What Good Comes from Trials?

It was shortly after my third ankle surgery when I rode my scooter up the ramp in the courtroom. I was there to be the voice of my daughter and to address the judge and the young man who struck me and Sophia. It was a hard day; an awful experience. A day that was flooded with tears and emotions. 

That’s what the trials in our lives look like as well. They aren’t pleasant, in fact, they are indeed painful, and no one wants to purposefully go through them. 

Yet, in James 1:2-4, he writes, “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.”

As the daughter of a math teacher, I break it down to this formula: 

Trials —> Endurance —> Complete 

Following this formula, we are only truly complete after enduring trials in our lives.

It is through trials we are able to find wholeness and completion in our lives. Trials are not here to destroy us, but we need to allow them to shape us into who we are meant to be.

Now don't get me wrong. We don’t have to be happy with the trials we go through, but we can be thankful for the results that are produced on the other side. I will never be happy I buried my daughter, my marriage failed, or I lost my health for a season. But I can find joy in the growth on the other side. 

Trials not only have the power to create character within us, but trials also reveal our character.

What are the trials in your life revealing about your character? Will you look at the positive things God has or is doing in those trials? You don’t have to like the trials, but know good can come from hard situations. 

“In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (I Peter 1:6-7)

Some of the final words I read in the courtroom to the judge and the young man who took the earthly life of Sophia were these, “There will be a time, for you and for me, that hopefully we can see that God can bring some good out of this tragic event.”  

I hope on the other side of our trials, we allow God to use us in His story to bring about praise, glory, and honor to Him.