14 Lesson 7: Testing, Part 1 Trials

Welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Discipleship.

This is our class on an Introduction to Discipling. We are glad to have you with us.

This is a class where we are really trying to do an introduction to how to go about the art of discipling another person.

The Great Commission calls us to disciple. Everyone who is a Christian is called to be a discipler.

You should be discipling somebody. And somebody should be discipling you, which means you and I constantly must always be teachable.

I got the privilege of spending church with a dear friend of mine. One of the things

I always love about him is I've known him for, wow, over 20 -25 years.

Back before when he was a missionary in India and one of the things I always love about spending time with him is he's still teachable.

I know many men who after 20 -30 years they think they've got it all figured out.

One of the things I always value about our relationship is he and I are always discipling one another.

We're always learning from one another. I really value relationships like that in my life.

I hope you do as well. But not only should we be having people pour into our lives, but no matter how far we are on our walk with Christ, we should be discipling other people.

That may make you really nervous. You might have fear and trepidation at that thought.

You have something that only you can teach another person because God's created you unique.

Have you ever thought about that? You may say, you don't understand, I don't speak well.

Moses had that problem. We read a lot about him and what a great leader he was. But you don't understand,

I have physical things that limit me or maybe I'm not as smart as other people.

How could I disciple someone else? Sometimes I share this story when

I talk about discipling that the individual who taught me the most about what it means to live by faith and really what faith means was a young lady named

Felicia who had the mind of a six year old and would never get beyond that. She had a disease that kept her basically bound in a wheelchair.

She couldn't walk. She couldn't talk. She couldn't do many of the things that we would expect that we could do.

And so what we have is a case where when we look at things like that, here we have someone who the world would look down on someone like that.

And yet I looked at her and realized I was learning a lot from her. More than I was ever teaching her.

And we always have to be looking to learn from people. We also have to be looking to be teaching people.

And so we want to disciple you on how to disciple others. We are going through a book that we're using as a guide to discipling people called

Growing in Grace. It is available at our store. You can pick it up at our store at this strivingforeternitystore .strivingforeternity

.org. You can pick up a copy. They're relatively inexpensive. They're short little books that you can use to disciple people in your home, in your church, in your neighborhood.

It's a great way to start getting to know someone that's new to the church. Hey, would you like to get together and do a short

Bible study? Now we have spent time going through the first six lessons.

So we're halfway through this book. And at this point, we're going to get into a change of transitioning into some more meaty matters.

Now the first six lessons, which hopefully at this point you've spent at least six weeks with the person you're discipling.

But now you want to start doing more counseling. So we've kind of dealt with some of the principal things of the

Christian faith. But now, from now to the rest of the book, we're going to get into some touchy issues.

And ones where we're going to need to counsel people. So let's do an overview of where we are in our book, the lessons that we have.

Now you see here that the way it's kind of broken down is we saw the first three lessons were receiving

God's grace. Those are the first three. We're in a section now called living by His grace.

And then next we'll see sharing of His grace. When we talk about living grace, we're going to talk about testings, that's persevering for the

Lord. That's this lesson. Then we're going to talk about obedience and holiness and stewardship.

And those are going to get kind of, well, they're going to get into issues of struggle.

And so we're going to have to, unfortunately, slow down just a little as we go through these lessons because I have to give you guys some tips and help in how to counsel people and how to deal with sometimes issues that are going to come up.

And I can't cover every issue that's going to come up in your discipling of another person because well,

I have no idea who you're going to be talking to. And you're going to find that everyone's going to be unique and everyone's going to be different and it's just going to be a thing where every time you're going to disciple someone, something new is going to be...

And sometimes I go back, I never thought anyone was going to ask that question. I've had that many times where I just go,

I never expected someone to ask me that. But if we are in, starting with the lesson, what we always want to do, remember, repetition, repetition, repetition.

We want to drill into the person that we're discipling the lessons we're trying to teach over and over and over again.

And so what we want to do here is review last week's class. Now last week's homework, if you remember, was to read

Matthew 26 and Luke 22. What I would say you do with your person you're discipling is ask them, did you read those passages?

Yes, I did. And then say, okay, sit down and read those to me. It may be uncomfortable for people.

Keep in mind, and this is something I don't know that I mentioned, but some people have difficulty reading.

And if you have someone who cannot read or has difficulty reading, it would be okay to let them kind of struggle a little bit, but help them maybe even read to them.

And so the, oh, yeah, so let's review this lesson.

And I thought, I really thought that we fixed the seat. Was it right here? Yeah, no, right here.

See, you can see my sleeve. So yeah, so we'll pretend that's not there.

How's that? So what we have is a case where as we look at things, we see a quick review here.

And what we end up with is, as we look at the Lord's Table, which was last week's class, we see here, first off, the fact that the

Lord's Table is about remembering the Lord. We talked about communion, what that word means is given to you here.

If you look in the top there, it talks about being a partaker. And these slides are available to those who are enrolled students in the

Academy, that you've paid for the Academy. But as you see, we talked about the importance of the

Lord's Table, and I would review those things. Talked about the purpose of the Lord's Table. We talked about the time and place of the

Lord's Table. And then if you look along the bottom, some important things to remember about the

Lord's Table. It talks about examining ourselves. It talks about what the

Lord's Table is, so that we remember these things, because they're of value to go into that.

So I would review this with the person. Now this week, we're going to look at testings.

Now testings are broken down into two different categories.

Okay? When we think about testings, there are outward testings and inward testings.

Now, testings is an overarching term, and I'm giving you two different categories.

A test that comes from an external source, and a test that comes internally.

A test that comes externally is what we're going to call a trial, and a test that comes from within is a temptation.

Okay? So that's how we're going to break these up. Trials, temptations. Trials are when something outside of us is causing us to be tested.

A temptation is something from within us is causing us to be tested. Now keep in mind as we go through this, and this is something you may want to remind a student several times.

A testing, when God tests us, He is not tempting us. God tests us, giving us an opportunity to pass the test.

To allow us an opportunity to examine our own faith to see how much we've grown in the

Lord. Now, we can fail that testing, but God allows the test with the anticipation and expectation that we are going to pass.

It doesn't mean that He's surprised when we fail. God is omniscient. God knows everything before we do.

So it's not that He was surprised by it, but it is important to remember that God does not cause us to be tempted.

He does allow us to be tempted, and there is a difference between those two. Alright? We're going to go through that and mention it over and over again in the next couple weeks.

So let's look at lesson number seven. Persevering for our Lord. The testings of the

Christian life come from two different directions, as I mentioned. First, there are testings from outside.

We're going to call those what class? Very good. Trials. Trials. Secondly, there are testings from within, and we are going to call them temptations.

Very good. See? Some of you are paying attention. I do have to repeat, for those of you who are busy in the chat room,

I understand. Both trials and temptations are a test of strength, maturity, and sometimes even the reality of our faith.

Whether we have a genuine faith or not. And many Christians stop serving and living for Christ because of trials and temptations that shipwreck their faith.

In other words, they may be a Christian, and I know many people who I find it hard to believe that they're no longer

Christians. I want to think that they're a Christian, but over many years I've seen where something came into their life, and because of a setback, because they failed in a trial or a temptation, they never got back up and served again.

And that's something that I know recently. I had a friend that came over just six months ago, and we had gone through a church, and he was in a rough church situation, and he had to leave a church, and he really didn't like it.

And I've been with many, many people who have shared this with me, that they've kind of just gone through some churches, gotten depressed, they see bad things that happen, they get upset, and they've kind of given up on church.

And there's no good churches. Some have even stopped going to church. And I get together with them, and I've had this asked of me many times,

Andrew, what is it that just, you keep going, you keep persevering? How could you do that?

As my one friend said this summer, he's like, you know, I really respect you, and I look to you a lot, with a lot of respect, because you go through these difficult times, and you just keep serving.

He says, I don't know how I could do it. He says, I just want to quit. And that is the feeling that many of us have.

It's good for us to teach someone, especially someone young in the faith, that it's okay when we fail.

We've got to get back up and serve God. We have to keep our eye on the prize. The goal is not living for this life.

The goal is not the here and now. That prize is eternity.

That's where we've got to set our focus. And if our focus is on Christ, then these temporal things, these setbacks, cause us to desire

Him more. That's how we can persevere through it.

Because the more struggles that I have in this life, the more I desire death, the more

I desire to be with Christ, to be able to sit at His feet, and be done with all these testings.

So that's the motivation you want to give to your student, to your disciple. You want to help them through the testings.

Now this is a time where I would encourage you, before you meet with the person you're discipling, you want to think through your own life.

You want to be prepared. Go through this lesson and be prepared to open up, to be vulnerable to the person that you're speaking with.

Because as you're talking to somebody, you're going to find that when you can share how you personally have been tested, sometimes you've passed, and sometimes you've failed.

And this young person of the Lord needs to know that. They need to know that there's hope even after failure.

We can get back up, get on that bike and start riding again. We can fail and get up and serve again.

We need to let people know that. And so that's an important thing you want to make sure you communicate as you are going through this lesson with a student.

This study is designed to equip the believer for those times of testings. Testings from without and testings from within.

So let us start with the first type of testing, which is, as I said, a trial. Trials are testings from without.

Now, with this we're going to do an outline for both trials and temptations. But the first thing we're going to look at is the surety of trials.

The surety of trials. Now, in James chapter 1, it says very clearly,

Count it all joy, my brothers, if you meet with trials and various kinds.

Is that what it says? No. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet with various kinds of trials.

And so what you see there is that James 1 -2 does not say if the

Christian has trials, but when, and that's your blank there, when. In other words, you and I as Christians will suffer trial.

We will. Expect it. Don't be shocked by it. Don't be surprised by it.

These things will happen. We will have things that are external that will impact us.

It could be losing a job. Could be a car accident. It could be a death in a family.

It could be someone mugging you. I mean, it could be a lot of different things. Something external to you that causes you to test your faith.

Causes you to be in a situation of, Lord, what will I do now? Will I rely on self or on you?

This is a crucial lesson that you want to teach a new believer. The earlier and the more often that we learn to trust in God and rely on God for everything, well, quite frankly, the easier the

Christian walk is. But that's a hard lesson to learn, isn't it? Some of us understand that.

You know, in 2 Timothy 3, it says, You see, all who desire to live godly in Christ will suffer persecution.

That's your blank, will. They will suffer persecution. This is a sure thing. It's something you can guarantee.

If you are a Christian, you're going to suffer. So, these verses fly in the face of the modern

American gospel. That God has a wonderful plan for your life. He only has a wonderful plan for those who are believers after they die.

Until our death, we're being sanctified. And it is a process, a difficult process, of testings that we would rather avoid.

But avoiding them only stunts our growth. 1 Peter, in 1

Peter 4 .12, And that's your blank there, strange.

Beloved, do not be surprised. And you could say strange or surprised. Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange happened to you.

So, we should not count this as a strange thing, as something that's a surprise.

No, we should expect things like this if we are Christians. We should expect trials.

Again, this flies in the face of the gospel that says, just believe in Christ and everything will get better.

You know, there's many people, most of the people I talk to that are hardcore professing atheists are such because they actually believed that God was going to give them everything they desired.

And they wanted things and God didn't give it to them. Because God doesn't reduce Himself to be submissive to man.

Man is to be submissive to God. And so, because of that, we end up realizing that we're supposed to be obeying

God, not the other way around. We need to learn that lesson. And this talks about the fact that there will be uncomfortable trials in our life as Christians.

We should expect it. It's a sure thing. But what is the source of trials?

The source of trials. Well, we see in the scriptures that there are several sources mentioned.

There are a number of possible sources that trials can come from. One is

Satan. I know he's the most popular one to blame everything on. I understand.

But we know that there can be, Satan can be a source of trials.

It says in 2 Corinthians 12, So, to keep me from becoming conceited because of a surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.

So that word messenger is angel. An angel of Satan. An angel of Satan.

So, Paul, who was inflicted with his trial, according to Paul, who afflicted him with his trial, according to that text, it was a messenger of Satan.

That's your blank there. Or blanks. A messenger of Satan. So, Satan can actually send demons or messengers to inflict us with trials.

In 1 Peter 5, 8, we are told that Satan is seeking whom he may devour.

That's your blank there. Whom he may devour. Be sober minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

So, we see that Satan is searching and seeking to devour people.

We also see in Job 1, 6 -12, that's a longer passage, but you'll see here, who was it that inflicted

Job? And the answer is Satan. That's your blank there. Again, it's Satan. When you look at this, it's mentioned in verse 6.

It was Satan who came to Jesus, or to the Lord, and asked about if he could stretch out his hand against Job.

So, we see that Satan is one source. A lot of people give too much credit to Satan, by the way, and blame

Satan for everything as if Satan is God, like he's everywhere present. And he's omniscient and knows what I'm thinking.

He's not. So, but Satan is one of the things, one of the sources of trials.

And when we're saying Satan, it can also encompass demons. Demonic forces can be a source of trials.

Another could be unbelievers. We see this in the Scriptures in 1 Peter 4. 1

Peter 4, 14. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.

What we see here, then, is that this is saying that if we are being persecuted by unbelievers, specifically because we are professing and proclaiming

Jesus Christ. Now, some people don't suffer persecution or trials from unbelievers, and I understand that.

And one reason why is because they look too much like the world to tell the difference.

If you're not suffering any kind of trial from unbelievers, maybe it's because you're not proclaiming

Christ. I hate to kind of say that, but that's sometimes what it is. If we're not proclaiming

Jesus Christ, then the world's not going to respond.

But unbelievers who hate God are not going to like the proclamation of God's Word.

And so, if we're out doing what God's called us to do, out of love, because we love them, not because we're being a jerk.

If you're being a jerk and the world is responding to that, that's not a trial.

That's you needing to grow up. I mean, you need to mature in faith. But out of love, we need to be sharing the gospel.

And if we're proclaiming Christ, unbelievers are going to respond because they hate

Christ. It is because of the fact that they hate Christ that they're going to respond.

So, we see that unbelievers are one source. Another verse for that is

Acts 17. Acts 17 verse 5. And in case

I didn't give it, let's go back for a second. Sorry. 1

Peter 4 .14 tells us another way that we suffer insults or reproach while we're telling others about Christ.

And that's your blank there, telling others about Christ. In other words, we must be telling them about Christ. That's the goal of it.

Now, Acts 17 verse 5. But the Jews were jealous and taking some wicked men of the rabble.

They formed a mob, set the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason seeking to bring them out to the crowd.

So, you see here in this passage, it was the

Jews who were persuaded that persecuted

Paul. That's your blank there, persuaded. And I think, let's put that back up for, that's the

English Standard Version. They were jealous. So, jealous would be a fair word.

So, whatever word would be in the translation there. But it's the idea that they were persuaded. They were acting out of jealousy.

The idea of persuaded, I think, is better in the sense of, here you have the men, they're coming after Paul.

They are, Paul's preaching the Gospel. They don't like the proclaiming of the Gospel.

They hate it because what does it do? What the Gospel is doing to these Jewish leaders is revealing that they're enemies of God.

And they're going, wait a minute. We can't be enemies of God. We're the chosen people. We do everything according to God's Word.

We're supposed to be the teachers of the law. Well, what you have is a case where when people rebel against what

God's Word actually says, they do not accept the truth.

And they don't want the reminding of the truth. So, when you go out and you proclaim the truth, they don't like it.

Okay? So, just keep that in mind. So, unbelievers are a source of...

So, we have Satan as one source. Satan and demons, right? So, Satan and demons.

You have unbelievers are a source of trials. And there's another one is disobedient Christians.

What? Disobedient Christians can actually cause a trial in my life?

Well, they did for Paul. Look in 1 Timothy 1 .20. Among whom are

Haimaus and Alexander whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.

So, what you have here in this passage is Paul explaining that two believers,

Haimaus and Alexander the coppersmith, who were believers, were disciplined from the church.

Now, we're assuming they're believers. Maybe they were false converts who were acting like believers.

That's possible. It was sometimes that you have someone that seems to be a believer and they're not.

Or maybe they are a believer. They're just being disobedient. Could be one or the other.

In 2 Timothy, we see here another with Alexander. Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm.

The Lord will repay him according to his deeds. And so, you see here in 2

Timothy 4 .14 that Paul shared that Alexander did him, and your blanks there is much harm.

Much harm. So, you can have a disobedient person, disobedient

Christian doing you much harm. Now, they don't always have to be somebody who is handed over to Satan, as it was

Paul mentioned. It could be someone that is still serving. I know of people who have been done much harm by pastors, by someone that's a pastor.

So, it's not that it's, you know, because I understand sometimes it's the pastors who think that anyone that doesn't agree with them is doing them harm, and they never think that could be them.

But it works both ways. We as Christians need to be on guard to make sure we're not causing harm to others in our disobedience.

And if we're having conflict with somebody, let's not always assume it's their fault.

Our pride would blind us if it's our fault to what we've done wrong. So, we have to be aware of that, keep that in mind, look for that, and see that we're not the ones doing wrong there.

So, we have Satan and demons as one source. We have unbelievers as another source.

Third, we have disobedient Christians, as unbelievers were our second source, disobedient

Christians as a third source. And then fourth, I kind of already mentioned, it's you and I, ourselves.

Sometimes we suffer trials because of actions that we have done, because of things we've done.

1 Peter 4, 15 says, So, your suffering, you see the suffering there, is because of something you have done.

If you do wrong, it is not persecution. Let me give you a story.

Sometimes we can make these things sound spiritual. We make ourselves sound as if we are somehow just perfect.

I knew someone who had a job, he was getting paid 40 hours a week to do that job, but he wasn't doing that job.

What he was doing was walking around his work site and sharing the gospel with people. And he felt that he had the right to do that because he was called to a higher calling.

And so, he argued that he was doing what God wanted him to do, and therefore, he was arguing, unfortunately, against doing what he should have been doing.

So, what you have is a case where he got fired. And he came to church and he, at prayer meeting, asked for prayer because he was being persecuted at work for the gospel.

And when I started asking, what do you mean you were persecuted? Because I happened to work at the same location as him.

He says, well, I got fired today. What did you get fired for? Well, I got fired because my boss didn't like the gospel.

I shared the gospel with him, he didn't like it. I said, did you ever think that maybe you got fired because you weren't doing your job?

You were sharing the gospel. And we see that a lot with people. People will sit there and argue, well, you have to understand,

I was sharing the gospel, therefore, I must be right. No, you weren't doing your job. You were getting paid to do something, and instead of doing it, you were sharing the gospel.

You want to share the gospel at work, I'll tell you what you do. Do what I've always done when I used to work at secular locations.

I would take people out to lunch and share the gospel with them. Now we're at lunchtime, it's our own time.

We're out of the building, so they can't say that we're in any way doing it at work time.

So we can't get in trouble for that. And at the same time, you're buying them lunch. People are more likely to let you talk about anything you want when you're buying the meal.

Just saying. And maybe you can't afford to buy the meal, that's okay. Maybe you can't afford. Get together with them outside of work.

Do it off -site if possible. That way you're never going to be charged with sharing the gospel on work time.

And not working. So you want to make sure that that's what you're doing. Alright? So, it's not a persecution, it's not a trial.

Sorry, it's not persecution when something like that happens. But it is a trial. It is a test that you have to go through and figure out how are you going to handle this.

Okay? So let us look at the third thing that we said. We looked at the trials, the surety of trial.

The source of trials. And now the strategy for trials.

That's right. We're going to have a strategy. What is going to be our strategy? We know, because of the surety, we know trials are going to come.

We know the sources of those trials. We can look at them and say, okay, I can expect to see trials coming from satans and demons, from unbelievers, from disobedient believers, or myself.

I do something bad or wrong or sinful or stupid and there's some consequences with that.

Fine. What's going to be my strategy? How am I going to deal with this? When you're discipling someone, this is where you're going to spend a lot of time.

You are going to come up with things when you go through these things. They may come up and you start talking sources and they may bring up examples.

And you've got to be ready. You've got to be listening. Because before you can give them the strategy, you need to listen to what they're going through.

I've heard some things when I've discipled people. And I go through trials and people will tell me, you know, when

I talk about unbelievers doing things, or if I talk about, it may not be that it's an unbeliever doing something because of Christ.

When you're dealing with counseling someone that's new to the faith, sometimes what you find is that they had things that happened before they were

Christians. That's a trial that still affects them today. In other words, I've dealt with people who've been sexually abused, physically abused, verbally abused by family members before they were a

Christian. But they still have to live with those family members. Someone who lived in the same house with a family member that was sexually abusing them.

How do you deal with that? Okay, now in that case you call the police.

You get out of the house, right? And this is one thing you have to keep in mind. If somebody tells you when you're counseling someone, they say, look,

I want to share this with you, but you can't share it with anyone. You're not allowed to agree to that.

If they tell you that someone raped them, someone's sexually abusing them, you have a legal obligation to go to the police.

So be careful that you don't commit yourself, okay? Don't say that you won't tell anybody.

Because if they tell you about a murder, if they tell you about a rape or sexual abuse, you have a legal obligation or you're an accessory to the crime, okay?

Be careful. And that's where it takes some, you know, this is a grown process for us as disciples.

You're going to get things and you're going to have to deal with things. People are going to bring things up. Be willing to listen to the person you're discipling.

And there's going to be some just heartbreaking stories that you're going to hear the more you disciple, alright?

And you want to now provide that strategy. You've been listening for a while for them. Now try to give them a strategy, okay?

So let's look first. James 1 verse 2 says,

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet various kinds of trials.

Count it all joy? Joy? How do you count it joy when you fall into various trials?

James 1 verse 2 tells us that when trials come into our life, we are to consider it with all joy.

That's your blank there, joy. How do you have joy? There's a difference between joy and happy, okay?

And this is something you want to explain to the person. Happiness is in what happens.

I got the opportunity to meet with a pastor friend of mine's friend. This pastor lives in Georgia.

He's got a friend here in my state. And so I was able to call this person up who's not a believer and get together with him for lunch.

We met up at a diner and sat and spent like three, four hours talking.

And he's just complaining and, oh, life is so hard for him. And he just wants happiness.

And I said, well, I can't guarantee happiness, but I can tell you where you can get the source of joy even during trials.

And so what I did was explain that joy is found in Christ. It's in what

Christ did on that cross. Having an eternal mindset, we can have joy. In fact, when we have trials in our life, as Christians, it should cause us to have a greater joy because it gives us a greater anticipation looking forward to what

Christ will do, looking forward to Christ. The trials drive us further and closer to Christ, not away from Him.

But you won't be happy during trials. Trials are in what happens. You find happiness in what happens.

And if things go your way, you'll be happy. If things don't go your way, you won't be happy.

That's happiness. But joy is in having something that you anticipate that's greater than the trial so that the trial gets eclipsed by the thing that you're anticipating.

Now, the way I illustrate this, this may sound corny, but I, as a kid, used to love going to amusement parks.

Great Adventure here in Six Flags, Great Adventures, the one I used to go to as a kid. And I cannot tell you how long those lines were that I'd sit in because I don't really remember them.

I remember the ride. I remember getting on a ride called Free Fall. Now, that one I actually do remember because we were discussing the line with my friends.

We were on the line for 45 minutes for a ride that was a minute and a half. That's it.

And a minute and a half, the minute was going up the ride, and in 30 seconds, it was just dropping.

And we sat in line. You know what we got off that line, off that ride? We got right back in line because we forgot about the line because we anticipated the ride.

Now, as a father, I took my kids there, anticipating the great joy I was going to have with them of my childhood that I remember.

And you know what? Because I didn't do the rides anymore, it wasn't fun. The only thing I remember is the lines because I didn't have the anticipation of the ride anymore.

And my kids would be like, Dad, can we go? Oh, the lines, the lines. I don't want to stand in line because that's all

I would do all day because the anticipation was gone.

You see, when I anticipated the ride, I had joy in the, not in the line, but in the anticipation for the ride.

When the ride was removed, when there was no longer anticipation, it was just about happiness. I wasn't a happy camper standing in those long lines.

Okay, I did try to convince the kids to go on the teacup one, you know, where you just spin around. What can

I say? At 15 years old, they outgrew that. I don't know. So, alright.

So, let's look at 1 Peter. 1 Peter 4, 13 tells us to rejoice.

That's your blank. To rejoice when suffering comes in Christ. But rejoice in so far as you share in Christ's suffering that you may also rejoice and be glad in His glory.

So, in other words, when we do have trials that come, we should be looking for joy. We should be looking to rejoice because Christ also suffered.

So, what you want to do with your student is give them that greater perspective. Point them to Christ.

You're struggling here, look at eternity. Look at what Christ suffered. Here's the suffering, look where it leads.

Give them the anticipation. Give them the hope. So, one of the first things you'll learn in counseling someone is that you need to provide hope.

And the hope that we have is in Christ. It's an eternal hope. It's an eternal rest.

That these things we struggle are for a short time. They're here to mature us and to grow us, to make us more like Christ.

Look at what Christ suffered. Christ suffered the worst of every temptation because He struggled.

He experienced every temptation to its fullest. So, we've got to keep that in mind.

Direct them to Christ. Direct them to the cross. Direct them to eternity. That's where we're going to find joy and rejoicing.

Now, how can we possibly rejoice over trials and count them joy?

That's a good question. We can rejoice in our trials when we remember that A. Our trials teach us humility and dependence.

Humility and dependence. We see that in 2 Corinthians 12, 17.

To keep me from becoming conceited. This is Paul speaking of this greatness of the revelation.

A thorn was given to me in the flesh. A messenger of Satan harassed me and keep me from becoming conceited.

So, Paul was actually given a messenger of Satan to keep him from being conceited.

In other words, the trial should humble us. We have a great struggle with pride and we often don't recognize our pride.

And God allows trials in our life to humble us. How are you going to respond to this trial?

In pride or humility? If you respond in humility, you're going to grow in it. You're going to learn the lesson and maybe it's going to be over quicker.

I don't know. I can't guarantee that. But what I can say is that you're going to learn the lessons that God wants you to learn.

Next, let it be there. Trials mature us. We already saw from James 1.

Trials are going to mature us in the faith. Alright? Let's just put it up there for a sec.

We read the first part. It says, Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet with various kinds of trials.

For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let the steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect, complete, lacking nothing.

So, the trials mature us. And that's what our goal should be. Maturity.

Spiritual maturity. A sign of spiritual maturity? Humility. So, you see how those two work together.

Those trials mature us in humbling us. Letter C there is that trials teach us to be satisfied with whatever the

Lord gives us. Job had to learn this lesson. James talks about this in verse 4 that we just read.

Alright? We need to learn to be content. To be satisfied in Christ. To be perfect and mature.

Learning all that we need to learn. Letter D there is trials purify our faith.

Trials purify our faith. 1 Peter 1, 6 -9 says,

In this you rejoice, though for a little while. Emphasize that with your ears.

How long is a little while? What, 70, 80, 90 years at most? That's nothing compared to eternity.

If necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.

So that the tested genuineness of your faith more precious than gold that perishes.

Notice the contrast. This genuineness of our faith, this tested faith is more precious than gold and that gold perishes when tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Christ.

So when it's revealed by Christ, that's going to be something that is greater. Though you have not seen

Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see

Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy and inexpressible and fill the glory, obtain the outcome of your faith and salvation of your souls.

So what you see here is that these persecutions that you suffer, these trials that you suffer purify our faith.

This is why the church that's persecuted is so pure. You don't have false converts in the

Middle East churches unless they're trying to infiltrate the church to kill people basically.

But trials purify our faith. And lastly, letter

E there is trials give us an opportunity to glorify God. They give us an opportunity to glorify

God. The crowd joined in attacking them. The magistrates tore the garments off and gave them orders to beat them with rods.

And when they had inflicted several blows on them, they threw them into prison ordering the jailer to keep them safely.

Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fasted.

Fastening their feet to stocks, about midnight Paul was praying and singing hymns to God and the prisoners were listening to them.

You see, they use their trials as a means to glorify God. We can do that.

So we're going to look at temptations next class. But what I want to focus in here is the fact that what we have is a case where we see that these testings, the first part being trials, those outward things, things outside of us, are something that the

Lord can use in our life to humble us, to mature us, to satisfy us, to cause us to be content, to purify our faith and to glorify

God. That is the strategy. Look to do those things in the trials that come your way.

And this is where you're going to want to try to explain to your student these things. Now, as we look at that, next week we'll look at temptations.

But as a quick review, there's a slide that you have that we can look at.

If you have any questions, you can email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

Happy to answer any questions that you have regarding trials. If you come across something that you just don't know how to handle, you don't know how to answer, someone asks a question you're just not sure of, you can contact us and we'll be happy to get in touch with you.

We're going to go through that slide that I just, because of time, we're going to look at that slide that we just quickly went over the review next class.

But you can get more copies of the book. If you want to get copies of the

Grown in Grace book, you can do that at our store at store .strivingforeternity

.org. You can pick those up there. Lastly, as we do each week, we want to have a brother or sister of encouragement.

I was greatly encouraged this week. I just decided I was going to start being more and more active on Facebook to encourage other people and really found, really, really was blessed.

I'll name names, I guess. When Angela Braxton decided to start doing the same and then someone on her wall commented to her that her encouragement of others caused this other brother to start realizing he should be encouraging others and he decided he was going to start doing it.

Pass it on. We don't have to just encourage this one person that we put each week, but we want you to focus on this one person and be an encouragement to the one person.

With that, we want to help you, but make it a daily thing. I know

I'm trying to do in my life. I'm not real good at encouraging others, but I can't tell you how much it means when

I send a message of encouragement to someone, to someone who works for us here and sent them a message of encouragement.

Angela sent this woman a message of encouragement and she sends me a message privately and then makes a public one to both of us and just said, you don't know how much

I needed to hear that. She says to me, the first thing I did was get up this morning and see on Facebook your encouragement and I so needed it.

I haven't been sleeping well. I've just been struggling and that's just what I needed. Thank you.

That feels really good when someone says that to you. Keep encouraging people. Our brother of encouragement is also someone who works here with us at Striving for Eternity.

It's Mitch LeBron. We are going to have a specific thing that you cover him for. That's right. I'm actually asking you to give up some money as a way of encouragement.

You know what? Maybe next week we'll try to... Actually, we'll try to play the YouTube video, but there's a YouTube video we have on Mitch's sharing his testimony.

Actually, you can just go there to the GoFundMe site. Was it gofundme .com?

I -F -L -Q -L -4. That's some, I guess, short way of...

It's easy to do. That's what it is. What is the GoFundMe for? Somebody, I believe maybe in Mitch's church, heard his salvation testimony that he did at one of our events at Ohio Fire and we put it onto a

YouTube video and put it online. In that, he talks about how he has a tattoo that reminds him of his video game addiction and how it's painful to him when his daughter saw it.

He actually is thinking of getting a tattoo, just tattooing his whole arm black so that it would cover the tattoo up completely.

This one sister has created a GoFundMe site basically to fund the removal of the tattoo for him.

It's a lot more money than he can afford and I'm not asking you to do anything that I have not done myself.

I was one of the first, I believe, to donate and so I put my money where my mouth is and I have donated to have his tattoo removed.

You can go to the GoFundMe site. You can see the video from our YouTube channel of his testimony sharing about this tattoo why it is such a struggle for him.

If the Lord lays it on your heart and you can give even a few dollars, it would mean a lot to him. Contact him.

Encourage him this week. He is a faithful brother who is growing on a regular basis in his knowledge and walk with the

Lord. He is serving faithfully in his church, leading music in his church, very active.

His church is very much, I really appreciate it. He is very much accountable to his local church and I'd love to see that.

Encourage Mitchell LeBron this week. A good way to do that is through funding him directly. It actually doesn't go directly to him.

It goes to someone else who is paying for it. If you could do that, that would be great.

Next class, we will deal with the issue of temptations, testings from within.