7 Mind-Blowing Things About How Trials Come to Make Us Strong At Last, the Secret to Involving Christ in Your Trials is Revealed

Jun P. Espina         10 min read

Updated on October 16th, 2022

Some Truths About Trials in Life That Are Acceptable to the Majority

How do trials come to make us strong in these challenging times? Do you have trials in life you don’t want your husband or mother to know about? What about rumors of war and nuclear Armageddon, global food shortages, the dissolution of physical money (to control us digitally), and the power elite’s agenda to put computer chips into our brains? Do you consider them part of humanity’s trials and tribulations in these last days?

Well, trials, whatever they are, don’t come for no reason. The devil makes trials darker on every hand. However, in this article, we will share seven mind-blowing things about how trials come to make us strong.

1. You Need to Involve God, But Who is This “God” You Want to Call On to Help You?

First, let us answer this crucial question: Who is this “God” you want to call on to help you in your difficulties?

For most Catholics, they implore their “Mama Mary.” The Hindus go to their 33 core gods and goddesses for help. The Buddhists trust in “Buddha’s 8 rules of life,” while the Muslims cry for Allah five times a day.

As Christians, we involve our Lord Jesus in our trials. We don’t plead with Allah, Mother Mary, Vishnu, or Brahma. Because we base our belief system on the Holy Bible and not other so-called “sacred Scriptures,” our God is Christ.

Our Lord Jesus says, “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” (John 14:13-14)

What about involving our Father God in our difficulties? Well, as Christians, we always address our “Father God… in Christ’s Name” in our prayers. Christ taught us this:

It is our Lord’s model prayer. You don’t need to memorize it as if it has some magical powers.

By model prayer, we mean a “prayer template” where we acknowledge and trust that Christ’s Father (our Father God) is Sovereign and His “will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

After we acknowledge our God’s lordship and authority, we proceed with what we need, like, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11) in Christ’s name. (See John 14:14.)

In our trials, we don’t mention “Jehovah,” because it is not Christ’s Father’s name, and it is not mentioned in the New Testament (except in the Jehovah’s Witnesses version of the Bible that mentions the word “Jehovah” 237 times for obvious reasons).

Mark Ward wrote: “There is one thing we do know, though: God’s name is not Jehovah. That word is a colossal, unrepealable, European mistake.”

2. As Christians, We Focus More on Our Relationship with Christ, Not Jehovah

We hear some “God, God” sermons without mentioning Christ, mostly from hyper-Calvinist preachers who exaggerate the doctrines of our Father God’s love and grace. It is not what we teach.

For example, John Piper, a prominent hyper-Calvinist, said that we don’t need to believe in Jesus but rather “Delight yourself in the LORD [Father].” (Psalm 37:4)

In our trials that come to make us strong, we won’t say, “Jehovah, or Yahweh, or whatever your name is, Father, please help me.”

Why? Because we must not take the name of the Lord our God in vain. Most Bibles have dropped the name “Jehovah” because God’s name is YHWH—all consonants! Scholars of the Holy Scriptures used Adonai (meaning “LORD”) since YHWH is so sacred and holy a word to write or utter.

In short, no one knows the exact pronunciation of YHWH. Is it “Yahweh”? We don’t know.

The evolution of the word “Jehovah” is “Adonai,” “Yahowah,” and then “Jehovah.” The principle used was to use the vowels of Adonai (a,o,a) and insert them into YHWH to produce “Yahowah,” from which comes “Jehovah.”

Exodus 20:7 states that we must “not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.” It is the third of the Ten Commandments.

3. The Bible Principle We Need to Know About is That Trials Come to Make Us Strong

How do we look at the bright side of our ordeals when Satan makes our trials darker on every hand? It is like asking, “Can a person just chuckle pretentiously after learning about his stage-four cancer?”

Well, trials come to make us strong regardless of how they come. James said, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.” It means your difficulties will produce your strongest version.

I heard about a former manager who was kicked out because of the pandemic. After a few months, he already owned three businesses as a successful entrepreneur.

The scriptural positive view attached to trials and tribulations has a catch, though. To make us rely on Christ more. The apostle Paul said, “Tribulation brings about perseverance.” (Rom. 5:3) Peter also said that trials “result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Pet. 1:7b)

I had various trials as a follower of Christ. God allowed the devil to devour my ten-year financial base with a huge fire. While playing, a nail hit my son’s eye; my daughter had a car accident, and I had been subjected to major surgery because of a tumor on my neck.

For all these trials, I became strong while keeping in my heart Christ’s promise. He said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9, NLT)

4. For Non-Christians, Christ is in Your Trials

Christ knew when Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, got sick and then died. When the disciples (not all of them believed in Jesus as the Messiah at that time) met a storm at sea, they woke up Jesus, who was sleeping. Our Lord was in the storm. He knows your trials, but you must wake Him. (See Matthew 8:23-27.)

When I was still teaching, a fellow teacher shared how she, a single mom, dimly gawked and pleaded with her idol, “Mama Mary,” while inside her hospital room, delivering her baby.

What she did not know was that Christ “is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Col. 1:17) She did not know John 16:33, where Christ says,

Our Lord Jesus Christ is always there in your storms in life because He holds all things together in His mighty hands.

It is the secret. You must include Christ in your life, no matter where you go or who you are, because He is the God of your trials. The apostle Paul wrote,

5. God Created Us To Face Trials and Tribulations

After God created Adam and Eve, He tried them with a command not to eat from the tree of life. But they failed. (Gen. 2:15-17; 3:1-10) Because of that, humans have suffered in this domain. And death becomes the crown of our sorrows in this life.

We will have trials and tribulations until we leave this world. We know how to unravel our ordeals, though, because our DNA has stored tons of ways to help us survive our adversities. That’s why we are still here—and that’s why we need to face our problems head-on, and not cower.

Anxieties and alarms are also embedded in our genes. That is why we are naturally God-centered, and if we cannot find God, we will invent one made of wood or stone. I remember the cliché, “Thank God I’m an atheist.”

Ignorance is a problem multiplier. They say, to solve a problem, we need to first acknowledge the problem exists. Just like fixing a computer bug by first checking the power cord to see if it is connected to the power source.

Since we have trials from day one of our existence, we’ve got to accept that element of being alive. Since ignorance is a problem-intensifier, we need the truth from the Sacred Writings as our first move in facing and conquering our trials.

Psalm 27 states,

Even though God said in Genesis 3 that humanity would suffer on earth, Christ also said you have a solution to all your problems through Him as God in your trials. Let us compare two biblical subjects dealing with this truth:

Our trials and tribulations in this life pale compared to Christ’s assurance that those who put their faith in Him will not perish but possess eternal life.

6. The Need to Understand the Behind-the-Scenes of Your Trials

As a rule, your trials in life have a back story. If you suffered, for example, because your wife left you after you cheated on her, your pains are predictable. Even God in your trials will not work to help you. God is righteous and won’t help sustain your wicked ways. Because God said,

Even our traditional wisdom—without a scriptural backup—says that “what goes around comes around.”

The God in your trials can help you, though, since Christ came to save sinners. (1 Tim. 1:15) But you need to seek Him, and knock on the door of His forgiveness.

What About Those Sufferings That Have Turned Up Naturally, Like a Birth Defect?

Christ said that God allowed natural defects, like being born blind, “so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:3b)

What’s the point? Well, a person born blind can be as happy as those who are not. That is the sovereign decree of God that divine satisfaction always involves the intervention of His Spirit. A dying billionaire, for example, is as unhappy as a poor and disabled man who has lost hope of the promised afterlife.

To those who have the Spirit of God in their souls—both those who are privileged and underprivileged, God said,

In sum, your ordeals in this life, whatever they are, are nothing compared with the better future and hope as promised by God. Our Lord Jesus, who is God in your trials, said, “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:40)

How deep are your trials in comparison with Christ’s promised resurrection of your body “on the last day”?

7. God-glorifying Trials Come to Make Us Strong

To prove a point, we want to restate the case of Lazarus, which we mentioned above. Let us note John 11:4 because it says,

Christ said that what was glorifying to God glorified Him, too. In short, Lazarus’s sickness glorified both the Father and the Son because our Lord raised Lazarus from the dead.

The story of the Shunammite woman was about the death of her son, whom Prophet Elisha raised to life. It was a God-glorifying trial because it started when she constructed a room in her house for the prophet Elisha to lodge in. She was wealthy and childless. Then the Prophet prayed over that she would have a son… then the child died, but lived again by Elisha’s prayer.

For another example, the wife of my brother-in-law already experienced agonal breathing when I spoke with her.

“I cannot understand why God gave me this sickness. I’m still so young,” she said.

“God’s love,” I replied, “is like the sun. It shines even during the nighttime.”

No one and nothing can “separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I read Romans 8:28-39 and explained to her that God would give her an immortal body and eternal life. (She had submitted to water baptism just a few months back.)

She died around four hours after I left the hospital.

I asked my mother-in-law about her last words, to which she replied: “Sus, sus, sus.”

I wrote about this woman many times over since I noticed her lips formed a smile before she breathed her last.

She died praying, even though she could no longer say the word “Jesus,” entirely.

To me, it was a type of trial, a fatal kidney infection, that had not only made her strong but catapulted her to heaven.

Conclusion

The entire Scriptures do not contain the word “problem” because there is no trial bigger than the God of your trials, Jesus Christ, our Lord. The apostle Paul wrote, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” (Rom. 8:18)

To wind up, we held that some truths about trials in life are acceptable to many.

Our point is that we attempted to present decent premises on how trials come to make us strong.

Trials in life differ from person to person, but the customary approach to solving tragic problems is to ask for God’s help through prayer. Let the atheists mock the principle of involving God in your trials since they reject mystery as a central element of life.

Trials and tribulations are a part of people’s lives on earth because of our separation from God, as we have hinted at in this post. The Prophet Isaiah said:

Trials in life may come from natural calamities or result from harmful choices. The need to understand the cause of your trials is crucial.

What matters more is that Christ is God in your trials, and you don’t ask Him for help most of the time.

The apostle Paul wrote: “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to humankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” (1 Cor. 10:13, NIV)

In your storms, Christ is just at the bottom of your ship, waiting for you to seek His help.