Suffering produces glory

 The Lord had given me many promises through the years.  The very first promise and vision came on a run through the corn fields of Tennessee. I held that dearly in my heart. I believed it with every ounce of my being. It was a “mountain top” experience. Day after day I would run that same course through the corn fields and use it as my prayer time with the Lord. That picture of the vision and promise would carry me through my runs. It became my strength. The promise became my joy. It became deeply rooted in my heart and seeped like a tea bag into my very being. 

Then year after year, the valleys came. Suffering. Trials. Refinement. Pain. Slowly, the promise and vision I once saw, looked more like a distant memory. I couldn’t reconcile the gaping distance between what God had spoke, and what the reality of my life was actually like. I was holding all these puzzle pieces in my hand, not knowing how they fit together. The promise/vision in one hand, and then the realities of my life as it currently was in the other hand. There was a gap between the promise and fulfillment. There was a beginning, and an end- but the middle I was in, looked and felt like destruction. The beginning started with joy. The end would be my joy, but here I was in the middle in deep suffering and pain and trials. I wrestled week after week in prayer over this with the Lord. Pleading with Him to show me a revelation because I still believed with all my heart His promise and the certainty of its fulfillment. I just couldn’t understand the process of getting there. Then I had gone on another run and the Lord spoke psalm 105:19 to me. I stopped dead in my tracks with my mouth wide open and soul gripped with these words. “Until the time came to fulfill his dreams, the Lord tested Joseph’s character”. It was like a lighting bolt from heaven calling my soul to attention, a roll of thunder rattling my dry bones, and a downpour of rain reviving me. My spirit leaped inside me. I finally had understanding come over me. Every puzzle piece I held was clicking into place like gears in a watch and I could finally start to see the whole picture as God does.  

Joseph was given a dream. It was a “mountain top experience”. It was something spoken over his life that incited his soul. It was a glorious and delightful moment. Then the valleys of his life came. Betrayal. Suffering. Pain. Injustice. Trials. God’s process from promise to fulfillment was trials and testing. It was in these very sufferings, and his response to them, that molded him into the shape of that vision/ dream from God. As the scripture says, “until the time came to fulfill his dreams, the Lord tested Jospeh’s character”. God was not responsible for these terrible sufferings, these didn’t come by His own hand- yet He used them for His purposes. God used wickedness and betrayal and injustice to accomplish His purposes in Joseph’s heart and life. God uses the sin of others and even our own sin, to accomplish His purposes. To mold us into the image of Christ, and to share in His sufferings that we may share in His glory. Trials become the means to intimately and relationally know Him. To test the genuineness of our faith. To refine and remove the dross in our soul. To strip away all that is not of Him. To identify with Jesus in His sufferings that we might know Him. Not just a head knowledge but a deep abiding knowing that permeates through our being. The valley is where we either prove the genuineness of our faith or expose the lack of it. Yet the trials in and of themselves will not produce this glory. This result only comes as we surrender and yield to His purpose, trust His character, and stand unwavering upon His word. Whether we will let the vision/promise be turned into actual character, depends on us, not on God. We have to learn to live out what was shown to us on that mountain. When He reveals His character to us, we receive it by faith and yet our joy becomes full as we have the same mind, love, unity in spirit and purpose towards others. Truth must work it’s way out into our living and breathing and being. This doesn’t come without trials. Remember, trials are the very means. We must begin to see hardship and suffering as opportunities rather than burdens. A proving grounds to our faith and the genuineness of it. As silver is refined in a furnace, so our faith is refined in the trials and sufferings we walk through. Yet He promises an exceedingly abundant reward! So we yield to His hand, we trust Him, and know He will make us a vessel for Him to a broken world. He walked through the same sufferings, and yet without sin- and so we have a friend alongside us in these pains and injustices and sufferings. As an old song goes, “And He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own, and the joy we share as we tarry there, no other has ever known”. We get the double blessing of knowing Him, and walking out with spoils from the trial!  

Genesis 50:20 “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”‬‬

James 1:2-4 “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

2 Corinthians 4:17-18 “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

‭‭1 Peter 4:12-13 “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.”

Romans 8:17-18 “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭48‬:‭10‬-‭11 “See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another.”

Proverbs 17:3 “The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart.”

Luke 6:32-36 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

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