Trials

I just want to read a few verses from 1 Peter chapter 4, starting at verse 12. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice, insofar as you share in Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. Who of us hasn't secretly in our hearts, and very often quite openly and out loud, and perhaps at the top of our lungs, complained, why does my life have to be constantly disrupted? Why do things all the time have to go wrong? Why can't I have a little peace and quiet once in a while? As if these disruptions that come into our lives, as believers, were unnatural. As if they had the power to intrude upon the divine peace that we enjoy, or to sap out of us our joy in the Lord.

Have you ever met a person who is seriously trying to follow Jesus, whose life hasn't been disrupted? If you think you've ever seen such a person, it's no doubt because you only have seen part of their lives. You know, that beneath the surface, that looks to be very smooth, and uninterrupted, and comfortable in every way, you can be sure there were also trials in their lives too. The abnormal Christian life, the life that will never make it through this world of flesh and blood, is the life without disruptions.

The life where everything is smooth, no problems, no interruptions, no money difficulties, no enemies, satisfaction at every side. The undisrupted, untroubled, satiated life is absolute death in this world of flesh and blood. Always such a life leads to Laodicea, where everybody is so proud of their prosperity, and so comfortable in their lukewarmness that they have no conception of how dead they really are.

For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, I have need of nothing, not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you, and keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes that you may see. Gold refined by fire, the only way that gold becomes pure is by being taken through heat and flame.

White garments to cover your nakedness, and who gets the white garment? Only those who have come through great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Salve to anoint your eyes that you may see. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

And what is this eyesight if it is not trials that shake us out of our lethargic, our enchanted sleep? One thing all believers have in common, along with the presence of Jesus in their lives, love, joy, and peace in the Holy Spirit, is trial. Something that puts our life under stress, baffles us, causes us pain, makes us weak. And this very thing, whatever it is, this trial, is what the Spirit of God uses to form us into the image of Christ, and to mold and shape us into true sons and daughters of the living God.

Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet with various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Without trials, we never emerge from our spiritual infancy and we will be destroyed by the first storm that hits. Now the trials may be different.

Some of us are going through a trial of persecution, where people are giving us a hard time because we're walking a path which is hard for them to understand. Now certainly if we're being persecuted, if they're giving us a hard time because we're obnoxious, insensitive, lazy, hypocritical, thoughtless of other people, that's not persecution. But there are those among us who are actually now going through some kind of persecution because of their desire to be obedient to the will of God.

And that persecution is a trial, a purifying flame. And some of us are going through a trial of monotony. Do you think Jesus' troubles only began when he first started to preach? What about those 30 years in drab, tedious, narrow-minded Nazareth? It was an awful place, despicable place as far as Nathanael was concerned, and many others when Nathanael says, can anything good come out of Nazareth? It was a hole as far as most people even in Galilee considered it to be.

And so for us, it's not all high adventure. You know, it's working around and living among people who may be petty and performing tasks that are utterly boring, day after day, year after year, with no let-up, but that very monotony which may be experienced by us becomes a flame that purifies. And some of us are experiencing a trial of loss.

A loved one has died. Or a friend turns his back and walks out of your life. Or a family is ripped apart by divorce, where a mate or a mother or a father leaves and takes with that person a hunk of your own soul.

That too is a trial, a purifying flame. Physical danger or any kind of danger. Notice how Paul enumerates this because it's important, mentions it often.

He talks about the perils he went through in 2 Corinthians, perils of waters, perils of robbers, perils by the Jews, perils by the Gentiles in the city, in the wilderness, on the sea, among false brethren. And we experience this too. Dangers.

To our person and to our property. And people laugh. What's wrong with having your property endangered a little bit? And you walk out and your car is stolen.

You have a different view. Somebody took your battery. You get home and they broke through and took your television.

And there are people in this block right now who have experienced physical, not just a danger, but they've been, every conceivable kind of injury that has been brought upon people and the kind of thing we're talking about has been experienced by people in this group right now. And these very dangers and the thought that it could happen to us again can become a purifying flame. Then there's that thorn in the flesh, some malady of the body or the mind that buffets us and we cry out for God to take it away from us.

And he says, my grace is sufficient for you. And this becomes then a purifying flame. Or a weakness.

You know, some twist, some strange tendency inside our personality or our soul, whatever it is, that is like that broken wheel in the cart in the supermarket that makes the cart always want to go crashing into the merchandise. You know, some fear, some perverted desire, you know, some weird compulsion. For many of these things we can expect and are healed.

We can expect to be healed and we are healed. But from some of them, for reasons that only God understands, the flame way in the back of our minds, even though it never produces an overt act, continues to push and to purify. And then there's the trial of loneliness that every one of us here has experienced.

And some are experiencing now. Where that invisible wall comes up between you, even in your closest loved ones, and it seems like you can't quite get through and they never seem to get through to you. Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us is not forever prison pen? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone, says Thomas Paul.

And when he wrote those words, maybe he was exaggerating, and yet we can experience that ourselves. We all know it, all of us. And when we experience loneliness, we're experiencing again a flame that purifies.

And so the trials come and the flames lit our lives. What do they accomplish? This depends on our response to them, but they can accomplish tremendous things. More than that, we rejoice in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope.

And hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us. King James says, God's love has been shed abroad in our hearts, moving out this way. And so, if we let them, trials, first of all, produce endurance.

The only way the runner develops endurance is to run. The only way the fighter learns how to take punches is to take punches. And the only way the believer develops any kind of stamina is to walk and run and pass through trial.

And we can look back, many of us, on insults that once seemed like the end of the world, made us want to go out and really commit suicide. And now the same insult, we can laugh off and keep going. Or sometimes there are setbacks that come to us that in years gone by would cause us to be ready to throw in the towel.

And again, you know, we seem to be able to take these things and roll with them and keep going. Disappointments that threw us into a depression three weeks or three months on end. Now, even these we can shrug off and keep doing what has to be done.

If we let them, trials also produce character, moral strength, the ability to walk through temptation and not fall apart. And there are men and women whose moral strength really puts us to shame. And the reason they have it is because while we were sitting in the little Christian hothouse they were out there walking through the storms.

The mind, the solid, unshakable mind of Christ develops in us only through trial. Trials also, if we let them, produce hope. And that may seem strange, you think that a trial is going to crush every ounce of hope out of your spirit, but it works the other way.

When things start getting rough and you hold on to God in the midst of it, things get much more clear and your desire for the kingdom increases. For instance, John had his revelation vision not when things were going well in Ephesus, but when he was sitting on the Isle of Patmos, a rocky, barren place of exile, experiencing loneliness and persecution. That's when he has his revelation vision.

Stephen sees Jesus more clearly when he's being stoned to death, experiencing pain with every rock that hits his head than at any other time in his life. And out there beyond is a universe which belongs to our Heavenly Father and because it's His, also belongs to us. That's our home.

Way out there, not here. And one day, if we walk with the Lord, we're going to travel in spaces beyond our comprehension without benefit of flying saucers or spaceships. But the only time we see that universe, have any glimpse of its glory, is when it's pitch dark.

You go out there now and the sun is shining and you see nothing but blue sky. If we let them, trials produce in us love, cause the love of God to be shed abroad in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit. Anybody can receive God's love into his or her heart by just opening the heart.

But for the love of God to flow out and touch somebody else, it's necessary for us to begin to experience trial. You know, the alabaster jar has to be broken and then the aroma of Christ begins to come forth. There was a man who had ten children.

And he loved them in his own way, but he was distant from them, kind of took them for granted, let his wife do all the work and do all the loving, really, and sometimes was quite critical of them. Until one day, one of his sons became mentally ill. So badly was this father shaken that he just dropped everything for the first time in his life and concentrated on this son, spent money by the thousands of dollars, drove all over the place, put his whole life in hop, stayed up whole nights, became a broken man.

Now the love, the kindness that begins to flow out to this stricken son also begins to move forth and touches the other nine children as well. For the first time in his life, this man begins to love and love is released in this man's life through a trial. If we allow it, trial will cause us to begin to experience the presence of Christ as in no other way.

Beloved, do not be surprised if the fiery ordeal which has come upon you to prove you as though something strange were happening to you, and that suffering is somehow connected to your Lord. You begin to experience fellowship with him, peace which is absolutely beyond understanding. You walk and talk with the Son of God in a way that you never, ever did before.

Connected with this, trials will also, if we let them, cause us to begin to experience the spirit of glory and of God because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. And we've all, most of us read, I suppose, in Watchman Nee's book how he runs into a man who was once his professor in law school or wherever it was. And years have passed and Watchman Nee's a little broken down Bible teacher and the professor takes him into a tea house and they sit down and talk and the professor looks at him and he looks at the table at this period.

And then all of a sudden the spirit of glory and of God came to rest upon him. Tremendous comfort. And most of us have tasted that.

When it's connected, see, with the name of the Lord and it begins to touch us and we're willing to suffer with him outside the camp, we also begin to experience a comfort that is known no other way or at no other time. And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. When you're complete in God, they can take from you everything that can be taken.

They can take our families, they can take our possessions, they can take our great reputations, they can even take our life. But we're still complete in God and we can still pass through the barrier into the world beyond the kingdom of God on our lips. There are many places these days where a gospel is proclaimed that offers a life without trials, prosperity galore, health and happiness and everything nice.

And people are flocking to those places by the thousands and all of us, surely in our hearts, have at times kind of wished that we could just do the same, that we could just lie down on those rose petals and float into the kingdom. But our Heavenly Father knows what we need. And just as surely as we need the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we also need the baptism of fire.

We need it. We don't have to go out looking for it. If you don't think you're having any baptism of fire right now, don't feel guilty.

It will find you. It will come. It will come when it comes, but it will come.

All we have to do is receive it when it comes and let it do its work. And instead of turning sour, we begin to turn sweet in God. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you as though something strange were happening to you.

But rejoice insofar as you share in Christ's sufferings that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. Let's pray.