Christ and Our Trials

Christ goes through trials with the born again believers just as He went through with Job.

God encouraged Job to trust Him even more. Job never denied God during it all but he did ask God why? This is a normal and permissible question as long as it does not lead to accusation against God.

Those who say it is alright to be angry with God are foolish, not understanding the nature and will of God they think of Him as possibly doing wrong. Assigning wrong to God is bringing Him down to the level of humanity.

God does no wrong, God never makes a mistake, He does however have purpose for everything He does and it is perfect, even if we cannot see or understand what we are experiencing.

Revelation 16:7 "7 And I heard the altar saying, “Yes, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are your judgments!”

To be angry with God is to claim He does not know what He is doing, it is denying His divinity and His very nature of perfection.

Proverbs 19:3
"The foolishness of man ruins his way, And his heart rages against the LORD."

God has every reason to be angry with man, but man has no reason to be angry with God.

Job 42:6 "I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance."

Job was not angry with God but had questions of Him. When the Lord showed Job that he was a mere man and that God created everything He began to see that his focus was more on his pain than it was on God. He had not sinned but he had allowed his pain to be diverted from God to that alone.

Job 42:6
"6 Therefore I retract,
And I repent (change his mind) in dust and ashes.”

God often does not tell us why we are going through trials, rather He wants us to trust that He knows what He is doing.

Also, we learn to trust Him more when we see that nothing we can do will fix things. When the fix comes, whether it be learning to live with pain or healing of that pain, we will know that it was a miracle from God.

Yes, I said it, that it is a miracle from God to learn to live with pain. Some godly people live with pain their entire lives remaining faithful to God, even with joy in their hearts through the tears.

Tears are not an expression necessarily of weakness, they are the bodies way of stress relief. God gave them, He had His own tears before going to the cross. Are we above God that we would not have tears when He did?

It is prideful weakness in someone who cannot cry for fear of appearing weak. The very act of refusing to cry when our bodies demand it, is itself a weakness.

Romans 12:15
"15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep."

Revelation 5:4
"Then I began to weep greatly because no one was found worthy to open the book or to look into it;"

Weeping over the sins we see all around us is a sign of the godly empathy we were given by Christ Who desires that all men be saved. Those who do not weep for others lack the character that loves God and mankind more than they love themselves.

Psalm 56:8
"You have taken account of my wanderings; Put my tears in Your bottle Are they not in Your book?"

There are 64 verses on weeping in the Bible, this is why I believe it is a part of the Christian life as natural as breathing.

John 11:33
"When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled,"

If anyone is emotionally and empathetically constipated then perhaps they ought to read all the verses in the Bible about concern for others and the healing that comes from weeping over someone else's sorrows.

As my husband says frequently: "a sorrow shared is half a sorrow and a blessing shared is twice the blessing."

If anyone realizes they lack empathy for others they are revealing a character flaw, it would be time to ask God to develop in them the character qualities of the fruit of the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22-23
"22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."