Faith Through Trials: Learning to Trust in God's Timing
2 Corinthians 1:9
But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:
Sometimes we pray that God will take things out of our way that He has no intentions of removing; at least not now. I say that not to discourage you, but to help you see what God made me to see in my own journey with Him. Sometimes the problems which we so desperately need for God to just fix and make go away are the very things He is going to use to strengthen our faith in Him. I probably won’t get a whole lot of amen’s on this next statement, but I’m afraid that we often need our problems worse than we need them fixed. Let me explain. If it were not for the struggles of life, we would never truly learn what it is to place our faith in the One and only who can do anything about them. Furthermore, if our faith is never tried and tested, then our Lord would never be pleased with us, because we are told that without faith it is impossible to please God (see Heb. 11:6)! Now, I don’t like that reality any more than you do, but it is the truth nonetheless.
So at times, God really does do us a favor through “unanswered” prayer. It is not that God is cold, heartless, cruel, or sadistic. On the contrary, He is loving and gracious, desiring to build up our most holy faith so that He indeed can remove the mountains that need moving in our lives. But, at first, don’t be surprised if He leaves some of your mountains in the way so as to give your faith a good work-out. One thing is for sure; regardless of whether or not He ever gets around to removing that mountain completely away, He will always give us the grace to withstand the pressure. We will survive, and we will thrive with His grace by our side!
I’m not saying that we should just accept our reality and stop praying for God to change it. By all means, pray to God and speak to the mountain that it will be removed. Meanwhile, what I am saying is that if you are living with a “sentence of death” over your head, where it looks like avoidance is impossible, then learn to live with that sentence with the kind of faith that believes that God will bring forth life even after the funeral is over! What do you do when you’ve prayed, fasted, wept, and pleaded with God, and the mountain is still there? Trust Him to the death, and life will come again!
~ Pastor Gary Caudill
But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:
Sometimes we pray that God will take things out of our way that He has no intentions of removing; at least not now. I say that not to discourage you, but to help you see what God made me to see in my own journey with Him. Sometimes the problems which we so desperately need for God to just fix and make go away are the very things He is going to use to strengthen our faith in Him. I probably won’t get a whole lot of amen’s on this next statement, but I’m afraid that we often need our problems worse than we need them fixed. Let me explain. If it were not for the struggles of life, we would never truly learn what it is to place our faith in the One and only who can do anything about them. Furthermore, if our faith is never tried and tested, then our Lord would never be pleased with us, because we are told that without faith it is impossible to please God (see Heb. 11:6)! Now, I don’t like that reality any more than you do, but it is the truth nonetheless.
So at times, God really does do us a favor through “unanswered” prayer. It is not that God is cold, heartless, cruel, or sadistic. On the contrary, He is loving and gracious, desiring to build up our most holy faith so that He indeed can remove the mountains that need moving in our lives. But, at first, don’t be surprised if He leaves some of your mountains in the way so as to give your faith a good work-out. One thing is for sure; regardless of whether or not He ever gets around to removing that mountain completely away, He will always give us the grace to withstand the pressure. We will survive, and we will thrive with His grace by our side!
I’m not saying that we should just accept our reality and stop praying for God to change it. By all means, pray to God and speak to the mountain that it will be removed. Meanwhile, what I am saying is that if you are living with a “sentence of death” over your head, where it looks like avoidance is impossible, then learn to live with that sentence with the kind of faith that believes that God will bring forth life even after the funeral is over! What do you do when you’ve prayed, fasted, wept, and pleaded with God, and the mountain is still there? Trust Him to the death, and life will come again!
~ Pastor Gary Caudill