“When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives my brothers, don’t resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends!” (James 1:2 PHILLIPS)

There are a lot of ways you can respond to the trials and temptations that daily life throws at you. One option is to give in without a fight—just surrender to despair or to your sinful urges. That’s one extreme. Let’s call it The Worst Possible Thing You Can Do.

Another option is to blame God, which is actually the same as playing God, if you think about it. You start with the assumption that trials and temptations are bad things, and that if God doesn’t spare you from them, He’s doing something wrong.

A third option is to hunker down and wait for them to pass, like a coastal resident riding out a hurricane.

James offers a different suggestion—one that’s so jaw-droppingly unexpected that it might make you do a double-take. Welcome trials and temptations as friends? Is that even possible?

Look at Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend” (NLT). You could also substitute the word spouse. Spouses and friends do the hard things that other people won’t do. They challenge us. They lovingly knock us down to size when we need it. They make us better people.

Trials and temptations do the same thing. They just use different methods. That is, God uses those methods. He created you. He knows your potential. And because He knows exactly how you’re wired, He knows which parts of your potential can be unlocked through successes and victories and which parts can be unlocked through trials and temptations. And that’s why He allows them into your life.

In 1 Corinthians 10:13, the apostle Paul writes, “The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure” (NLT).

Because God is faithful, we can endure anything life throws at us. Knowing that, we can look for His lessons in every trial and temptation.

God allows hardships to remind you of His power. Sometimes He allows a difficulty so that He can deliver you from it. Sometimes He allows it so that He can remove the difficulty from you. And sometimes He allows hardships to produce or strengthen a necessary quality in your life.

James wrote, “For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing” (James 1:3–4 NLT).

Think of it as a spiritual workout. I go to the gym, but I don’t like it. I’m there with the weight slammers, the guys who drop their barbells so everyone else can hear the heavy clang. And the people who sweat all over everything. And the people who take pictures of themselves while they work out. My favorite part of the gym experience is when I leave.

But I go to get stronger. And that’s not an easy process. You have to break down muscle in order to build it up. God does the same for us. Trials and temptations are like God’s gym, where He strengthens us for the present and for the future.

Reflection question: How might a trial or temptation that you’re facing right now ultimately strengthen your faith?

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