Adversity can help forge character
“See, I have refined you, but not like silver; I have tested you in the furnace of adversity” (Isaiah 48:10).
This era of social-distancing has produced more adversity than we’d like.
Teachers have had to spend untold hours adapting lesson plans to post online. Kids long to see their classmates, and many parents have had to navigate new challenges in finding outlets for children’s energy.
A Biblical theme for those who wonder what God is doing is that God uses adversity to forge character.
We read in Job 5:7 that “man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.”
And in Second Corinthians 4:17, the Apostle Paul assures us that “our light and momentary afflictions are achieving for us a weight of eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
It is because the path of humility leads to life that God often chooses to remove us from our comfort zones, to test our faith and give us an opportunity to grow.
The full text of the Serenity Prayer speaks of “accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.” Likewise, C.S. Lewis writes in “The Problem of Pain” that “it is natural for us to wish that God had designed us for a less glorious and less arduous destiny, but then we are wishing not for more love, but for less.”
Amid trying times, all who trust Jesus Christ for salvation can take heart in knowing that God is refining our souls and equipping us for heaven. His mysterious process is producing more beauty than we can presently imagine.
Therefore, we can rejoice in knowing that heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people, and that God’s beloved shall all participate in that glory.
For the sake of love, Jesus Christ laid His life down for you, to stake His claim on you and grant new life in Him. Because of what God’s done in the past, we need not fear the future.
I address my closing words to all who have ears, especially mothers and school teachers.
In good times or bad, keep looking to Jesus, praise Him and cling to Him, for it is His loving arms that hold you eternally secure and He shall equip you, for now and forevermore. Amen.
The Rev. Matthew Kail is pastor of Muddy Creek and Unionville Evangelical Presbyterian churches.
