Tribulation

Tribulations overwhelm us. They render us powerless and helpless. Those are some of the most unpleasant feelings in life. Most of us like to feel in control and yet there are times when events in our lives just overwhelm us and reduce us to powerlessness and helplessness. These are not pleasant feelings, but by learning how to deal with them, a person really discovers what life is all about.

When we look back over our lives, some of our most trying times, so painful to go through, were the most transforming moments of our lives. As God helps you to deal with them with His grace and His patience, there comes a transformation that leaves you better rather than bitter.

Yes, patience is the product of tribulation. It is what you learn when you come to grips with what you cannot control and what you cannot change. You finally surrender to God, and you discover that God takes you through those painful times, so the next time around you are a little more patient with the process. I believe that every set of trials and tribulations we go through leads us into a new dimension of patience if we are allowing God to use the process to sanctify us or make us more and more healthy.

Patience

After going through this process of power-lessness and helplessness again and again, a person learns to be patient. And the word patience as it is used in Romans 5 refers to an inner strength that enables a person to endure and survive circumstances they do not deserve. Obviously some people have the strength and others do not. But It is a strength that is available to every child of God. For if we submit ourselves to God in the midst of our tribulations, He will through our tribulations develop patience in us.

Paul refers to this when he talks about being strengthened with his might in the inner person (see Colossians 1:11). This strength is a kind of strength that comes to believers who are going through personal tribulation. One of the most famous gospel songs describes this process very well: “Through many dangers, toils, and snares...”

We might prefer to avoid or escape tribulation rather than to face it. But each of us in the course of life finds his house under siege. Jesus said the rains descend, the floods come, the winds blow on our house (see Matthew 7:24-27). Tribulations do bring pain and turmoil into our life. But if we are conscious of God’s presence and hold to His unchanging hand through the process, the fire and flames of that furnace of tribulation refine us and make us into patient people.

The key to making it through tribulation is to keep your heart open to God. You have to put your powerlessness and sense of helplessness on Him, then He brings you through.

Experience

People whose history is marked by a number of tribulations are either bitter or better people for having come through them. If they have surrendered to the Lord in these overwhelming circumstances, they have learned that He is faithful in giving us the strength to survive and endure. They are not only patient people, but they are people of experience, and almost inevitably, they are wise people because of what they have experienced.

Journaling is an excellent way to benefit from past tribulations. I know when I was going through my experience with my first wife — she was battling cancer, a battle she eventually lost — every day I would journal. Then I would look back upon my journals and I would read them, and I could see how God had helped me through this crisis and that

crisis. As I saw God’s grace follow me, it gave me hope to believe He would see me through any experience.

Out of tribulations will come patience and experience that are invaluable to those who walk through life with you. You become a symbol of wisdom, of stability, and strength to them. Take a look at the people you seek out when you are going through difficult times. Who are they? They are the people who have been through tough times and from them you will find wisdom.

Hope

As you move through life and discover God's boundless grace, you overcome your fear of tribulation. Your life history has taught you to be patient in tribulation. Because God has been faithful in bringing you through past tribulations, you are full of hope for the future. This is a character quality that the Holy Spirit develops in you as you learn to trust God to bring you through the painful circumstances of your life. Hope is a grace of the Spirit.

The graces of the Spirit are the distillate of God’s love in our life, and they conclude the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (verse 13). Love produces hope, and out of hope comes faith.

From tribulations and patience and experience, believers have learned to inspire people with hope, to assure people who are going through deep, dark valleys that God will bring them through. That is what you need when you are going through a trial and when the storms are brewing around you. You need hope that God will help you to survive and get you beyond the storm.

A Heart Full of the Love of God

After you have come through a series of tribulations, you begin to understand how much God loves you. He was there with you all the time and your being is full of His loving presence. Show me a person who has survived many tribulations in life and kept her faith firm in Jesus Christ and I will show you a person who is mature in love. She does not keep score of wrongs; she is not easily provoked. You can go through 1 Corinthians 13 and say, “Where is the person who is displaying these character traits in the church?” You will find those traits in the lives of people who have been through deep tribulation.

But when you talk to the people in churches who are critical, who are pastor’s headaches, who are sour on life and they claim to be Christians, get into their history. You are going to find in their history storms through which they have never passed, tribulations they have never really dealt with. You are going to find experiences that have passed through their lives, but that they have never really processed. They have never really dealt with them and fought their way through the storm.

You can tell the people whose tribulations have brought them patience and experience, because their hearts are full of the love of God. You learn to be attracted to those people, to go to them when the storms come your way.

Are you in the midst of personal tribulation? Are you being overwhelmed by undeserved pain? I want to encourage you to put your life in God's hands. If you have grown weary of trying to control what you cannot control and trying to change people or circumstances you cannot change, why not surrender these circumstances and people to God? He wants to strengthen you with His might. He wants to teach you the virtue of patience. He wants to remind you of His great love for you and give you hope. He wants to fix your sights on the future of peace and joy He has for you.

Copyright by Dr. Richard D. Dobins @ Akron, Ohio; 2000.