A fourth purpose that the Lord has in sending trails is to call us to a greater realization of our eternal hope. To state it more simply, trials make us long for heaven. Consider the death of a loved one who was a believer. If that most precious of persons (spouse, child, some other relative or close friend) is called to heaven, and you are open and accepting of God's sovereignty, you will invariably focus your heart and mind on eternal things. You will quickly develop a disengaged, disinterested relationship with this passing world. Romans 8:18-24 beautifully supports this thought:
For I consider that sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God...the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved.
The Apostle Paul lends further support to this premise in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, where he draws upon his own experiences and summarizes the results of his trials:
Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day...while we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal.
In 2 Corinthians 5:1-8, Paul adds:
We know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven; in as much as we, having put it on, shall not be found naked...being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord -- for we walk by faith not by sight -- we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.
Even apart from the context of trials and sufferings, Paul exhorts us to set our mind "on the things above" (Colossians 3:1-2).
The Lesson of First Love
God also uses trials and sufferings for the very important purpose of showing us what we really love. That was part of the Lord's test for Abraham at Moriah. The big question Abraham had to answer was Do you love your son Isaac more than God or do you love God more than Isaac? In that situation the answer was crucial because God was prepared to remove Isaac from Abraham if that would have given God first place in Abraham's life:
The Lord also tests us to show us the object of our first love (Deut. 13:3; see also 6:5; Matt. 22:36-37). Jesus brings this matter of first love into sharp focus: "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:26).
That is an extremely harsh statement if you take it at face value. But Jesus is not saying you should hate everyone including yourself; He is saying believers must love God and Christ so much that, by comparison, they will seem to hate themselves and their families. If Christians are not willing to put even their closest self-interests far below Christ's interests, that reveals their lack of supreme love to God and that they are not worthy to be called Christ's disciples.
Therefore, if you want to be completely obedient to Christ, there will be times you need to push aside any and all appeals from family members that would keep you from giving first priority to Him. God might call upon you to make that most difficult of choices to test your loyalty. He wants you to pass the test even as Abraham did, and thereby prove that He is your first love.
(from The Power of Suffering, John MacArthur, Jr.)
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