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The Pit from FAAD on Vimeo.

“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up”. James 4:10

     Often times in my life as many of us have, we go through some really tough times. During these times, I call it ‘the pit’. God does allow for each of us to go through these trying times either to help us or to help him. I am the type of person that anytime I have struggled in my life; I need to understand the ‘why of it’. I guess my thought process has been I definitely do not want to go through it again and if there is a lesson to learn, then I need to understand the lesson so I can divert the trial the next time around.

      Then there has come times in my life that I have struggled to understand and during one particular time in my prayer time, I have begged God to lift me out of my struggle because I just could not figure it out. I have prayed relentlessly asking God to just give me the answer, but it took a while for him to give me the answer or I guess I should say it took me awhile to hear him. In James 1: 2- 5, James tells us to “consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”

      If I have read this verse once, I have read it a hundred times and I am not going to lie that it some weird way, it gives me some anxiety, but then I keep going back to the words, ‘consider it pure Joy’. I know I am far from being mature and complete and I for sure lack a lot and I have gone through some really tough trials so this is what I have learned. Sometimes God will ask us to do things not to learn but to do things for him. Isn’t that a blessing itself?

      During the process of this life, God places us in situations that we just have to understand we are doing God’s work. We are struggling but we have to persevere and just keeping doing what he will have us do, we have to keep our heads up and just keep praying for God to give us the strength to do what he wants us to do. The one thing we can learn from these types of battles is that God will bring us through them and we will receive our reward.
During this most recent time of trial, I recall praying for God to give me the strength and it was through one of Pastor Dion’s devotions or teachings on Sunday I am not sure which, but he stated we had to ask for God to open the doors for us to go to the next level of where we were currently at. So this is what I began to pray for, “God, I am asking for your strength to endure to do what you want me to do but also I am asking for the right doors to be opened for me to go to the next level in my life”, as I began to pray for this, things began to happen and eventually the doors were opened to where I understood the trial. God was having me do his work during this trial.

      God may sometimes have us to do some tough things for him, so consider it Pure Joy that he is asking you to do something. I personally believe I owe him that much for our Savior, Lord Jesus, did suffer and die on that cross for me and for you. When I think of this I am just so humbled to be in ‘the pit’, because God has never let me down and I know he will bring me through it just as he will bring you through it as well. For remember, it is not our faith we had before or after the trial that means anything, it is our faith we have when we are going through it is what matters.