On the Purpose of Adversity: Just What I Needed

 

You know how sometimes you read something or run across a video at just the right time?

That happened to me this morning when I read the following in James Watkins' updated version of Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ.

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

James 1:2-4

It is good for us that we sometimes have sorrows and adversities, for they often make us realize we are only strangers and sojourners on this earth and that we can't put our trust in worldly things. It is good that we sometimes endure opposition and are judged unfairly. When we experience this trouble, it is for our good. For these things help us to be humble and shield us from conceit. For when people speak evil against us falsely and give us no credit for good, then we seek more earnestly the approval of God.

So, we need to rest wholly upon God, rather than needing to seek comfort from the hands of people. When people who fear God are afflicted, tried, or oppressed with evil thoughts, they realize how much they need him, since without him they can do no good thing. Then those with heavy hearts groan and cry out from the troubled heart. There are even times when God's children grow weary of life and desire to depart and be with Christ. All this teaches them that on earth there is no perfect security or fullness of peace.

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Truth is...The more I entrust my sense of well-being and happiness to what happens to me or what people say about me or do to me, the more miserable I will be. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart..."