The purpose of fiery trials remains a mystery to all who go through them. Yet, God in His Sovereign love and mercy permits fiery trials to test those created in His image, by refining, purifying, sanctifying and glorifying them.
Parental Love
Parents desire their children to be protected from all harm. However, this is both an unwise and an impossible aspiration. A child learns to walk by taking a step, falling down and encouraged to get up and try again. The best parent in the world cannot protect the child from getting hurt. The best training is to teach the child to become resilient, face life’s trials and overcome them.
In the spiritual realm we take a step, fall down and need to get up and try again. Each time we fail, we are one step closer to succeeding. Every advancement that has been made by humans, has been through trial and error and not quitting at the first obstacle.
Predestined
Predestined is not a word that we enjoy as human beings. We wrongly feel it is saying that we have no choice with what we do.
God predestined us to become conformed to the image of His Son, Romans 8:29. Predestined is simply God choosing from eternity, based on two things. God knows the end from the beginning, Isaiah 46:10, and God lives in the eternal now, with no yesterdays, or tomorrows.
God knows who will believe in Him before that person is even conceived. ‘Before I formed you in the innermost parts I knew you. And before you came out from the womb I set you apart,’ Jeremiah 1:5. God has a special path for each one of us, yet it is filled with fiery trials.
Fiery Trials Builds Character
Fiery trials are an opportunity to develop personal growth and character. If a person goes to a gym and only looks at the equipment, it won’t build strength, stamina and persistence. So it is in the spiritual.
In times of fiery trials we have a choice to either sink into self-pity, or we can face the challenges and turn to the only true helper, God. He will not give us more than we can handle, but with the temptation or test, He will provide the way of escape also that you will be able to endure, 1Corinthians 10:12.
That way of escape is to develop a deep and lasting relationship with God. He alone will see you through so that you come out the other side stronger and a better person.
Learning Experience
Trials and testing are opportunities to adapt to difficult situations. Fiery trials are unpleasant, but they alone test and strengthen a person’s faith. God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose, Romans 8:28.
It took the death of 3million Jews for Israel to be reborn. Great nations have risen and fallen, yet none but Israel was born again. She will take her predestined place as God’s witness on earth.
We don’t like learning things the hard way, but sometimes that is the only way we learn to trust God completely.
Adaption and Overcoming
It is through the fiery trials we learn to overcome and adapt. It is great to stand on the mountain top but it is in the valleys that the real growth takes place.
Few people who have gained fame and fortune are truly successful people. The money and notoriety produces no heroes, but broken and deeply disturbed people. Yet, it is in the tragedies of life that you find thousands of unsung heroes, who develop new strategies and skills for coping with life’s challenges.
In the book of Revelation that we find eight promises to the overcomers. Revelation 2:7, 11, 27, 26. Revelation 3:5, 12, 21 and Revelation 21:7.
Opposition
Satan is the god of this age, 2 Corinthians 4:4, and the ruler of the power of the air, He is the sprit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Ephesians 2:2. His aim is to destroy the work of God on the earth.
As followers of Jesus we have great opposition, but God alone is our defender. He is our help and our shield, Psalm 33:20. When trials and fiery testing come it is all about whom we have faith in. Ourselves or God? Trials push us to our utmost limits and bring us to the end of ourselves.
Obstacles
Major trials transform and change our pathway. It takes the fiery trials and obstacles in our lives to produce a profound change in our perspectives and priorities. Life ever becomes ‘before’ and ‘after’ life changing calamities.
It is at this point we make our most important choice. We can sit down and become self-centred and full of self pity. The successful way of coping with fiery trials is to throw ourselves on the mercy of God, for He alone has the power to save us, 2 Thessalonians 3:3. As the world grows darker and darker, just as Jesus prophesied, we are to lift up our head because our redemption is drawing near, Luke 21:28.
Job
If we yield ourselves to the tender hand of a loving God, the Great I Am that I Am, these tests will draw the dross out of our lives, for God is a consuming fire, Deuteronomy 4:24. Job faced tragedy after tragedy. He lost all his children in one fatal accident. Then he lost all his wealth and standing in the local community. His wife told him to curse God and die, while his friends told Job it was all his own fault. It took a long nine-month valley, but Job came out the other side a changed person.
Two things come from the story of Job. ‘He knows the way I take. When He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold’, Job 23:10. The second thing is Job finally admitted ‘I have declared that which I did not understand. Things too marvelous for me, which I did not know’, Job 42:3.
Our faith is more precious than gold, 1Peter 1:7, for God permits evil to bring about good, as was seen at Calvary.
Glorification the True Purpose of Fiery Trials
The true purpose of fiery trials is beyond our comprehension, yet they result in an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, 2 Corinthians 4:17. If we will place our trust in our heavenly Father, He will bring us out the other side, for we are not alone in our trials and temptations.
We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory, Romans 8:17. Do not despair in the rough valleys of life, for the real purpose of fiery trials is to make you into a better person, conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. If we look at our trials from the realm of eternity, they are but a whisper in the night.
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