How God Uses Painful Seasons

Can I encourage you again to turn to First Peter if you have a Bible? Uh, if you don't know where First Peter is, if that's unfamiliar to you, um, hopefully you've got access to a Bible or an app or something.

But if you get your Bible, go to the end and turn back about, you know, a very small percentage.

You'll hopefully track down First Peter there.

It is a small, hard-to-find letter, but a sweet and a beautiful one, and it would be great if you could happen- have it open in front of you.

Today what we're talking about is trials, as I mentioned.

And the first thing that I want to do as we begin to open up this topic of trials is figure out what they are.

What is a trial? Before we talk about the dynamics and how God works through the good that He's producing through trials, we need to define what a trial is.

And thankfully, Peter doesn't leave us in the dark as to what he means when he's talking about trials.

Let's read verse six and seven together again.

1 Peter 1:6-7.

We're looking at aspects or the sort of nature of trials from these verses.

Let's read them together.

"In this you rejoice." We'll come back to that in a moment.

Hit pause on that idea for a second.

"In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith-more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire-may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." That is a thick and condensed sentence, but in that sentence, what we see is the nature of a trial, what a trial looks like.

Can I encourage you again to turn to First Peter if you have a Bible? Uh, if you don't know where First Peter is, if that's unfamiliar to you, um, hopefully you've got access to a Bible or an app or something.

But if you get your Bible, go to the end and turn back about, you know, a very small percentage.

You'll hopefully track down First Peter there.

It is a small, hard-to-find letter, but a sweet and a beautiful one, and it would be great if you could happen- have it open in front of you.

Today what we're talking about is trials, as I mentioned.

And the first thing that I want to do as we begin to open up this topic of trials is figure out what they are.

What is a trial? Before we talk about the dynamics and how God works through the good that He's producing through trials, we need to define what a trial is.

And thankfully, Peter doesn't leave us in the dark as to what he means when he's talking about trials.

Let's read verse six and seven together again.

1 Peter 1:6-7.

We're looking at aspects or the sort of nature of trials from these verses.

Let's read them together.

"In this you rejoice." We'll come back to that in a moment.

Hit pause on that idea for a second.

"In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith-more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire-may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." That is a thick and condensed sentence, but in that sentence, what we see is the nature of a trial, what a trial looks like.