Why Does God Allow Trials in the Life of the Believer?: Providing Comfort to Others

The following message from Pastor Greg Laurie is made possible by Harvest Partners, helping people everywhere know God. To find out how to know God personally, go to knowgod.org. K-N-O-W, knowgod.org.

Hey, would you do me a favor? Share this message with someone who needs to hear it. He comforts us in all of our troubles.

Why? So we can comfort others when they're in trouble. We'll be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. When trials fall heavy on your life, Pastor Greg Laurie says receive the comfort of God so you can one day pass it on to others. To you comfort with the comfort that you have been comforted with.

So perhaps the hardships of today are preparing you for greater opportunities tomorrow. This is the day when the lost are found. This is the day for a new beginning. Amazing grace how sweet the sound. Oh, can you hear when the angels are singing? This is the day, the day when life begins. School kids love to whisper something to someone and say, pass it on.

Remember doing that? But today's insight is worth passing on in more than a whisper. Today Pastor Greg Laurie points out that God sees our trials, God reaches out to comfort us in our trials, and that He wants us to reach out with that same comfort to someone else who's suffering. It's a lesson on how we can be the hands and feet of God to those around us. Glad you're along for an important edition of A New Beginning.

This is the day, the day when life begins. Alright, well we are in the book of James and chapter 1 and the title of my message is, Why Does God Allow Trials on the Life of the Believer? And this is from our series, What Every Growing Christian Needs to Know. Let's pray together.

Father, tonight we don't want to just get information. We want to find hope. Especially for those that are here and those that are listening and watching, who are feeling rather hopeless, who are feeling quite despondent. They feel like they're just in a black hole. They don't know how to get out of it. They don't know why certain events are happening in their life.

It makes no sense. Lord as we go to Scripture, help us to get clarity, help us to get perspective, and help us to be reminded that You are in control of our lives and we don't have to be afraid. You have Your purposes and You have Your reasons for trials in our life as we will discover in this message. So speak to us as we open Your Word. We ask this now in Jesus' name. Amen. Now why does God allow Christians to go through trials and testings?

I mean it happens. To all of us things are going along wonderfully and suddenly without warning or so with seeing. One problem after another comes tumbling into our life.

Things are looking bleak. And then the clouds just sort of part and the sun shines again and everything is better. Why do we go through those hard times? Why do we go through those emotional lows? Why do we go through those days of difficulty?

Why do these things happen to us? That is what we are going to look at now. James chapter 1. We are going to read verses 2 to 4. My brothers, writes James, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the test of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work in you, that you may be mature, lacking nothing. God allows trials in our lives so we will grow up spiritually. Let me read on from a more modern translation. Listen to this. When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives, my brothers, don't treat them as intruders but friends.

I love that translation. Don't treat them as intruders but friends. Realize they come to test your faith and to produce in you a quality of endurance. Let that process go on until that endurance is fully developed. And you will find you have become men and women of mature character.

Men and women of integrity with no weak spots. The testing of your faith will produce perseverance or steadfastness or staying power. Even another translation translates it as heroic endurance. I like that translation.

Here is another translation. Spiritual toughness. So the testing of your faith produces spiritual toughness. Heroic endurance. Staying power. God wants iron to enter your soul.

Here is number two. God allows trials in our lives and that is true. But even when things look bleak, all things work together for your good and God's glory. Again, even when things look bleak, all things work together for God's glory and your good. And sometimes something will happen to you and you say, this is the worst thing that could happen.

Then as time passes, suddenly you look back and you go, actually that was kind of a good thing. Actually the Lord used that to make a very needed change in my life. All things can work together for good. Again we love that verse. Romans 8.28. All things work together for good to those who what? Love God. And are called according to His purpose. And that brings me to my next point.

Point three. God's ultimate purpose for us in trials and really in life is to conform us into the image of Jesus Christ. Let me say that again. God's ultimate purpose for us through trials and really in life is to conform us into the image of Jesus Christ and His usual method for this is heavenly pressure.

Why? To produce a family like this. Yes we love Romans 8.28 but we forget that after that is Romans 8.29. And those two verses together give the big picture. Again Romans 8.28. We know that all things work together for good to those that love God and are called according to His purpose. Verse 29.

For whom He foreknew He also did predestine that they might be conformed into the image of His own dear Son. God's long term goal for you is to become like Jesus. So there are things we go through in life and it is bad. They stay bad and they are always bad.

Am I right? They never are good. Tragedies? That wasn't good. Now maybe good came out of it. But it never becomes a good thing. And by the way God doesn't say a bad thing always will become a good thing. It says He will cause all things to work together for good.

But here is the bigger picture. Some of the things that God is doing in your life are not going to be discovered until we get to heaven. And you will realize that all of those things were designed to make you more like Jesus. So some benefits of trials we will see in this life and other benefits of trials will not be seen until the afterlife. Just know this. God is at work.

Point number four. Suffering can bring glory to God. Suffering can bring glory to God. God can be glorified through just intervening and doing a miracle. I mean maybe you are sick and you go to the doctor and they say you have cancer and there is nothing we can do.

And you might as well get your affairs in order because you may only have a few months to live. And then you go to church and you say I need prayer. And the Bible says if there is any sick among you call for the elders of the church who will lay hands on that person and pray for them and anoint them with oil. And the effectual fervent prayer of an evangelist will accomplish much. And so you go and you get prayer. And then you go and you get rechecked and suddenly the tests reveal the cancer is gone. And the doctors can't figure it out.

What happened? A miracle. God still does things like that today.

We hear stories like this all the time. He intervenes. He does the miracle. He provides that sum of money that is needed. He comes through in some amazing way.

He still does it. So sometimes God is glorified by removing the problem and resolving the situation. How many of you have had what looked like an insurmountable problem that was overruled by God?

He intervened. Ok. So that is most of you. That is fantastic. Thank God when that happens. But then there are times when God will be glorified not by the removal of the problem but by leaving it there and having you worship Him just the same. And that is a powerful testimony. That is what happened to Paul and Silas who were thrown into a prison for preaching the gospel. And the Bible says at midnight they began to sing praises to God and the other prisoners were listening.

I don't think they had ever heard singing in a hellhole like that before. Paul and Silas were able to give God glory at midnight. And then of course you remember that they had been treated so badly by that Roman jailer who whipped them and had a hard heart. But then the earthquake came. A miracle happened.

All the prisoners could have run free if they wanted to. And the jailer was about to kill himself because he knew if he lost his prisoners he would be executed by Rome. And Paul said, don't harm yourself. We are all here. And that jailer said, sirs tell me what must I do to be saved.

You see their testimony won him over because they gave God the glory not after the earthquake but before. And that is the time to give God the glory. So let's say you are the person that gets the unfortunate diagnosis. You are the person that has the tragedy befall you.

You are the person that hears the bad news. You say, well I will give God the glory when He fixes it. No.

No. You give God the glory now. Right now you give Him the glory. Because He is still in control. He is going to work it ultimately together for His glory and your good.

He is going to make you more like Jesus. Ok so you have got your problems. And I don't want to diminish what you are going through because you say, ok my problems aren't that bad. But there are still problems Greg. Ok. I will give you that. Yeah a problem is a problem. A trial is a trial. Whatever it is.

Big, small, somewhere in the middle. Ok but now here is the question. Can you somehow give glory to God through that? Can you find a way to remember that God is still in control of your life and He is going to work it out for His glory and your good ultimately? Can you use it as an opportunity to proclaim Christ to others?

Yes sometimes He will remove the affliction and sometimes He will be glorified in the affliction. Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment. It's a blessing when we hear that people are listening to Pastor Greg's messages on the radio. Pastor Greg, I listen to A New Beginning every morning on KPDQ Radio in Portland, Oregon. It's a wonderful way to start my day. Thank you for sending me your Christmas card last year with the pictures of your family. It's a good reminder to pray for you and your family. God bless you.

Are you being impacted by the teaching here on A New Beginning? If so, why not drop Pastor Greg an email and let him know? Send it to Greg at Harvest dot org.

Do it today while you're thinking about it. Again that's Greg at Harvest dot org. Pastor Greg continues now with his message called Why Does God Allow Trials in the Life of the Believer? Number five and lastly, trials and suffering can be used by God to prepare us for a special task. Trials, suffering, can be used by God to prepare us for a special task.

God's getting you ready for something. God can use these experiences of life to transform us. When you've gone through something and survived it, you can be a great comfort to someone else who is going through it. When the Lord called our son Christopher home to heaven, I reached out immediately to people who had lost children.

I knew a few. One of those people was John Corson, pastor and a friend for years and I just said, John, help me. I'm not some big pastor with all the answers. I'm a father who lost his son and I'm in pain like any other father would be.

John was such a comfort. I think just to see someone that survives such a thing functioning brings a measure of hope. When you've gone through something and you say, Why did God allow me to go through this?

The answer may be, well, we don't know but I know this. You're going to sure bring a lot of hope to somebody else that's going through it. Because when that crisis hits you, when that doctor says you have cancer, when the loved one dies and it looks like your world just ended, they have someone say, You're going to get through this because I've gone through the same thing and let me share with you what the Lord has shown me. So you have a message like nobody else has. So you don't ever want to waste your pain. God allowed it. Now God wants to use it. Over in 2 Corinthians 1 Paul says, He comforts us in all of our troubles. Listen to this. He comforts us in all of our troubles.

Why? So we can comfort others. When they're troubled we'll be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. We can be sure the more we suffer for Christ the more God will shower us with His comfort through Christ. See, you comfort with the comfort that you have been comforted with. So perhaps the hardships of today are preparing you for greater opportunities tomorrow.

You might say, Man, I don't know. This stuff, this message is so depressing. Why do you have to talk about things like this? Can't you tell us something that's more positive? I actually think it's kind of positive to think that God can take the worse things and work through them.

This is real life. You say, Well, I can't handle suffering at all. In fact, I don't do suffering. Well then you're not going to do life. Or you're going to live in a state of basic denial. Listen. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Okay? Reality is hardship is going to come your way. It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when.

Trials are going to come. Now some of you are young and you're saying, Well, I haven't faced them yet. That's because you're young. But you will. Some of you are older and you say, I've faced quite a few already.

In fact, I'm in one right now. Okay, here's what we need to remember so we don't get freaked out when we hear about hardship and the lives of others. God gives you what you need when you need it. God gives you what you need when you need it. Not necessarily before, listen, but never after.

Not necessarily before, but never after. He will give you the strength. He will give you the words. He will give you the power to do what you need to do when you need to do it. So don't panic. God's in control. He's going to work it out for His good.

He'll give you what you need when you need it. Now, final thoughts. Everything I've said is for only a follower of Jesus. You're not a Christian. You're listening to this message.

Actually, this doesn't really apply to you. Romans 8.28 again, all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. For the man or woman who doesn't love God or doesn't believe in God or doesn't want God, all things are not working together for good.

Let me take it a step further. All things are kind of working together for bad. Because not only is your own life going to have troubles, every life does.

You know, the rain falls on the just and the unjust, the Bible says. Everyone is going to have calamity. Everyone is going to face hardship. Everyone is going to lose loved ones. The Christian can hang on to God knowing that the Lord is in control and will accomplish His purposes.

But the non-Christian, what are they going to hang on to? There is nothing. There is no person that can fix it.

There is no way to resolve it. And that is why you need Jesus. Listen to this. Sometimes God allows hardship in our life to wake us up to our spiritual need. The psalmist said, Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I have kept Your Word. And maybe it is something that has happened to you recently that has been like your wake-up call. A close brush with death yourself. Maybe someone close to you died. Or maybe something dramatic happened. Your wife or your husband walked out on you.

Or Starbucks closed before you got there. I don't know. I am joking about that of course. But here is the thing. Whatever has happened, maybe it has got you to start looking up saying, Maybe I need God. Maybe I need to start thinking about my life spiritually.

Yeah, that is what you should be doing. You need to think about Him. And how much He loves you. And how you can run to Him. Just, you know, when a little child falls and hurts himself, what do they do? They run to their parents.

Let's get specific. They run to Mommy. If Daddy is around, they will accept Him. But they really want Mommy.

Right? And Mom takes that little one into her arms and hugs them and kisses them and reassures them and maybe kisses their hand or wherever they were hurt or whatever it was or their knee and tells them it will be alright. Well, listen, we fall, we are hurting, you can run into the arms of your Father who is just ready to receive you. He will. He will receive you. You say, Well, what if I made a mess of my life and all these things that are happening to me are because I made wrong decisions. Would God still receive me? Yeah, He would. He would receive you.

And say, Let me help you now. First of all, let's get you right with me. First He will forgive you of your sin. And now He will start changing you from the inside and you can go back to what looks like a tangled mess that could never be resolved and you watch what God will do.

I don't know what state your life is in right now but I know what the answer to your problems are. It's not an it, it's a who. It's Jesus Christ. You need to come to Him. He will throw His arms around you. He will forgive you. But you must say, God, I am sorry for my sin.

You must turn from it. You must put your faith in Him. In Him alone. And He will help you. Jesus showed us how much He loved us when He went to the cross 2,000 years ago and died there in our place and spilled His own blood so we could have our sin forgiven and come into a right relationship with God. If you don't know God in a personal way, if Jesus is not living inside of you, if you don't have the assurance that you will go to heaven when you die, if you feel as though you're all alone and lifeless, then you can come to Christ.

Right now. So we're going to pray and I'm going to give you an opportunity to ask Jesus Christ to come into your life if you need to do that. And there might be some that, well, you're a believer but you've been running from God and it's brought a lot of added drama into your life. It's brought a lot of problems you didn't have and you wouldn't have had otherwise but you kind of brought this on yourself.

You're reaping what you sow. Maybe you need to come back to the Lord. It's like old Jonah, you know. He was told to go preach to Nineveh.

He said, no. Went the opposite direction and a storm came. Maybe you're running from God and a storm has come. But remember that the Lord was there for him even in the storm. He'll be there for you. So if you need to come to Christ or come back to Him, here's an opportunity to do it as we close in prayer. Father, thank You for Your word.

Thank You for Your love. Thank You for sending Jesus to die on the cross in our place and then to rise again from the dead. Now, Lord Jesus, we pray that You will speak to hearts here. Help people know that there's forgiveness, that there's a second chance in life no matter what they've done wrong that You will accept them and forgive them.

Help them to come to You. Right now we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. An important prayer from Pastor Greg Laurie. And if you'd like to make a change in your relationship with the Lord today, Pastor Greg will help you before today's edition of A New Beginning concludes. Now, the title of today's presentation is Why Does God Allow Trials in the Life of the Believer? For an instant replay, look for that title when you go online to harvest.org. Again, go to harvest.org. Or for a CD copy, call 1-800-821-3300.

We can take your call anytime around the clock, 1-800-821-3300. Pastor Greg? Hey, everybody. I'm here in studio with my friend Darrell Strawberry. Now, most of you have heard of Darrell.

And he's obviously a great athlete, a well-known celebrity. But what I love about Darrell is he takes the platform that God has given him to share the gospel. And I've seen Darrell in action.

So, Darrell, thank you for just being who you are. And thank you for writing this brand-new book, Turn Your Season Around. You know, one of the things you talk about in this book is you talk about how we have seasons in life.

The Bible says to everything, there is a season in Ecclesiastes. You say there are seasons of sufferings, heartache, and despair that can serve as God's batting cage for teaching you how to persevere, endure, and wait for his healing and deliverance. So, you know a little bit about batting cages.

Tell us how that works. And maybe there's someone listening right now who is in a season of suffering or a season of difficulty or some other challenge. So tell us about what it's like to be in God's batting cage. Well, it's a really good place when you finally get to God's batting cage. There are different seasons of life that we all go through.

Either you're in a storm or storm on the way or you're coming out of a storm. And it's part of life. And it's part of like just baseball. When you play baseball, you go through a season and you have a high at the beginning, the first month. Then you have a tail off in the middle. And then you pick it up at the end of the year and you finish up strong.

It depends on how you're going to finish. And the reason for turning your season around was a lot of media used to write about me having the first half of the season, the first 82 games. I probably just had a third par season so far, but they forgot that I had a second half of the season. And that's just the way it is with God, you know, in your life. It's having a second half of your season where you can have the first tough six months and then you have another six months to go and God can turn things around within those next six months if you don't give up, if you don't quit. And it's just like baseball, you know, and the reason why I use this book so much like baseball, turn your season around nine in these nine chapters is because you're going to have some struggles. You're going to have some valleys.

You're going to have some difficult roads to get through. And those that end up excelling at the highest level, they persevere. They don't quit. They continue to go and they continue to pursue and that's what it is the same with God. You have to continue to pursue after God, even though it's been a hard time, even like this pandemic has been a hard time. People ask me, well, what did you do? Well, I just saturated myself again with God and got closer to God in the middle of the pandemic to keep me healthy. You got to stay hungry for God.

And I think that's the real key for a lot of people. And they say, well, what else did you do? I say, I surrender myself every day.

And what do I do? I get up and I worship God and I thank God. It's just like plant baseball. What did I do every day? I had to participate in doing something new every day when I was in the struggle. I had to go down to the batting cage. I didn't hit on the ball field and I would just have soft toss to me and I would hit the ball the other way, constantly over and over and over. And my hitting coach would make me do that, just that one place until I actually get a hit.

And once I got a hit, boom, I would take off. I'll be back in another groove. And it's the same way with your walk with God.

That's so true. You know, the apostle Paul seemed to be a bit of a sports fan too, Darrell, because he used sports analogies all the time. Talked about running a race, wrestling in the spiritual battle that we're in and he said, you know, that when we're running a race, you need to put your eyes on Jesus and cast off the excess weight and persevere through it. So folks, if you're going through a storm right now, then you need to get a copy of Darrell Strawberry's new book, Turn Your Season Around, How God Transforms Your Life. And we'd be happy to send this to you for your gift of any size to help us continue to teach the word of God and proclaim the gospel.

So again, get your copy of Turn Your Season Around from Darrell Strawberry. And we won't be mentioning this much longer, so write us at A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California, 92514. Or call 1-800-821-3300. That's 1-800-821-3300.

Or go online to Harvest.org. Well, Pastor Greg, you talked today about the importance of coming to the Lord or coming back to the Lord. And no doubt there's somebody listening who'd like to do that. Can you help them take that next step?

Yes, I would be delighted to. And you that want to make this commitment or recommitment to Christ, I want you to pray right now. And if you mean this prayer from your heart, God will hear you. The Bible says, draw near to God, and he'll draw near to you.

And that's a step you'll be taking now. Pray this after me. God, I know that I'm a sinner, and I'm sorry for my sin, but I thank you for sending Jesus Christ, your son, to die on the cross in my place. Now I turn from my sin, and I choose to follow you this day forward as your disciple. Thank you for accepting me. Thank you for forgiving me. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Now if you prayed that prayer a minute from your heart, God has heard you, and he has forgiven you. We have some materials that we would like to send to you at no charge that will encourage you in this commitment you've made to Jesus Christ.

Yeah, that's right. The materials are all assembled in what we call our New Believers' Growth Packet. We'll be glad to send it to you. If you'll get in touch with us right away, it's free of charge. Just write A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California, 92514. Or call 1-800-821-3300.

That's 24-7, phone number 1-800-821-3300. Or go online to harvest.org and click the words Know God. Next time, Pastor Greg continues his series, What Every Growing Christian Needs to Know. It's a helpful study on avoiding temptation. We'll see even Jesus was tempted. It's how we respond that makes all the difference. More next time on A New Beginning. This is the day, the day when life begins. The preceding message from Greg Laurie was made possible by Harvest Partners, helping people everywhere know God. Sign up for Pastor Greg's free daily email devotions at harvest.org.