Perfection from Trials

A few years ago, my daughter and I decided to do a Zombie mud run. It was a 5k run with obstacles AND zombies that try to “infect you”. Now, I am not a runner, but I bought a couch to 5k app for my phone and started following it to the ‘T’. By the time the Zombie run came around I was running a 5k 3 times a week and was in pretty good shape.

Race day…we are ready, our start time comes around and we take off, we run about 200 yards before we encounter our first hoard of zombies, then right after was the first obstacle…a 30 foot high mud hill. We climbed up the front side and then was suppose to slide down on your but to the bottom.

I decided to ski down on my feet.

It did not go well. Cause as I got to the bottom, my left knee hyper extended and I felt a rip in my knee. I tumbled down and when I tried to get up, my leg didn’t work.

Needless to say, my race was over before I actually got past the first obstacle/trial.

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:2-4

You cannot pick your trial. You don’t get to decide where your test/trial comes from. I trained for a race, hoping to reach the end, I ran and prepared my body as best as I knew how. Little did I know, that the biggest test would come in a form of a knee that would require surgery and 6 months of rehab. I could not prepare for any of that and it became a trial that I had to walk through, literally…lol.

I thought my training had improved my endurance, but my truest endurance came in walking with crutches for about 10 weeks. The falls I took with crutches during that time were frustrating. The Bible says that various trials will produce endurance and that endurance will produce perfection. Not a perfection that means I am perfect. But from the idea that perfection means complete, lacking nothing.

You see, we don’t what you are made of until you are tested. You can never answer that question that most of us have, “Do I have what it takes?” until you go through a trial of life and are able to endure it, then come on the other side and know you are tougher than you thought.

I talk to people who have done hard things and I am always amazed that they did not lose hope while walking through their trial, they didn’t give up…they just kept walking through it.

I believe with all my heart, God is good and He wants you to be the best version of you. Since He created you, He knows what you are made of and He knows what you can handle and what you cannot. When we trust Him with our lives, we are asking Him to do just that. We are trusting Him with the process, no matter what it looks like, knowing that the testing of our faith produces in us new faith to trust more and believe upon Him with greater assurance. Listen, not everything is gonna work out the way you think it is, but if you allow Him creative license over your life, it will work out the way He intended and IT WILL BE for your good.

So dream, believe and for bigger and better things, but trust Him for the results because He is simply trying to perfect you!

Love you guys.