"All my trials..."
There's this old spiritual, which goes, "All my trials, Lord, soon be over." Now, I'm not expecting all my trials to be over soon, the Bible says I can live until I'm satisfied with this life and ready to go on, and I've still got what I consider to be good work left in me on this earth. But trials and tribulations are certainly part of life. No pie in the sky will change that; God has never told me through the scriptures, through the Holy Spirit, or any other way that trials will not be part of my daily life in this world.
Nevertheless, something the Bible says which always comforts me is when God said, "I will never, never, never forsake you." And He hasn't; he has always been with me, guided me (when I had enough sense to listen, which wasn't by any means every time He tried!) and supported me in every way. When I was sick year after year with a supposedly incurable and terminal illness, He was always with me. And today I am as free from that sickness as if I'd never had it. My body is older, and I'm not in the kind of shape I was in before, but that happens anyway, right?
But the great thing about trials is how you come through them. In my illness, I placed my trust in God instead of modern medicine and the doctors. Don't think for a minute I don't think doctors are useful, they are. God uses doctors to heal with, just like He uses herbs, good positive attitudes, good food, and the healing of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands and praying. God has a multitude of good things ready for each and every one of us, if we're willing to accept them from Him. And that is one of the main points about God's personality; He wants to give us great things, but He's not going to force us to take them.
But I placed my trust, my leaning upon in total reliance, in God, not in any specific herb or Chinese tea or type of accupuncture or medical procedure or chemotherapy. If I thought God wanted me to use any particular one of those tools, I used it. But through "all my trials" I relied on God, not the doctors, not the herbalists, not my own ideas or moods. The Bible says that by the stripes laid on Jesus, by His taking upon Himself the burden of the consequences of my willful misconduct, I was healed, body, mind, spirit and soul, when He hung on the cross. His last words were, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He wasn't berating God for abandoning Him; He wasn't complaining. He was quoting one of the psalms, quoting a passage that foretold His (self) sacrifice and the agony of it, for the good of all... For me. To heal my body, to heal my mind, to heal my soul (my emotions and thoughts), to heal my spirit for all time. I believed what God said about my healing, and clung to that regardless of how I felt, or what my mood was. I accepted the gift of healing He had for me. Gratefully!
I know this body will evetually run down and die, but I won't. The "hidden man" or "inner man", the REAL me, will continue to live, because the REAL me is a spirit being. And ALL my trials will be over, in some ways are already over. Because the consequences of my actions, the question of how will I get through it all, all these things have already been dealt with. The questions have already been answered. Ad the answer is a resounding "Yes." Yes to love, yes to responsibility, yes to God. Yes to the Author of my life, to the Giver of all good things in my life, my wife and children, my talents, my family and friends. Yes to my Best Friend, the King of the universe.
