Articles
Hardships Grow Us
If you are reading this today, you have survived whatever has been thrown at you in life!
Maybe it was marital problems, health problems, losing a job, losing a fortune, a bad accident, false accusations that you had to endure; an endless list of trials or tribulations. While some of them, maybe all of them hurt, are you not stronger in some way because of them?
Oh, I understand if it was a job or you lost your savings in the stock market, it's hard to see any good from it, but if you look hard enough, somewhere in there, you are stronger (or maybe smarter) today because of it. I'm not saying that terrible things haven't left permanent scars, but somewhere something good came out of it, if not for you personally, then perhaps for someone else.
I can speak from experience, and I know many of you can too, that some tragic times in our lives have left us stronger, wiser and more capable of handling hardships as they come. Often times too, our friends and people we didn't even know have had opportunity through our ordeal to serve us and by dong so, serve Christ. With experience comes wisdom, and having had to endure such events reminds us again and again to turn these periods in our lives over to God, because we have little if any control over them. After having endured them though, through all the bad, there is good to come out of them.
We talked in our last post about spiritual maturity. James tell us, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (James 1:2-4)
Simply put, we need to let hard times grow us closer and closer to maturity, even if in the moment, we have to suffer in various ways. God can always bring good out of bad, and knowing that, we can better endure and overcome and use our experience(s) to help us and our family and friends in the future as more trials will certainly come.
