The Trial You’re Running From Is the Lesson You Desperately Need
God doesn’t waste your pain; He’s shaping you through it.
Your instincts are lying to you.
When hardship hits, your flesh screams two words: fight or flight.
Push back, or run away, but resist the discomfort at all costs.
But God’s Word says something that offends every natural impulse you have.
James 1:2-4 — “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
Joy? In trials?
That’s not a suggestion. It’s a command.
And it reveals something critical about how God grows His children.
Your Response Reveals Your Theology
The natural man meets suffering with resistance.
The mature believer meets it with submission.
R.C. Sproul put it plainly: “God just doesn’t throw a life preserver to a drowning person. He goes to the bottom of the sea, and pulls a corpse from the bottom of the sea, takes him up on the bank, breathes into him the breath of life and makes him alive” (R.C. Sproul).
That same sovereign God who saved you is now sanctifying you.
And His preferred tool? Affliction.
In his sermon series on James, John MacArthur declares: “God doesn’t have to test any of us to find out what’s in our heart. God tests us so we can find out” (Grace to You, The Purpose of Trials).
And then he drives it deeper: “So many people who might be confident of their faith on the surface find that when it goes under the water of sorrow and affliction it loses all its brilliance, showing itself to be, in fact, an imitation. While on the other hand, the true child of God shines as a genuine diamond in the water of adversity” (Grace to You, How to Endure Trials).
The fight-or-flight response treats trials as accidents.
Scripture treats them as appointments.
When the Church Becomes Job’s Friends
As if the trial itself isn’t enough, there’s a second wound that cuts even deeper.
It comes from inside the church.
When suffering enters a believer’s life, well-meaning Christians often reach for the same broken theology Job’s friends used: you must have done something wrong.
Job 42:7 — “After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: ‘My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has.’”
God Himself rebuked the theology that equates suffering with personal failure.
Yet that same theology thrives in churches today.
The prosperity gospel has trained an entire generation to believe that hardship is evidence of weak faith; that if you were really walking with God, this wouldn’t be happening to you.
Justin Peters, who lives with cerebral palsy and has spent decades exposing this lie, recounted the story of a woman who came to him in tears after one of his seminars. She told him about her 8-year-old son with muscular dystrophy: “I’ve been told by so many that if I had enough faith my son would be healed. I’ve been told that if I loved him enough he would be healed. All of these years, I have blamed myself for my son’s illness” (Baptist Press).
That’s what bad theology does.
It takes a person already crushed under the weight of suffering and adds guilt on top of it.
John MacArthur identifies this pattern directly in the prosperity movement. As he writes in Strange Fire, these practices “distort the biblical message and leave congregants feeling guilty for their perceived inadequacies” (Strange Fire, 2013).
Ligonier Ministries, the teaching ministry founded by R.C. Sproul, states it with theological precision: “Physical, material, and financial prosperity are no sure marks of God’s favor, and suffering is no sure mark of His displeasure” (Ligonier, A Field Guide on False Teaching).
Here’s the truth your condemning friends need to hear.
Trials are not evidence of God’s disappointment. They are evidence of His engagement.
Peters himself came to this conclusion after years of living with the very condition false teachers said God should have healed: “Next to my salvation, my cerebral palsy is one of the greatest gifts God has ever given me. I have come to know and experience Him in ways I could never have done otherwise. God has used it to keep me dependent upon Him” (Baptist Press).
If you are in a trial right now, and someone in your church is suggesting your suffering is your fault, hand them the book of Job.
God had strong words for people who preach that theology.
What Happens When Children Disobey
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable.
God doesn’t ignore rebellion in His own family.
If you belong to Him, you will be corrected.
Paul Washer drives this home with characteristic directness: “If you are a genuinely born again Christian, a child of God, you will walk in the way of righteousness as a style of life, and if you step off that path of righteousness the Father will come for you. He will discipline you. He will put you back on that path” (Shocking Youth Message).
And then the terrifying corollary: “If you step off that path and there’s no discipline and you continue on that path, you can have no assurance whatsoever of your salvation. And it is not that you lost your salvation; it’s that you’re showing now that you never had it” (Paul Washer).
That’s the distinction most professing Christians miss entirely.
Discipline isn’t punishment; it’s also proof of sonship.
A.W. Pink, writing in his Exposition of Hebrews, also makes this distinction: “When the believer is smarting under the rod, let him not say, God is now punishing me for my sins. That can never be; that is most dishonoring to the blood of Christ. God is correcting thee in love, not smiting in wrath” (An Exposition of Hebrews).
And then he adds: “Chastisement evidences our Divine sonship; the father of a family does not concern himself with those on the outside” (An Exposition of Hebrews).
The child who is never corrected has reason to question whether he belongs to the Father at all.
Stop Fighting and Running. Start Submitting.
Every trial you face is doing one of two things:
Refining genuine faith into something unshakable
Exposing a profession that was never real
Your flesh will always default to escape.
Your church may default to blame.
Faith defaults to trust.
The question isn’t whether God will bring trials.
The question is whether you’ll count them as joy or treat them as enemies.
James 1:12 — “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him.”
Stop fighting God’s process.
Stop listening to those who tell you suffering means failure.
He’s not breaking you.
He’s building you.
To His Glory,
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From another perspective, from one who has walked with Jesus for 50+ years through many kinds of challenges that modern humans can face, the New Covenant makes a crucial distinction our standing and identity in Christ (His sovereign work) and our experience as we walk in newness of life.
We (as people) have been sanctified once for all at salvation.
Our attitudes and actions are being set apart in daily life as our minds are renewed.
So “God is sanctifying you” is only true if we’re talking about our (external) behavior being trained and refined—not our core identity. We don’t become "more set apart" as a person in Christ. We’ve been fully set apart already by Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice. We who are in Christ Jesus are already sanctified (past tense):
Hebrews 10:10 – “We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
Hebrews 10:14 – “By one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”
1 Corinthians 6:11 – “You were washed… you were sanctified… you were justified…”
Acts 26:18 – “Those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.”
That we are undergoing a behavioral change to match our standing in Christ is also true:
1 Peter 1:15 – “Be holy in all your behavior.” That’s growth in expression, not a change of who you are.
Romans 12:2 – “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Your thinking and actions are learning to match your new heart.
In James 1:2–4: James is not teaching that God “uses affliction to sanctify your nature,” he’s explaining that trials produce perseverance, and perseverance leads to maturity—our faith muscles get exercised. That’s growth in endurance and wisdom, not a progressive cleansing or increased sanctification (or "reinstatement" of permanent standing) before God. We’re already perfectly cleansed and accepted (Hebrews 10:14; Ephesians 1:7).
God’s “preferred tool” is not affliction; it’s His grace and His indwelling Spirit.
Grace teaches us to say NO to sin and live uprightly (Titus 2:11–12).
The Spirit is the power for self-control and fruit (Galatians 5:22–23).
Trials can reveal and do refine us (when we respond from faith and our already established place of acceptance, love and from the counsel, guidance and empowering of the Holy Spirit) but they don’t make us any more forgiven, "closer," or more “sanctified” since Jesus already did that through His death and resurrection on our behalf.
So our identity and standing is once-for-all sanctified, holy, and united with Christ (Hebrews 10:10,14; 1 Corinthians 6:11; 1 Corinthians 6:17).
Our experience of walking in the Spirit, as new creations, walking in newness of life, having been given everything pertaining to life and Godliness, living in union with Jesus and in concert with the Holy Spirit within us -- is that our "behavior" is being trained and matured by grace as our minds are renewed (1 Peter 1:15; Romans 12:2; Titus 2:11–12). The transformation of our actions and attitudes is the outward manifestation of the truth that we are already sanctified as His own.
In the New Covenant, the Father’s discipline is loving training for our good, not punishment for our sins. Jesus already took all of the punishment in full. Discipline is about coaching sons and daughters, not condemning criminals.
That God does care when our actions do not match our standing as Sons & Daughters is as a Father who loves and cares for us -- who guides, teaches, and trains us—because we’re His own, born of His Spirit, one with Him through our Union with Christ.
Hebrews 12 speaks of our enduring hardship with Jesus, so that we learn, mature, and “share His holiness” in our attitudes and actions. It yields “the peaceful fruit of righteousness”—the expression of Christ’s life in us.
Discipline is NOT punitive pain to get us back into God’s "favor." Favor is already ours because of Jesus.
When visible hardship or a certain kind of “discipline experience” is apparently absent in our lives, it does not mean we were never saved, because our assurance rests on Jesus and His promise & completed work on our behalf (He's seated at the right hand of God the Father -- not standing as the Old Testament priests had to do in order to mediate for the people - also, He "ever lives to make intercession for us" and He is our advocate before our accuser, the devil), which we appropriated at salvation and have as a permanent possession -- not on how many spankings we think we’ve had from God. Discipline is training for future conduct, not punishment for past sins!
Hebrews 12:7–11: “Endure hardship as discipline… He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness… it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” This is fatherly training, not punitive punishment.
Romans 8:1: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” No condemnation means no punishment remains.
Hebrews 10:10,14: “We have been sanctified… once for all… By one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” Our core sanctification and standing are complete (as stated above).
2 Corinthians 5:18–19: God has reconciled us to Himself in Christ, “not counting their trespasses against them.” Reconciled means no in-and-out fellowship cycle - a lifelong, eternal partnership, where we are being transformed in our minds about the completed work and right standing we have and the riches that are ours in Christ Jesus, including all that we need as His own as we are more and more awakened and alerted and made aware and experience the changes brought by His love and care for us and through us for others (and with the fellowship & assistance of other believers).
So (always) our assurance is in Jesus' finished work and His indwelling Spirit—not in measuring our holiness against some external behavioral standards (that's Old Testament, law-based relationship, not New Testament abiding, living and dwelling in Christ and He in us -- He who will never leave or forsake us). We’re sealed with the Spirit as a guarantee (Ephesians 1:13–14) - His mark of ownership and a deposit in good faith He will claim our bodies for their final redemption as He has already rebirthed us anew by His Spirit into eternal life with Him now.
When someone is struggling with sin as a believer in Jesus, the issue isn’t “maybe you were never saved,” but “let’s remember who you are and let grace teach you.” (we speak the truth in love and remind them who they are in Him, what He's done, and that He is not condemning, but like a Father who loves us -- He has redeemed and forgiven them for all their sins and wants to restore their sense of rightness and their actions that will follow). Grace, not fear, trains us to say no to sin (Titus 2:11–12). The Spirit leads us from within, convincing us we’re righteous and not made for sin (Romans 8:14–16; Galatians 5:18, 22–23).
Thanks be to our loving Father God He doesn’t ignore us—He trains us; however, He never punishes His children for sin, since Jesus "paid it all." The Father’s discipline is constant/ongoing -- a loving investment, using all things—good times and hard times to shape our attitudes and actions to match who we already are in Him ("For we are God’s workmanship [masterpiece], created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life.. Ephesians 2:10).
The beauty of sanctification and love expressed through training is that our Father is working through His Spirit in our lives to transform our attitudes, actions and aspirations to match the holy, righteous and "set apart" person we are already because of His completed work for and in us as His own. We're beloved, cherished, and treasured, even when we sin, because sin is no longer the operative force (our "master") in our lives -- God's Spirit working in us through new hearts, renewing minds and the experience of loving training in the things of God, the fellowship with the Triunity and with other believers refines and sharpens us for the work He's uniquely gifted each of us as members of His body, as His bride, and as His children to fulfill by the power of His Spirit, not the earnest straining of our will to try and conform to an external behavioral standard that is instead the (super) natural outgrowth of an internal transformation in relationship -- we're not becoming "sons and daughters" we're already washed, cleansed, made holy and righteous and we're in walking in His assurance and love discerning what is pleasing to God who By His Spirit guides, leads, directs and trains us....(by the way, have you noticed sin is no longer fun or rewarding [but instead it grieves the Spirit] and does not satisfy but instead brings bad feelings)? That's because it's contrary to who we are now -- it's contrary to our new nature -- our old self died with Christ [Romans 6 & Colossians 3] along with those carnal appetites and desires). We are more than conquerors through Christ Who love us. His victory is ours.
Amen