Trial or Gift?

James 1:2-4  (The Message)
Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.


This passage really poked my heart this morning.  I have been in a season of testing and I have been crying out to the Lord to save me.  But His answer has been to be with me in the midst of trial.  Day by day, I am getting revelation of the power we have in simply keeping our eyes firmly fixed on His.  He is training me to live and move and have my very being in Him.  When the waves of the storm come crashing over my heart, I am quickly restoring my sights towards Him.

Gratefully, the times I take my eyes off Him are growing shorter and fewer.  But I have also discovered that those moments, when I change my focus from Him to my situation, bring more pain than I have ever known.  What I am realizing is as I stay with Him, in Him, the love that we share is becoming so intense.  Any separation causes distress.  So that it is not the trial causing the pain any longer, but the separation from my Lord. 

Thanks be to God for His gifts of mercy and love...He fills my every empty cove.