It is hard to see at first how God uses trial to bless, but let’s take a look at Paul’s trials and what God does with them.

“For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:5).

If we are God’s bondservants, then He can do with us as He pleases for His glory, even if it is to give us hard things to accomplish His purposes, and that is what He did with the apostle Paul. Consider who this God is who is asking such hard things of Paul.

“For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (v. 6).

But He is God, and we are not. We are weak.

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us” (v. 7).

Being weak is part of the design feature that God gave us which Continue reading God’s purposes in Hardship →