Stepping Stones: Growing In Grace Through Adversity

Transformational Tip
If you can learn to trust God...really trust Him with your whole being, then nothing can separate you from His peace. By training yourself to trust in God, everything you endure can be put to good use. This is the best way to halt in it's tracks the very adversity that was meant to harm you. Although I trusted God in my head and verbalized it well, my actually emotional, thought and behavioral world showed that I really didn't trust God fully in my core in some areas. Then I realized, I must be trusting something else to be true. When I compared the 2 systems - God's and mine - the authority, omniscience, wisdom, track record, omnipotence, sovereignty, love, ability to see the future....I could go on but you get my point, obviously no contest. This really pushed me over the hump to trust God when it became crystal clear what my alternative was all those years. Wow, have things changed for me since that realization. By trusting your Lord you can actually grow in grace as the evil one continues to attack you with his burning arrows of temptation, accusation, gilt and shame.
Today, when you are unsettled or face a sticky decision, KNOW the Bible is true and God IS who He says He is. Comfort, peace, and direction in the face of adversity will allow you to laugh at the evil one and rejoice with God.

Prayer
Dear Father God,
My deepest desire is to trust You with my whole being...but I continue to struggle with trusting You; it does not come easily to me. I pray Lord that You help me be more open to accepting adversity as a way of growing closer to You. I know that my earthly lifespan is but a blink of an eye compared to the eternal glory that awaits me. Help me view my life through these "big picture" lenses. Help me Lord to use my shield of faith skillfully to stop the missiles and arrows and to extinguish their flames. You know Lord that some arrows from the evil one have hit their mark and have wounded me. But I do not despair, I turn to You Lord, the Great Physician. I know Your loving presence can heal my wounds and at the same time, train me to trust You more. In Jesus' wondrous name - AMEN!

The Truth
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
2 Peter 3:18
In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Ephesians 6:16
that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away.
But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.
None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him"-
1 Corinthians 2:5-9