I firmly believe that the Remnant of God\u2019s people are going though a purifying and strengthening process by waves of trials. I know many Believers who are wrestling with great hardships. My family has not been exempted from that purging process. It seems that you barely get through one trial, have a brief period of peace, and another one comes rolling in. I sometimes feel like a rock in the surging tide. We have no option but to accept it, stand in God\u2019s armor (Ephesians 6:11), and wait for the wave to pass. It is essential to remember to put on His armor\u2014not ours. Trying to fight in our armor would be a disaster.<\/p>\n
When the Believer attempts to fight the enemies of righteousness in his or her own strength and abilities, it is a huge mismatch. Sometimes all that we can do in the firefight of light against darkness is to cry out for more light. Like a solar powered vehicle, we are \u201clight-powered\u201d and must stay in the light to function at optimum performance. It means to overcome evil by doing good, to walk in the light, and not descend into a m\u00eal\u00e9e designed by Satan with his rules and on his battlefield. Instead we commit our battle to the Lord and trust in His faithfulness.<\/p>\n
Commit your way to the\u00a0Lord, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring\u00a0it\u00a0to pass. – Psalm 37:5<\/em><\/p>\n The Hebrew word for \u201ccommit\u201d is galal, which means to \u201croll off or roll oneself.\u201d When I discovered that blessed nugget long ago it became a source of great comfort and relief for me. It means to roll off my burden onto the Lord. That is much different than handing Him a burden. A burden that can be handed off does not appear to be much of a burden.<\/p>\n When working on a farm I carried heavy bags of feed on my shoulder. One did not lay such a heavy burden down\u2014it had to be rolled off. Sometimes I would carry it to the entrance of the barn and roll it off onto another guy who would take it inside and stack it. The relief is instantaneous and you feel light-footed as you head back to the truck for another bag.<\/p>\n Sometimes it means that we must remain silent in the face of a torrent of demonic attacks. When it becomes unbearable, we bow our heads and roll it into the care of God. Remaining silent does not mean you are weak, guilty, or that you are defeated. The silence of Christ was to the old Serpent an indication of defeat. A cruel instrument of torturous death delivered what Satan believed was his magnum opus. However, the cross became the instrument of eternal life. The Lamb was murdered and placed in a tomb, but He rose from the dead as a Lion. His victory is an eternal one for all who believe in Him. When Christ returns with the called, chosen, and faithful, He will recompense Satan for his eons of disaster on the human race.<\/p>\n For\u00a0consider\u00a0Him\u00a0who endured such hostility from sinners against\u00a0Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. \u2013 Hebrews 12:3<\/em><\/p>\n He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He\u00a0opened\u00a0not\u00a0His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He\u00a0opened\u00a0not\u00a0His\u00a0mouth. \u2013 Isaiah 53:7; Acts 8:32<\/em><\/p>\n Until we depart this temporal realm or our Lord appears in His glory, we have to endure the consequences of a sin-ridden earth. We must realize that the short span when we endure satanic animosity is but a testing ground of the genuineness Our natural inclination when under the burden of the hostility of trials and sinners is to succumb to despair. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,who suffered greatly by the wiles of a ruthless Communist dictator, wrote in his book Gulag\u00a0Archipelago that despair was suffering without cause. It is the proclivity of our human nature to ask \u201cWhy\u201d during suffering. God\u2019s word gives us the answer in the hope of His promise that cannot be taken away. It is the cause that we need to overcome despair. We could endure losing all our material possessions, our freedom, and even face losing our lives, if we can only hope in God\u2019s promise of a \u201cfar more exceeding eternal weight of glory\u201d (2 Corinthians 4:17).<\/p>\n We have the promise of eternal life eternal in a city built by the Lord Jesus where nothing will ever harm or distress us. That is what the Apostle Paul told us that we should measure our suffering by the glory that will be revealed (Romans 8:18-19). With that empowerment and the indwelling Holy Spirit, we can stand in every adversity, through every storm, in the Refiners fire, and to the \u201cend of our faith\u2014the salvation of our souls\u201d (1 Peter 1:6-9)<\/p>\n Perhaps Satan, as so many of his braggadocios bad girls and boys, believes that he rules superior in wickedness. That\u2019s the delusion. Wickedness only produces death and death is the ultimate end of Satan and his crew. So the more that he pushes toward his goal, the more he stirs the pot of his eternal death. In the process his aggression merely stirs the gift of God within us. After all, how do we know that faith is genuine and viable if we never have to use it? How can faith be genuine enough to believe in Christ who died and was resurrected from the dead if our faith is not resilient enough to endure hardships of temporal trials?<\/p>\n Building ourselves up on our most holy faith (Jude 1:20) is accomplished one fire-hardened \u201cbrick\u201d at a time. When the white-washed walls with untempered mortar comes down with the fury of God, the foundation of trial-fired faith will stand. I firmly believe that as painful as our trials are at the moment, one day we will be grateful that we endured them. On that day we will not take the wealth of the entire world in exchange for them and their work in our spiritual lives.<\/p>\n Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward\u00a0man\u00a0is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.\u00a0For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding\u00a0and\u00a0eternal weight of glory,\u00a0while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen\u00a0are\u00a0temporary, but the things which\u00a0are not seen are eternal. \u2013 2 Corinthians 4:16-18<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I firmly believe that the Remnant of God\u2019s people are going though a purifying and strengthening process by waves of trials. I know many Believers who are wrestling with great hardships. My family has not been exempted from that purging process. It seems that you barely get through one trial, have a brief period of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paIm2N-pP","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1601"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1607,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601\/revisions\/1607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nof our faith; faith that must be purified and polished by fiery trials. Certainly, it gets difficult, but have we shed blood striving against sin? The seed of our faith was purchased by blood and sown in blood. It is the unwavering belief that the Gospel of Christ is worth both living and dying for.<\/p>\n