Trials

"My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing." (James 1.2-4)
This is a challenging Scripture to me. I don't like trials and suffering. I like it when things are running smoothly and things are happening as I prefer. But James is reminding me that there's some things I might not learn if I always got my way. James is reminding me that there's some hard lessons I might not ever learn unless I go through some trying times.
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, knew about trials. Here's what he had to say about them: "Pleasure and pain, health and sickness, riches and poverty, honor and dishonor, friends and enemies, are all bestowed by [God's] unerring wisdom and goodness with a view to this one thing. The will of God, in allotting us our several portions of all these, is solely our sanctification; our recovery from vile bondage, the love of his creatures, to the free love of our Creator."
In other words, God wants us to grow up in Christ! God wants us to die to self and let Christ live in us. There must be something about human nature that we don't learn lessons like that if our whole life is easy and goes our way. As the old saying goes, "there are some lessons we only learn on our knees," lessons that we learn as we go through trials and are nudged to look to God for help, guidance, and strength.
I don't like trials and suffering, but looking back on my life, I am sure that I have grown the most during some of those times. I am sure that I learned new levels of dependence on God's grace. I learned more about trusting God in the storms than I did on the sunny days.
How about you?