“Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”   ~James 1:3

Why do seemingly bad things happen when I’m trusting in God for the opposite? Why does He allow me to struggle when He could make my life a breeze? Simple . . . because faith without testing is useless. What kind of faith does it take to trust God when everything goes our way?

Does it really take patience to keep our faith alive? Yes, without patience we will give up before we see the effect of our prayers. When we give up and stop believing before we see results, we are no longer enabling God’s outcome.

Patience is simply the byproduct of God testing our faith. It’s in these storms of life that our faith grows and patience develops.

God allows the storms. He allows to waves of tribulation to crash against the hull of our lives so that we lean on Him . . . even when the outcome looks bleak.

Our faith grows through tribulation. It’s when we have problems that we are forced to make a choice to trust God for the best possible outcome or believe all is lost and we will fail. Once we learn to trust God no matter what’s happening—allow Him to come through in His way and time—our faith will grow.

This is exactly what Paul was referring to when he said we should rejoice in our tribulations. This never made any sense to me, to be happy when I have problems. But I now understand that without problems, we don’t need faith because we don’t need God. But through our troubles, we learn to lean wholly on the Lord and in so doing we develop our faith by seeing the end results of our answered prayers. We all need a refuge from the storms of life, and that refuge is faith in God.

“…but let us also rejoice in our tribulations: knowing that tribulation worketh patience…”   ~Romans 5:3 ERV

God will make a way, even when there seems to be no way. That is a guaranteed promise from Him. I understand this can be hard to believe when we feel like we've tried everything possible to fix our situation and nothing has worked. The difficulties of this journey here on earth are, in reality, the trials that grow our faith. These are the times that make us understand that indeed… His ways are not our ways.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord.”   ~Isaiah 55:8

God shows us endless examples of this very thing throughout the Bible. Can you just imagine what the Israelites must have thought when Moses led them to the Red Sea? [Exodus 14] The Egyptian army was right on their tail in hot pursuit. They were trapped, there was no way out! They were literally trapped between a mountain and an ocean with absolutely nowhere to go. Talk about being between a rock and a hard spot. Their death was imminent but Moses didn’t give up . . . he just kept praying for God to make a way.

These are the times in life when God really wows us! These are also the occasions when His mighty ways are not hindered by physics. He can and will do as much as our faith will allow Him to do. He wants to show Himself to us. He wants us to muster up some miracle size faith so He can change our situation no matter how hopeless it might seem—to just believe that He will come through.

God will raise our sea of obstacles and make a way for us to go forward into His will . . . if we only believe!

We must learn to hold tight to what we know—that God will somehow lead us through our insurmountable sea—somehow, some way, He will bring us through. But He will only give us a miracle if we believe He can.

“Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” ~Matthew 14:58

Now that we understand why God tests our faith, can we ever learn how to stop worrying?

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