The Road to Transformation Goes Through the Tunnel of Trials

28 Feb The Road to Transformation Goes Through the Tunnel of Trials

I had a root canal done in Colorado Springs. It was your worst dental nightmare realized.

We were living in Austin, TX at the time, and my wife and I had taken a driving vacation to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, hitting the highlights along the way: Rocky Mountain National Park, Grand Tetons, Yellowstone and Old Faithful. As we visited these spectacular sites, my teeth were the last thing I was thinking about.

But coming out of Jackson Hole on our way home, I began to feel a mild pulse in my lower left molar that grew into a throb by the time we reached Cheyenne, Wyoming. As we turned south on I-25, the throbbing intensified into a great crescendo of pain by the time we hit Colorado Springs. We found a dentist (a diabolical sadist) who first had to find out which one of my teeth was really causing the problem (I told him twenty times) and how bad it was (it was killing me!)  After shooting liquid oxygen on it, creating enough pain to qualify me for a Purple Heart, he had to shoot me so full of Novocain that my kneecaps went to sleep. I had felt nothing but pain for a day, and then I felt nothing at all for the next day.

Prior to that, I had seen my dentist every six months for a cleaning and checkup. There was no hint that I would have any trouble. Why did I have to have tooth trouble while on vacation? Why couldn’t it have been discovered at my last checkup? Why this? Why now? When I look back on it, it was a little thing, but it is a parable of many things in life. We hurt, often unexpectedly, and we don’t understand why.

One of my favorite stories when I was growing up was the vintage Disney classic Old Yeller, the story of a pioneer family carving out an existence on the edge of wilderness, who adopt a huge “old yeller” dog after it saves their two boys from a pack of wild pigs.

The dog lives as a beloved member of the family until it once again saves their lives during an attack by a rabid wolf. In the process, Old Yeller contracts rabies himself, and the lovable, lop-eared mutt is reduced to a snarling, drooling set of snapping teeth. The boy who owned Old Yeller was faced with the incomprehensible task of having to shoot the dog that had twice saved his life.

Afterward, in a tear-jerking scene, the father tries to console the son on the loss of his dog—a blow that the whole family felt. I’ll never forget the tender words of wisdom his father gave: “Son, sometimes life just hauls off and socks you one right in the stomach, and there’s no explaining it. And all you can do is hang on until you catch your breath, and then start living again.”

How true that is. It has happened to all of us. Life hauls off and socks us one right in the stomach, and we stand there, immobilized by the searing pain, doubled over, mouth agape, unable to breathe spiritually or emotionally. Questions flood our minds. Why me? Why this? Why now? Does God care? Where is God when it hurts?

The reality is, there is no easy answer. A Christian must stand nose-to-nose with this mind-bending truth: A good God allows His children to suffer. Period. We can speculate on the reasons. We can ponder the consequences. We can debate the rationale. But the two towering truths remain unchanged: God is good, and His children suffer.

Though we may never fully understand why,

the road to transformation always goes through the tunnel of trials.

If you are on a road that does not include trials, it is not the road to transformation. God wants us to be changed into the character likeness of Christ, and He often uses pain to accomplish it.

The central passage in Scripture on this theme is James 1:2-4, where we read, “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.”

From this passage, we get three key truths about trials.

Trials are unavoidable – they come to everyone

Trials happen to all of us, if not now then later. Someone once said, “There are three different kinds of people: those who are in the middle of a trial, those who are going into a trial, and those who have just come out of a trial. James said to count it all joy when, not if, trials come your way.

I once heard the story of a man who was on his way home from work on the subway. He was prone to motion sickness, he had eaten a big lunch that didn’t agree with him, he had worked hard all afternoon in a stuffy conference room, and he boarded the subway with an upset stomach. He was jammed into the train, the last one to get on, and the automatic door closed right at the end of his nose. He stood there, facing out the windows of the closed doors, things flashing by at ninety miles an hour, and the longer he stood there, the sicker he got.

The train pulled up to the next stop, but he did not want to get off. However, the train was so full, no one could get on, even though a small crowd was pressed up near the slowing train. The lurching and jerking of the stopping train was the last straw. The door opened, and up came his lunch all over the man waiting on the platform. The door closed without anyone getting on or off, and the train sped on down the track. The unfortunate man whose chest had become the depository for the sick man’s lunch turned to the person standing next to him, raised his palms to the heavens, and cried, “Why me?”

Sooner or later, the doors of life open, someone’s lunch is deposited on our chest, and we cry, “Why me?” James answers the question. It is not just you. It is everyone. If not now, then later, but everyone.

Trials make us spiritually strong

We wish we could become spiritually strong by eating chocolate while watching beautiful sunsets. But that’s not the way it works. James said, “Count it all joy . . . knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.” The Greek word for “testing” implies a test designed to validate or refine the finished product.

When gold is dug out of the hills in its natural state, it’s mixed with clay, iron ore, mineral deposits, and other impurities. To purify the gold, all the ore is put into huge vats and heated to a white-hot temperature until the whole mess bubbles like golden oatmeal. Gold is heavy, so in this liquefied state all the gold settles to the bottom and everything that is not gold rises to the top, like ugly froth. This stuff is called dross. The dross is skimmed off, and what is left behind is pure gold.

Without the heat there would be no separation of the gold from the impurities. In the same way, trials can be used to separate us from our personal impurities. This is the process the writer of the hymn “How Firm a Foundation” was referring to when he wrote:

When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.

It’s the same as when a blacksmith works with a horseshoe. He holds it in the fire to heat and soften it and make it malleable. Then, with blows from a hammer, he shapes it into what is needed. That is why God permits the testing of our faith by trials. He wants us to become spiritually malleable.

Trials can change us into the character image of Christ

The one who “endures” remains under refinement in God’s fire until God’s work in him is done. Then we become “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” If we are to become all that God wants us to become, we must endure the pain, remain spiritually sensitive, obedient, faithful.

When we remain faithful to God in trials, we become “perfect.” Perfect does not mean without flaw. Rather, it means “complete, mature, fully developed.” It means we become mature in our character. “Complete” carries with it the idea of being whole. “Lacking in nothing,” then, would have the idea of not being void of any major character qualities.

There may times in the life of a Christian when the grace of God does not seem sufficient to bear the suffering. We may be willing to believe that God has a purpose in it, we just want to know how to survive. Even Jesus Himself experienced suffering that took Him beyond a calm peace. He was deeply grieved and distressed in the Garden of Gethsemane before His betrayal and crucifixion. He said to His disciples, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death… and He then went a little beyond them, and fell on His face, and prayed” (Matthew 26:37-39).

Luke records that “being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). Later, on the cross, Jesus cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46).

We see then that even in the life of our Lord, suffering was real, and the grace of God did not take away the pain. Nor did the grace of God make it easy to endure. But the grace of God did make the suffering (just barely) endurable.

In the middle of suffering, many of us would say that the grace of God does not seem sufficient. But when we look back, we see that somehow, He sustained us. The grace of God doesn’t always enable us to go water skiing through life. Sometimes it just keeps our nostrils above the surface of the water enough of the time.

Conclusion

The road to transformation always goes through the tunnel of trials. It is important to remember what James 1:2-4 teaches us:

• Trials are unavoidable – they will come to us all
• Trials make us spiritually strong
• Trials can change us into the character image of Christ.

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