubted, but I want to grow in my faith and trust in You - and whether I live or die, may my testimony be one of pure, undiluted, unadulterated faith in You and You alone!