Good to be Afflicted

Psalm 119:71

It was good for me to be afflicted so that I could learn your statutes.

Many of us are visual learners, and others are auditory learners. There are some of us, however, who are hands-on learners, and we cannot fully grasp something until we actually do it. Unless we actually encounter the truth of a lesson, we won’t fully understand its meaning. Therefore, God allows us the learning lab of life to experience certain things so they will reveal the truth of His word to us.

When we are afflicted with hard times, the best thing we can do is to sit back and ask ourselves a question: “What is God saying to me through all this?”  He is always teaching us, and He has a message for us in every difficulty. Even if we brought the difficulty on ourselves, He continues to speak to us to carefully guide us through the situation so we don’t make the same mistake again.

Perhaps, the greatest lesson we learn through the hands-on laboratory of affliction is to trust God. When we can’t do anything for ourselves, we have to trust that He is in the midst of it and will bring us to victory. We may not triumph the way we would prefer, but in the end, we gain something very valuable that we would have never received otherwise.

If you are going through a difficult time, take time to reflect upon what God is saying to you in the midst of it. What big picture do you see emerging from your trial? What is important in the long run, and what is not? What mistakes did you make that you’ve learned never to make again? To whom is God drawing you closer, and whom or what should you let go? Through it all, you will find your trust in God increasing, and your dependence upon yourself decreasing. In the words of John the Baptist, “I must decrease so that He may increase.” (John 3:30)

Have a blessed day!