Trials, troubles, and the like … yes, they are a part of life!

Job 5:4 even makes this remarkable statement about such difficulties: “Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”

Wow, sounds inevitable, doesn’t it?

But for the Christian, the Believer in our Lord Jesus Christ, “pressures” and “heartaches,” the “hard times” that come … have a unique significance!

These “bumps in the road” are, in reality, send by God!

For our “good” and God’s “Glory!”

Most often God allows them (or designs them) to teach us or to mature us … or at times even to chasten us!

And God never wastes such “problems!”

He sends them to further develop us as growing Christians.

Peter used a clause that impressed me earlier this morning, about our trials.

“Though now for a season, IF NEED BE, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 1:6-7

I capitalized the clause.

“IF NEED BE!”

The verb “need” translates the Greek “dei,” if it is NECESSARY!

God sends us difficult times … BECAUSE THEY ARE ESSENTIAL … to accomplish some greater goal, some more glorious end, for our Christian pilgrimage!

“If need be!”

What are you enduring today?

What’s the “hurt” that so plagues you this week, this month, this year?

Does it help to know there is a God in Heaven, your Father in fact, who is watching as you suffer? And Who has only sent this trial because you NEED it?

It is as if you’re in the furnace of affliction … and God is carefully, lovingly watching … with His Almighty Hand on the thermostat!

You will only be “there” until some “need” has been met!

Also note the words “for a season!” There’s some help in this little phrase too!

It won’t last forever!

One more time, please read and ponder our Text today: “Though now for a season, IF NEED BE, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”

Wow!

— Dr. Mike Bagwell

When we don’t understand Him, we can still trust Him!