The Power of Testing: Demonstrates the Power of Grace

We cannot fully know the power of grace until we have walked through the power of testings. God uses testings to demonstrate to us what is actually in our hearts. Scripture tells us in Jeremiah 17:9-10 (NIV): The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.” 

It is hard to know what lies within these hearts of ours unless they are squeezed. We are so easily deluded about ourselves and are all too often deceived in the true evaluation of our hearts. God uses trials and tribulations to bring to our attention and to squeeze out what is not to be there to replace with more and more of Him. His great desire is to make us more like Jesus and our testings, trials and tribulations are often His tools of choice as we rarely learn when things are going swimmingly well, Amen? Our hearts are exposed when we are pressed on every side. Also, until we are tested “far beyond our ability to endure” as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:8 (NIV), we wrongly believe “we got this”, meaning we can handle everything ourselves in our own strength. No dependance on God necessary type of attitude. This does not get us very far (to say the least) since we are all dependent upon Him for every breath that we take. Trials develop us giving a patina of Christ which is of greater worth than gold.      

Puritans March 31

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.