Do you ever feel like life is out to get you?  Do you wonder if you might be walking around with a great big target on your back?  Do you feel as if life seems to be throwing you one challenging situation after another?  If you live life long enough, you are going to experience trials!

I don’t like trials!  In fact, for most of my life I have done pretty much everything within my power to avoid trials.  Even with my best efforts at avoidance, trials seem to find their way into my life and while I don’t really like them, I have discovered that I have survived.  In fact, through the trails I have done something more than survive, I am beginning to notice that as I live my way through the trials, there are actually moments that I begin to thrive!

In the Scripture we are told to:  “2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”  James 1:2-4

Consider it joy when I face a trial?  Are you kidding me?  No – that’s what it says and then it tells us why we as Believers should consider it not just joy, but “pure joy”!  It says that when a trial comes into our lives, it provides testing of our faith.  The trial comes to test our faith, not to show God how strong or weak we are, because He already knows the answer to that question.  The trial comes into our lives to test our faith to help us to know how strong or weak we are and this knowledge is for a purpose!

The purpose of this knowledge is to produce perseverance – the strength to stand up under whatever pressure the world might try to put upon us!  This perseverance is what makes us mature and complete.  It is the finishing touch of the Master’s hand that takes the ordinary and turns it into extraordinary!

As you face trials this week, don’t let them knock you down, instead let them lift you up and carry you to that place that you could never get to on your own!