Testing Your Faith Through Trial

TESTING YOUR FAITH THROUGH TRIAL
DR. JIM DIXON
PHILIPPIANS 1
FEBRUARY 15, 1981

“Count it all joy, My brethren, when you experience various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” Those words were spoken by James, the apostle and brother of our Lord Jesus Christ, the great head of the Jerusalem Church. If any man knew trials, sufferings, and testing, it was James. His life was filled with persecution and he was ultimately pushed off the pinnacle of the temple by an angry, unbelieving mob. He survived the fall, but he was then stoned to death where he fell. Why must we, as Christians, experience suffering, trials, and testing? In the Word of God we receive many answers to that question. I’d like to explore three of those answers with you this morning.

First of all, God tells us that He allows us to experience trials and allows us to be tested in order that He might humble us. Peter says, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility towards one another. For God opposes the proud, but He gives grace to the humble.” If there’s any area in your life where you have pride, you should know that God is opposed to it. If there is any area where you have self-sufficiency, you should know that God is opposed to it, and He will test it. He will try it in an effort to humble you.

A few years ago, I went to a conference where I heard many different Christian testimonies, and one testimony kind of sticks in my mind. I remember a guy got up and he said something like this: “When I was in college, I was student body president. Grades came easy. I got straight A’s. All the girls loved me. I drove a Mercedes and I lettered in three sports, but I knew something was missing in my life.” He went on to talk about how he accepted Christ. When I hear a testimony like that, I don’t really know how to respond.

First of all, I really cannot identify with a testimony like that because my life (certainly my college experience) was not a string of successes. In my life and I’m sure in your life too you’ve probably had as many failures as you’ve had successes. I know that when I was in college I didn’t even know the student body president and the only letters I got were from home. I’ve often wished that I had an exciting and impressive testimony that I could share, but I really don’t. My life has been kind of average. I grew up in a Christian home. I’m thankful for that. I accepted Jesus Christ when I was only five years old. I can still remember kneeling in my parents’ living room by the sofa and saying, “Lord Jesus, come into my life. I want to live for You.” That was 30 years ago. And in these past 30 years, there have been tests. There have been trials in my life, and I know they’ve all been meant to humble me. The Lord’s not always been successful in doing that, but I know that’s what He’s wanted to do.

I grew up the youngest of three brothers, and I think (by worldly standards) probably the least of three brothers. As I grew up, I was always known as Greg’s brother or Gary’s brother. When I got into high school, my brother was student body president. I was treasurer of our church group. That didn’t quite measure up. My brother Greg was always tan. Have you ever met a guy that’s always tan? It didn’t matter what time of year it was, it always looked like he just came from the beach. I always looked like I just came out of a closet.

I can remember some nights when I think Greg was in high school and I was just about ready to go into high school. Greg would come home (he’d been out on a date) and he’d come into the bedroom there (Greg and I shared the same bedroom). I had usually been home reading comic books. I was real big on Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck. And Greg would come in and he’d share with me about what an exciting date he had. And then as he’d get undressed and get ready for bed, he’d usually stand in front of the mirror just to make sure that he was still looking good and he’d ask me to come over and stand next to him. I was more than willing to do this. I’d usually go right over there and I’d stand next to Greg. It really was quite funny, actually. We’d get to laughing hysterically because it looked like one of those before and after ads that you would see. I always looked like I just got out of a concentration camp and Greg always looked like Charles Atlas, you know?

Actually, both of my brothers were a great deal bigger than me as I was growing up. There was a reason for that, because my parents always gave them more dessert. Whenever we had dessert they’d always get a bigger piece. I’d always say, “Mom, dad, look, Greg’s got a bigger piece. Gary’s got a bigger piece. That’s not fair.” And my parents would always say, “Well, they’re bigger.” And you know, it always seemed to me that that wasn’t likely to change.

I can remember when I got into high school, when I was a senior in high school, I very much wanted to have a girlfriend. During my senior year, I started going steady with a gal. We went for a while and then summer came and she went away on vacation. She came back from vacation and she told me that we were going to have to break up. She said she needed to spend more time helping her older sister move. I never really understood that either. That’s just one of those things.

As I went away to college (you know, it’s really too bad that Kim Johnson doesn’t have some violins up here—that’d really be appropriate), by my senior year in college all of my friends were married and I was not. I really have to say, in all honesty, that bothered me. By this time in my life, I should have been humbled. I mean, I should have been broken. I should have realized that I really couldn’t take care of myself. But I was still trying as hard as I could. In my senior year, I must have gone out on a hundred dates and nothing good came out of it.

So I graduated from college and I was doing some graduate work in Santa Barbara. I remember one night I was walking along the beach in Santa Barbara and I began to pray and I said, “Lord Jesus, I give up.” I said, “I’m willing to be single the rest of my life. I’m willing to never be married. Lord, I’ll go where You want me to go. I’ll do what You want me to do. I can live without a girl, but I can’t live without You.” I can’t explain to you what happened to me that night, but I really believe that the Lord filled me with His Spirit. And it was in the weeks that followed that I felt called into the gospel ministry. I went to seminary, and it was three years later that I met Barbara.

Anyway, I met Barbara three years later and, you know, the Lord set that up. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there’s no way that I ever could have won Barbara. I had proved that over and over again in my life. There’s no way. So you see, I honestly believe that God gave Barbara to me and He gave me to Barbara. You see, that’s the kind of thing that God can set up. You know, of my wildest dreams of what it would be like to be married, the most ideal wife that I wanted to have, Barbara is better. I can truly say that because God set our marriage up. What He asks of us is that we’re willing to be broken, that we’re willing to be humble, and that we’re willing to let Him take over. And then He will give us the desires of our heart. He’ll give us the things we truly need.

Sometimes it’s not easy to be broken. One of my favorite stories is the story of a lion. Some of you have probably heard it, but I’ll tell it because I enjoy it. There was this lion out in the jungle and he felt mean one morning. He decided he was going to go out and have himself a time. So he went out and he went up to an antelope. And he said, “Who’s king of the jungle?” And the antelope said, “You are, O lion. You are.” The lion felt pretty good. He walked away from there and he went up to a bear (this was kind of a strange jungle—there were bears and lions in it). He went up to the bear and he said, “Who’s king of the jungle?” Well, the bear looked a little irritated for a moment but he said, “You are, O lion. You are.”

Well, he went a little further and he came up to a tiger. He said, “Who’s king of the jungle?” Well, the tiger was really put out, and he really struggled with that for a while. But finally he said, “You are, O lion. You are.” Well, the lion went out of there just feeling fantastic. He came up to an elephant and he said, “Who’s king of the jungle?” Well, the elephant looked down on him, wrapped his trunk around him, swung the lion around in the air like this, and just threw him into a tree. And the lion fell to the ground in a heap of dust. He got up all dazed and confused. And he looked up at the elephant and he said, “Hey, listen, just because you don’t know the answer doesn’t mean you have to get all excited!”

I like that story because I think we, most of us, are a lot like that lion. It takes an awful lot to humble us, to break us. But that’s why God sends little tests and trials into our life, because He wants to break us. He wants to humble us. He wants us to realize that, apart from Jesus Christ, we can do nothing.

The second reason that the scriptures give that God sends trials and testing into our life is this: God tests us in order to help us to learn how to trust Him. Trials and testing are meant to teach us to trust. They’re meant to lead us to faith. This is why God has sent trials and tests into our lives. In our passage for today, Philippians 1, we saw a kind of amazing situation. The Apostle Paul was in prison. Now, he’d been in prison before. He knew what it was like to suffer. He’d been in trials and testing situations before. He’d been shipwrecked, he’d been beaten, he’d been flogged, he’d been destitute, and he’d been without food and water. But this time when he was in prison many of his Christian brothers, many Christian preachers, were beginning to make fun of him. They were beginning to belittle him. And it’s interesting to see how Paul responds when he writes this letter to the Philippians.

First of all, you see that Paul had a confident trust. He said to the Philippians that he knows that through their prayers and through the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ all things will work out for his deliverance. And he said it was his eager expectation and hope that he would not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage, now as always, Christ would be honored in his body. You see, he had confident trust. He had learned to trust God in the midst of every circumstance of life. But beyond that, you see an even deeper trust in Paul. He had a trust of relinquishment. In the passage that we had today Paul says, “I know that Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Now, that is total relinquishment. He was willing to live for Christ or to die for Christ. That is ultimate trust. And that’s what God wants to bring us to through our life’s experiences. He wants us to be able to say, “I am the clay, You are the Potter.”

That’s not easy, is it? Two months ago I went to the doctor because I had swollen lymph nodes. I didn’t know a whole lot about lymph nodes. So I went to the doctor to have them checked out. He asked me how long I’d had these swollen lymph nodes. I told him that I’d had them for quite a while. He said that was kind of a concern to him. He said he was going to give me some antibiotics and it was his hope that these antibiotics would bring my lymph nodes down. He said if they didn’t come down, however, he was going to have to take a lymph node out and do a biopsy on it because there was always the possibility of cancer. Well, I have to say that I left that office and I didn’t feel too good. I think some of you probably could have been in a situation like that and it would not have bothered you a whole lot. But the Lord knows that one area where it’s very difficult for me to totally trust Him is in the area of my health.

So, as I went in the next couple of weeks I began to pray that the Lord would make my lymph nodes flat. I began to get kind of frustrated because after a few weeks they hadn’t changed at all. And I really didn’t know how the Lord wanted me to pray. I thought, well, maybe the Lord wants me to just claim a healing. Maybe He wants me to just claim that they’re going to be flat and believe it. But I didn’t really feel a peace about that. I believe that sometimes the Lord does want us to claim a healing as His Spirit directs. But I didn’t feel free in this circumstance to claim a healing. I felt like what the Lord wanted from me was relinquishment, because He knows that that’s a problem in my life. I felt what the Lord was saying to me was, “Jim, I want you to just give it up. I want you to say that you are the clay and I am a Potter. I want you to be able to say, like Paul has said, ‘For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.’” I knew that in all probability there was nothing serious wrong, but just the possibility that there was something wrong really bothered me. And I knew the Lord wanted me to give that up. He wanted me to come to a point of relinquishment. That’s not easy for me. As it turned out, everything is all right and I praise the Lord for that. But I know the Lord’s not done with me in a sense, that He’s still working on my trust in this area of my life.

I read recently a story told by a man named Donald Dethner, who is a Lutheran minister. A friend of his was involved in a horrible traffic accident and he was knocked unconscious during the accident. He woke up about four days later in a hospital bed. He didn’t know where he was. He was totally disoriented. He was confused and the room was kind of dark. As he woke up, he began to look around, disoriented. He began to feel himself to see if he was in one piece. As he looked around the room, on the window ledge he saw a little white card. On the card he saw the name of the hospital, and underneath that he saw his own name. And then he saw these words: condition critical. Well, he panicked when he read that. You can imagine how you would feel if you woke up in a hospital bed and saw that. But after a while, he just began to think about Jesus Christ because he knew Jesus and he loved Him. He said, “You know, the minute I began to think about the Lord Jesus, an incredible peace just began to come over me.”

He had a peace which passed all understanding. And he said it wasn’t a peace that was based on confidence that he was going to be healed from the physical injuries of the wreck. It was just a peace of relinquishment. It was a total trust. He truly had that attitude of heart where he said, “Lord, I’m Yours. ‘If it’s to be life in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. But my desire is to depart and be with You, Lord Jesus.’” He just had a total peace of relinquishment. I really believe that that’s the point that God wants to bring us to, where we go through every day of our life rejoicing, serving Him with no anxiety at all, knowing that He will leave us on this Earth until our ministry is full. He will leave us on this Earth until our ministry is complete.

In 1978, Barbara and I went to England and we worshiped in St. Paul’s Cathedral. St. Paul’s Cathedral is a beautiful edifice. During World War II, London was flooded with a sea of exploding bombs and many of the buildings in London were destroyed. Others were damaged. St. Paul’s Cathedral was damaged, but it still remains standing. It’s a great testimony to the kingdom of Christ. Barb and I, when we left London, drove north into the region of Coventry. In Coventry we saw another cathedral, the Coventry Cathedral. It had been destroyed during World War II and all that were left were the ruins. And there was a plaque carved in stone on the ruins of the Coventry Cathedral that had been put there by the people of Coventry. And all it said was, “Father forgive.” And the Coventry Cathedral is also a testimony to the kingdom of Christ. You can go throughout Europe and you can find hundreds of cathedrals, some of which have been destroyed in wars, others of which have been damaged, and others of which still stand flawlessly.

There’s a sense in which we as Christians are very much like those cathedrals. We who are living temples of Jesus Christ are like those cathedrals. Some Christians go through their whole life and they hardly are ever sick and they live a long life. Other Christians go through life and they’re sick often. They’re damaged, they’re kind of defective. Other Christians leave this Earth at a relatively young age. There’s no guarantee in the scriptures that we won’t experience suffering, trials, and tribulation. We’re not immune from the weapons of the enemy, but we are promised the victory. And if we will trust God, God promises this: He promises us that when our life is through on this Earth, we can know that we did not live in vain or labor in vain. He promises us that our ministry will have been full if we trust our lives day by day to Him. He promises us just like Coventry Cathedral, where the people of Coventry have now built a new cathedral, more beautiful and more majestic than the old cathedral, new bodies, new temples, more beautiful and more majestic than these old bodies that are subject to decay. And so the Lord Jesus wants us to go through life on this Earth, through every test, through every trial, through every period of tribulation. He wants us to trust Him with a trust of relinquishment. He wants us really, truly, to be able to say with Paul, “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain,” rejoicing in every day, having no anxiety about anything, giving Christ the glory for everything, knowing that when our days on this Earth are through we will not have lived in vain or labored in vain. That’s the total relinquishment that Christ calls us to.

Now, the third and final reason that I would like to discuss this morning that relates to why God allows trials in our life is this: God allows us to be tested and tried in order that He might bless us. He wants to bless us through our trials and through our testing. Peter says, “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that in due time He may exalt you. Cast all your anxieties upon Him because He cares about you. Behold, your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world. And when you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ Jesus will Himself restore, establish, and strengthen you. To God be the glory forever. Amen.” What a beautiful passage. Trials, tests, and sufferings in life are meant for the purpose of restoration. They are meant for the purpose of establishment. They are meant for the purpose of strengthening.

God wants to bless us. He wants to make us strong. I read recently of a wealthy heiress who lives on the East coast. She has millions of dollars worth of jewelry and she keeps the jewelry in a bank vault. Among her jewelry there is a string of pearls. This string of pearls is one of the most valuable strings of pearls in the world. Now, there is some scientific evidence that unless pearls are worn occasionally, unless they come in contact with a human body, they lose some measure of their luster and beauty. And so this wealthy heiress hires the bank secretary to take those pearls out of the vault and wear them to lunch once a week. She goes with two armed guards behind her, all for the purpose that those pearls might be used so that they wouldn’t lose any of their luster and beauty. Now, your faith and my faith is like that. Our faith, our trust, needs to be tested. It needs to be used or it begins to lose some of its luster and beauty. It needs to be applied in order to grow in beauty.

In the early 1970s, an absolutely amazing story came out on the news wires and went out to the world. Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda of the Imperial Japanese Army had just emerged from the Philippine jungles and surrendered. 29 years he had been hiding in the jungles of the Philippines fighting a war that no longer existed. When he came out of those jungles, his clothes were torn and his body was frail. He was afraid to come out of those jungles. He was afraid that he would be humiliated. He was afraid that he would be abused. He was afraid that he’d be rejected. But he came into a world that he didn’t even know existed. During the 29 years that he’d been in the jungles, an entire generation had been born. They’d grown up and they had children in elementary school. He came into a world waiting to receive him.

He came into a world that wanted to love him. He came into a world that wanted to bless him beyond his wildest imaginings. And sometimes we who are Christians are just like Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda. We have some area of our life that we’ve kept in hiding. We’re not willing to relinquish some situation, some trial. We’re not willing to give something up because we think that God wants to take something away. We think that God won’t take care of it appropriately. We’re not really willing to relinquish it. But when we do, when we surrender, suddenly we find that God has a whole new world of blessing for us that we never even knew existed. He doesn’t want to take life away, He wants to give life. In all of its fullness, He wants to give life to us. But the key in the midst of every trial and tribulation is surrender, relinquishment. And then comes blessing.

If God gave you the privilege of charting your own life, of just sitting down and drawing out a blueprint for every day of your life, you never would’ve designed it the way God has. If you could design your life, you’d never have a trial, you’d never have a period of suffering, you’d never be tested. You’d never have a valley, I’d never have a swollen lymph node, you would never have problems in dating. You’d never have a problem in your marriage. You would never ever feel rejection because you would design it perfectly, but you’d also never learn humility. You’d never learn to trust in Jesus Christ, because if you never had a problem you’d never know that He could solve them. You’d never learn to trust in Jesus Christ and you’d never experience the incredible blessings that He has for you. That’s why James says, “Count it all joy, my brethren, when you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its effect in every way, that you might be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Shall we pray?

Father, we can’t possibly thank You enough for Your love for us. Lord, we thank You that Your love reached down to us in Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, we thank You that You came into this world and lived among us, that You gave Your life and our behalf, and that You now live to give us a life that is abundant and full. Lord, we thank You for trials. We thank You for testing. We even thank You for suffering because we know, Lord, that when we give these circumstances to You, You use them to help us grow. You use them to bless us. Lord, help us to be a relinquished people. Help us to be a people that trusts entirely in You. Help us to be able to say with Paul, “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Lord Jesus, we give every day to You, knowing that when our life is through on this Earth we will not have lived in vain or labored in vain. We love You Lord Jesus, and we pray these things in Your precious name. Amen.