9 Ways Trials Can Enrich Your Soul

If we place the trials we face in perspective, we often can see the eternal benefits of the current unpleasant situation. For example, Psalm 73 shows how perspective transformed the attitude of the Psalmist: “You hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel…Whom have I in heaven but you? My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever” (Ps. 73:23–26).

A Puritan writer once said that if someone threw you a bag of gold and it knocked you out as you reached out to catch it, you would not rebuke the person for giving you the gold after you awoke. Trials are like that. They temporarily may knock us out, but they also enrich our soul. Here are some of the ways that trials can enrich our life.

1. Trials give you a special opportunity to experience Christ’s peace. Jesus said that “in me you may have peace. In the world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
2. Trials will enlarge your capacity to experience Christ’s joy. In 2 Corinthians 8:2 we read of God’s people experiencing “overflowing joy” in the midst of a “very severe trial” (see also John 16:20–22).
3. Trials give you an opportunity to know the God of all comfort and the Father of compassion (2 Cor. 1:3).
4. Trials will enhance your ability to minister. Paul told the believers in the church at Corinth that the comfort of God in the midst of their pain would enable them to comfort others. “[God] comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves received from God” (2 Cor. 1:4).
5. Trials give you an opportunity to learn new lessons of faith. That’s what Paul learned. “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:8–9).
6. Trials build perseverance in your life. The Apostle James declared that “the testing of your faith produces perseverance” (James 1:3).
7. Trials give you opportunities for ministry and evangelism. Paul knew that trials could be useful in the midst of hard ministry, telling young Timothy, “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).
8. Trials will open up for you a new understanding of Scripture. The Psalmist wrote, “It is good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn your decrees” (Ps. 119:71).
9. Trials will enhance your fellowship with Christ. Paul desired “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” and yearned to “know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection, and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Phil. 3:8, 10, italics added).

Excerpted from God As He Wants You to Know Him (Moody Publishers) by Bill Thrasher.