These Inward Trials I Employ

Perplexing, complex, and difficult situations await all Christians in this life. We face hard marriages, employment difficulty, strife and anger, besetting sins, and all other kinds of trials. Though the broken world, sin, and evil have their hands in all painful things. God is not absent in them.

If Romans 8:28 is true, that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose, then this must mean even difficulty is not wasted in our life.

In J.I. Packer’s book, Knowing God, he writes about how God uses these inward trials we all face. Packer’s viewpoint may initially paint God as somewhat harsh or aloof, but it is helpful for us to remember these trials we face in life are primarily from the broken and sinful world, sometimes even our own sin. We will have to face them anyway. In God’s graciousness, He chooses to use them for good, even though He could just let them be bad with no aspect of redemption within them.

How does God use these inward trials?

How does God in grace prosecute this purpose? Not by shielding us from assault by the world, the flesh and the devil, nor by protecting us from burdensome and frustrating circumstances, nor yet by shielding us from troubles created by our own temperament and psychology; but rather by exposing us to all these things, so as to overwhelm us with a sense of our own inadequacy, and to drive us to cling to him more closely.

This is the ultimate reason, from our standpoint, why God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort and another: it is to ensure that we shall learn to hold him fast. The reason why the Bible spends so much of its time reiterating that God is a strong rock, a firm defense, and a sure refuge and help for the weak, is that God spends so much of his time bringing home to us that we are weak, both mentally and morally, and dare not trust ourselves to find, or to follow, the right road.

When we walk along a clear road feeling fine, and someone takes our arm to help us, as likely as not we shall impatiently shake him off; but when we are caught in rough country in the dark, with a storm getting up and our strength spent, and someone takes our arm to help us, we shall thankfully lean on him. And God wants us to feel that our way through life is rough and perplexing, so that we may learn thankfully to lean on him. Therefore he takes steps to drive us out of self-confidence to trust in himself—in the classical scriptural phrase for the secret of the godly life, to “wait on the Lord.”

Packer ends this chapter with an old poem:

I asked the Lord, that I might grow In faith, and love, and every grace;

Might more of His salvation know, And seek more earnestly His face.

I hoped that in some favoured hour At once He’d answer my request, And by His love’s constraining power Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, He made me feel The hidden evils of my heart;

And let the angry powers of hell Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with His own hand He seemed Intent to aggravate my woe;

Crossed all the fair designs I schemed, Blasted my gourds, and laid me low. “Lord, why is this?” I trembling cried, “Wilt thou pursue Thy worm to death?”

“’Tis in this way,” the Lord replied, “I answer prayer for grace and faith.

“These inward trials I employ From self and pride to set thee free;

And break thy schemes of earthly joy, That thou may’st seek thy all in me.”

-John Newton