Mom Heart Moments #117

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.

I AM NOT NATURALLY A VERY NOBLE or valiant person. And so when I read this verse over the years, I would flinch and go through it quickly, because I didn’t relish trials. Our lives have been full of them, and I have, at times, learned to dread another day in case it might have some new trial in it!

Having four children, homeschooling, moving seventeen times, and all the difficulties in relationships, criticism for my ideals, financial struggles, health issues, loneliness, marital tensions, the ever-changing phases of my children’s lives, ministry challenges, and an overload of responsibilities —just keeping up with all the work that never ends was so very much harder than I ever realized life would be. Though in my early twenties I became serious about the Lord and truly committed to going anywhere and doing anything for His Kingdom, I no more had an idea of what that would mean than a little girl who dresses up as a princess and pretends to know what it would mean to become a queen and rule a country.

Yet, I can look back now and see that God had such great plans for my life, and the only pathway to these plans of His was through many trials. I had pretty much committed myself to becoming a warrior for His Kingdom in this life, not realizing that in order for someone to become a general to lead others into battle, he must first begin with basic training.

Do you ever feel incapable of doing what God might have planned for you? Have you considered the idea that perhaps the very difficulties you’re facing right now are part of the way He is preparing you?