Digging Deeper – Our Response to Trials

This is a great coffee mug verse that we like to pull out when we need some Godly advice or direction for life. But context in studying the scriptures is important, so let’s remember the context: IF YOU LACK WISDOM REGARDING THIS TRIAL THAT GOD HAS YOU IN TO DEVELOP YOUR ENDURANCE, ASK GOD FOR THAT WISDOM, AND HE WILL GIVE IT TO YOU, AND HE WON’T MOCK YOU FOR ASKING (Dave’s version).

I have to continually remind myself that Jesus came to earth as a man and endured more than He will ever ask me to endure. He knows that life is hard, trials are relentless, the enemy is real, and I am made of dust (Ps. 103:14), so you and I need some help when the road seems all uphill and full of ruts. For crying out loud, Jesus went to His Father relentlessly to seek His counsel. Why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t you?

God WILL answer our prayers when we are tired and weary, and He will give us all that we need to endure and to come out the other side closer to Him and looking more like His Son, Jesus!

Just an aside, who of us DOES NOT LACK WISDOM? If you did not say, I DO, then you lack wisdom! All of us lack wisdom, especially in a trial or a difficult situation. The wisest man to ever live, King Solomon, was asked by God what he wanted from the Lord, and Solomon, in complete humility, asked for wisdom. That is how he became so wise. God granted Solomon his request AND gave him wealth as well (1 Kings 3).

Why did the King ask for wisdom and not peace or might or riches? Because he had a posture of a slave. He willfully occupied a position of humility.

I asked my son many years ago, when he was going through a very intense trial that almost wrecked him, how I could pray for him. In brokenness and in all humility, he asked me to pray that God would give him wisdom. He was in a state of absolute surrender to his Lord, and all he wanted to do was hear from heaven. Not as to what he should do necessarily, but as to who he should be. I look at him now, still enduring various trials (not that one, thank God), as we all do, but a wise younger man full of joy and hope. It is one of the stone pillars (Joshua 4 for reference) I look back to when I am in a trial and I need a reminder of God’s goodness.

If you are in the midst of a trial, and you have submitted yourself to Jesus’ Lordship over your life, cry out to God for wisdom; search the scriptures for answers; He promises to give them to you with compassion, not judgment.

Tomorrow we will look at the conditions, not conditional love, of our Lord!

He loves you so much, forever!