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    Can God Be Trusted in Our Trials?
    Can God Be Trusted in Our Trials?
    Can God Be Trusted in Our Trials?
    Ebook52 pages58 minutes

    Can God Be Trusted in Our Trials?

    By Tony Evans

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    About this ebook

    A frequent stumbling block for Christians and non-Christians is how to handle adversity. Why aren't we promised an easy ride once we accept Jesus as our Savior? Tony's book explores why God allows trials, and then delivers practical steps for responding to them and emerging victorious!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMoody Publishers
    Release dateJun 1, 2004
    ISBN9781575676500
    Author

    Tony Evans

    Dr. Tony Evans is founder and senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, founder and president of The Urban Alternative, and author of The Power of God’s Names, Victory in Spiritual Warfare, and many other books. Dr. Evans is the first African American to earn a doctorate of theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, as well as the first African American to author both a study Bible and full Bible commentary. His radio broadcast, The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, can be heard on more than 2,000 US outlets daily and in more than 130 countries. Learn more at TonyEvans.org.

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      Book preview

      Can God Be Trusted in Our Trials? - Tony Evans

      Trials

      OUR

      TRIALS

      HAVE A

      POSITIVE

      PURPOSE

      When I was growing up, I used to get irritated whenever my favorite television program was pre-empted by those tests of the Emergency Broadcast System, which would be used in case America was attacked or some other disaster occurred. When it was time for one of those tests, normal programming was interrupted, and a voice announced, This is a test.

      The nice thing about the television tests was that they only lasted about sixty seconds, and then normal programming resumed. Superman always caught the bad guys and rescued Lois Lane, and everything was cool.

      But the Bible makes it inescapably clear that life’s trials are not sixty-second interruptions, after which things return to normal and everything is cool again. That’s why we need to learn the purpose God has in our trials, the spiritual resources He has given us to be victorious in any trial—and, maybe most important of all, His faithfulness to us throughout the process of enduring our trials.

      Let me begin by offering a biblical definition of trials. Trials are adverse or negative circumstances that God either brings about directly or allows in order to develop us spiritually. Trials come in all sizes and colors: physical, financial, relational, emotional, and spiritual, just to name a few. The Bible’s most comprehensive statement on life’s trials teaches this foundational truth. The apostle James writes: Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (James 1:2–4).

      There are several key concepts in these verses that we need to talk about, but the one that usually throws people is the Bible’s command to count our trials as all joy. That doesn’t seem to make sense. How can we be joyful in the middle of a trial when everything is going wrong? Remember, trials by definition are negative circumstances. But God steps into the middle of our trials and tells us to be not just joyful but overjoyed that these things have come. How can we do this? We can do it because we know something important, which is explained in James 1:3–4.

      As negative as our problems seem, they are always there for a positive reason, which is to develop us spiritually. God is not telling us to be joyful about the pain but about the purpose and the outcome of the pain, which is our spiritual completeness and maturity.

      JOY VS. HAPPINESS

      That may sound like preacher talk, so let’s see how we can have overflowing joy in—or in spite of—our trials. Notice first that the Bible does not say, Count it all happiness. The reason is that happiness is largely driven by circumstances. It depends on what happens. If your happenings happen to be good, you’ll be happy. You get a raise on the job, and you’re happy. But get a pink slip, and you’re sad.

      In other words, happiness is basically a feeling. It is located in our emotions and subject to all their fluctuations. Our emotions cause us to react, not to think. That’s why we jump in fear when the monster appears out of nowhere in a horror movie. When we do that, we are reacting to a complete fantasy that we know isn’t true. But it still has the power to scare us, because emotions don’t stop to take into account whether what we are seeing is true or make-believe. Our feelings respond to the information fed to them, whether it is true or not. This is

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