The past three years have been some of the toughest of my life. I have been homeless, thanks hurricane Wilma, moved about 4 times, been rejected by friends and the church…the list goes on and on. Anyway, this post isn’t about those trials, but rather what I learned through them.

 The tough thing about trials, for me, is that I rarely know what I am learning until I come out on the other side. I haven’t yet learned how to focus on God in the midst of the trials. I normally get frustrated and pull away from Him because of my stubborn nature. I am not always stubborn, but when I am it is pretty difficult to change my mind. The thing that God is putting me through is only to kill the thing I want dead anyway.

Why is it that we always try to kick against the goads? -see Acts 9:5- This proverb is commonly found in greek literature and in this context signifies the senselessness and ineffectiveness of any opposition to the divine influence in his life.

We can’t fight what God wants especially when He works into changing us. His ultimate goal is to look at us and only see His son Jesus. We go through these trials because it is His way of removing the things in our lives that keep us from Him. The interesting thing is that we don’t want that junk in our lives anyway. We kick and scream during trials and sufferings because they can be miserable. I’ll be the first to admit that trials are tough emotionally, mentally, and sometimes physically, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be good.

Ok, so I know I may sound like a masochist, but I’m not. There is a place in God that we can skate through trials and sufferings because we only see His face in them. The though part is taking our selfishness and putting it behind us and picking up our cross, which is to die to ourselves. We must fight our selfish desires and look for the glory that is often buried under the rubble of our trials. That glory is the love and passion that God has for us, His kids.

To be continued…