‘Anything that makes me need God is a blessing.’ – Nancy Demoss Woglemouth
Recently I went through a very hard season. I started to have health issues, and within 5 days, I lost the vision in both of my eyes. To say that this was a desperate time would be an understatement. It’s in times like these that truly bring us to our knees and cause us to seek the Lord all the more earnestly.
Now to end the suspense, the Lord is healing me and to date my vision is 90% fully restored. So please rejoice with me, He is an amazing God! However, the blessings I am referring to in this post aren’t necessarily the end testimonies and miracles, but what the quote above refers to as ‘anything that makes me need God.’ The trial itself brought such a blessing to my life that I am better off having gone through it, than if I didn’t at all.
Though we despise going through pain, whether physically or emotionally, the Lord allows it in order to refine us and cause us to be closer to Him. We are in a day and age where we are bombarded with messages that to live a Christian life means that everything will always be good and comfortable. But what does the Bible say?
‘These things I have spoken to you, that in Me (Jesus) you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.‘ – John 16:33 (emphasis added)
‘You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.‘ – 2 Timothy 2:3 (emphasis added)
The Bible doesn’t promise us a comfortable life, but in fact the total opposite. We are promised tribulation, afflictions and hardship. That may come in many forms and it may just be several moments, or it may be some hard long years we are called to suffer. But even in the hardest of seasons and times, there are great blessings which come from afflictions.
‘Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word. You are good, and do good; teach me Your statutes… It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes.‘ – Psalm 119:67-68, v71 (emphasis added)
Can you relate? Before any trial comes, we often can go astray. We can get caught up in our sin. We can be so comfortable at times that we forget God. So the Lord allows us to be afflicted through circumstances so that we can keep His word. It builds our faith and prunes our character. There is much fruit which can be birthed from our trials. I love that the Psalmist goes on to say that the Lord is good and only does good. We need to remember that He is good; He isn’t an evil master. We may not understand all that the Lord allows but we know that it is for our good and for His glory. However, most of us are like the children of Israel going around and around in the same wilderness—not allowing it to do a work in us, but instead we are miserable, ungrateful and complaining. We can often wonder if the Lord loves us. If He really did loved us, He wouldn’t allow us to go through such a test, right?
Well, be encouraged by these passages:
‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.‘ – Romans 8:35, 37-39 (emphasis added)
‘For whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights.‘ – Proverbs 3:12 (emphasis added)
The Lord loves us and nothing can separate us from His love. However, His love is like that of a Father. A father corrects and disciplines, and a lot of the times a child might struggle to understand why the father is saying no to something he or she really wants, or why the father ‘punishes’ when he or she does something wrong. However, we know as adults the wisdom in disciplining children; it is a similar way with the Lord. In fact, even more so with the Lord. He knows what He is doing. All things are for our good and His glory.
Are you going through a hard time right now? Be encouraged that the Lord loves you and He wants to use this very trial to draw you closer to Him and to be used for His glory.
