If You Wish to Serve the Lord Prepare Yourself for Trials

Call it a “millennial aversion to commitment,” or even weak moral courage, but shortly after coming back to the faith during my freshman year of college, as the trials began in earnest, I seriously began to reconsider that choice to follow Christ. Where had all the consolation from the first few weeks gone? I thought the Lord loved me. I was stuck in the awkward cognitive dissonance of believing in a loving God who sent suffering and trials my way.

I can’t really plead ignorance on this score (as much as I would like to) because I knew exactly what I was getting myself into: the Christian life is replete with trials, and anything less is no longer the path of Christ.

So here is the real dilemma for the Christian who experiences trials: he or she is left with one of two interpretations to escape the cognitive dissonance: Either God doesn’t love you at all – because how could God send suffering to those whom He loves? – or your working definition of “love” is wrong.

Classic Answers

All the classic Catholic answers to this dilemma (including this article) land firmly in the second option, but I do want to acknowledge the weight and the difficulty of the first option. While I can point to significant areas of suffering and trials in my life, including sudden deaths of a number of family members and friends, my experiences likely pale in comparison to the suffering endured by so many others who have discussed their own experiences of suffering with me.

I treasure those moments of accompanying others in their pain, and I have to admire their courage to persevere in their belief in a God and Father who loves them in the midst of everything. The first option can be so much more of a temptation to someone who has undergone intense suffering. Under that option, at least he or she doesn’t live in a world where a “supposedly-loving” God is actually some sort of sadist who sends suffering to those who call themselves His children.

Yet, I have to say that the first option cannot be correct because it flies in the face of the Father’s revelation of Himself. It is also contradicted by the testimony of so many saints and faithful men and women who have undergone great suffering.

Our faith points us to the second option: our working definition of a loving God is usually incorrect and needs adjustment. This is a common theme in our faith, but we can’t return to it often enough, especially in challenging times such as these. So, to begin to adjust our definition of a loving God, let us turn to how our Lord has revealed Himself.

Remove Egypt from the Israelites

It was our first Old Testament class of seminary, and we had been working our way through the book of Exodus. Our professor was the king of punchy one-liners, and as we were diving into some of the liturgical and purity laws outlined in the books of Exodus and Leviticus, the professor took off his glasses (a sure sign that a one-liner was coming), and stated:

“Gentlemen, it was a matter of a few days for the Lord to remove the Israelites from Egypt, but it would take forty years to remove Egypt from the Israelites.”

He went on to explain that one of the reasons the Israelites were forced to wander in the dessert for forty years after they left Egypt was because they were not yet strong enough to enter the Promised Land. They still had a longing for the relative safety of Egypt whenever they encountered trials. As early as crossing the Red Sea, the Israelites complained to Moses:

What have you done to us, in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt, “Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians”? For it would have been better to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness. (Exodus 14:11-12)

It would take another forty years for the Israelites to cease pining after the life they had left, and it was only because of the trials they faced that they were strong enough in their trust to finally enter the Promised Land. As painful as the wilderness was, it was the path the Lord was leading them on because it was the only path possible, a path of training and strengthening for the fledgling people of God.

For What Son Is There?

It is good to see the wilderness, the suffering, the trials as a training ground, but it is more difficult to see trials as a sign of love from the Lord. And yet, that is exactly what the author of the Letter to the Hebrews calls us to do:

My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are tested by him. For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. (Hebrews 12:5-6)

The trials we endure are actually par for the course in the life of the Christian, because, as the author explains, “It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” (Hebrews 12:7).

If we truly are to live as sons and daughters of God, we accept these trials as the loving discipline of our heavenly Father who knows our need to be tested. And while the Lord already knows our hearts and our level of commitment to Him, we ourselves sometimes need to be reminded – through these trials – of how much we must trust the Lord and endure.

When things become difficult, and it seems like an impossible task to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us,” the author of Hebrews reminds us to look “to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

To give us an example, our Lord Himself set His face like flint when He considered the trials He was to endure. He did not retreat from doing His Father’s will, even when it meant crucifixion. The author of Hebrews reminds us to keep that in perspective as we struggle in our own trials: “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Hebrews 12:5). Christ, in His great love for the Father, did not hesitate to shed His blood for us, and so each of us can look to His example of absolute perseverance in the midst of trials as a true mark of sonship, to which all of us are called.

Prepare Yourself for Trials

Had I known, when I returned to the faith, all the trials the Lord would put me through, I would have run in the opposite direction. Had I known all the relationships I would lose, all the sinful habits I would have to give up, all the struggles of being a college-age man attempting to live for the Lord, I would have thrown in the towel long ago.

But, dear reader, I can assure you that there has never been a single trial which the Lord has sent my way that has not been redeemed somehow by His grace. Everything the Lord has allowed into my path has molded me into who I am today, and I cannot love who I am today if I hate the experiences that shaped me.

He has shown me His love in the midst of all these trials, time and time again. Whatever small amount of strength I might now possess has only come from His grace allowing me to trust Him in the midst of trials.

So, I cannot hate the trials any more than I can hate the weight room for making me strong, or the running shoes for making me fast, or the chores my parents made me do as a kid for making me disciplined. To face these trials is the destiny of the sons and daughters of God, as corny as that sounds. It is by way of trials that true children are tested and brought to maturity.

“My son, if you come forward to serve the Lord, remain in justice and fear, and prepare yourself for trials… For gold and silver are tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in God and he will help you; hope in him, and he will make your ways straight” (Sirach 2:1.5.6).