We are in the midst of a mighty battle, a trial that seems to grind on us, where do we run for strength?  The Lord promises a to be our strong tower, to be our strength when we are weak.  More then once in scripture is the Lord referred to as a Strong Tower (Ps 63:1 , Pr 18:10 ).  A strong tower is a place of refuge, a place where one can retreat to when the battle is rough and the strength has run out to fight any longer.  A strong tower is a place where the battle no longer seems on the doorstep because the walls are strong and resilient to the fight.

How do we know God is our strong tower?  His word tell us so, and He proves Himself faithful to His promises.  His history is evident to us in scripture, and we need only spend time there to know that He has proven Himself faithful over and over again.  Proving it to us in a personal way can be different however.  So how can we know He has proved Himself faithful to us in His promises?

We saw that faithfulness for the first time when we trusted Christ.  He was faithful to His promise to forgive us at that very moment, to do what He had promised through the blood of  Christ.  The very fact that we have the ability to be forgiven through trusting Christ is the proof that He fulfills His promises in a  personal way to each one of us.  From there we need to be reading His word to see what His promises are in order to see how He goes about fulfilling them.  There is the key–to know God’s promises in order to recognize that He is fulfilling them.

We are often fooled into thinking God is not fulfilling His promises to us because we don’t understand what those promises are.  For example, God does not promise us a perfect, trouble free life, where He will swoop in solving all our troubles and sorrows.  What He does however promise is this:  "The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged." (Deut. 31:8 NIV).  I know this because He has proven it to me even in small ways.  Like reminding me of a passage from His word I had hidden in my heart when I needed it, in a situation where I could not pick up His word to read it.  God is faithful to this promise, we just need to know the promise to realize He is keeping it!

To understand that God is keeping His promises, including that He is our Strong Tower, we need to know the promises He has made to us.  We need to be in His word, reading those promises.  Strength comes from knowing the promises and seeing them fulfilled because we see the Lord working in our life, despite our situation.  When we see the fulfillment of the promises, even in the smallest of ways, we are renewed in our strength because God is a strong tower,  can withstand the fight and has resilience beyond measure.

We know God is always molding us on His anvil, He is always doing that even when we are not facing trial, He is consistent in that endeavor.  He is going to mold us into the people He wants us to be.  So what are we gaining in trial that we would otherwise not gain?  Perseverance, and it is possible to gain joy.  That we learn from James 1:2-3 .  Why do we need this perseverance?  And is it really possible to gain joy in a trial?

Maybe we say I don’t want perseverance. If this is what I have to go through to get it I can live without it!  The first part of that answer as to why follows in verse 4 .  We also find out in Hebrews 12:1-2 that we need that perseverance to run the race that we are running.  Perseverance gives us the ability to keep running, to endure the race.  Better yet, we receive what we need as we run, as we are enduring the trial.  God will give us what we need to persevere through it if we ask it of Him.  This we learn from Matt 21:22 .  If we are asking God for things that we know He desires us to have, He will give them to us, and perseverance is one of them.  Along with that He desires for us to experience joy in the trial.

Back to James 1:2, where James tell us to "Consider it all joy my brothers when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance." (Jam 1:2-3 NIV).  God intends for us to have joy in the trial.  He does not want us to be defeated. If we are getting the very thing God knows we need to run the race and endure it to the end–that is our source of joy in the trial.  God is giving us what we need!  We need to view our race as Paul did when he wrote to the Philippians.  He said "but one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Phil 3:13-14 NIV).  With that goal in mind, we will see that God is giving us what we need to get there, the very thing that we need to endure the race, to make it to the end.

It is not an easy task to view things from that perspective, but with God we can.  We need to be asking Him to give us what we need, asking Him to give us what He desires for us, not what we desire.  For this to happen we need to be spending time with Him in prayer doing what 1 John 5:14 says, asking God for things according to His will, not ours.

Physical pain effects us in so many ways.  It is more then what we endure physically, it trickles into other aspects of our lives because we require the use of our physical body to do the tasks of every day life.  Even the simplest things can become difficult when our bodies do not agree with what we may want to accomplish.  Physical trials of many kinds can often seem to go on for the longest in our path.  Some of us have physical trials that last weeks, months, years, or all of our lives.  We are still Gods workmanship (Eph 2:10 ), and God is still going to use the situation we are in to mold us into the person He wants us to be.  The physical trial we are in is a result of the fact that we are in our physical state.  A body that can become broken, battered, and bruised.

It should not come as a surprise however that our bodies go through physical trials, because our bodies are imperfect. They are natural, weak, and an perishable creation.  We know this from 1 Corinthians 15 (1Cor 15:42-44 ).  From that same passage we also learn that there is a spiritual body.  In stark contrast to our physical bodies our spiritual body is going to be imperishable, raised in glory and power!  What hope that gives us in physical trial.  The promise that it truly is only temporary, no matter the length here on earth.  We know this to be true because our fleshly bodies will be changed before we inherit the kingdom of God, because flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50 ).  What a powerful promise of God to remember, that no matter our physical condition, it will not last forever because we will be changed before we inherit eternity.  We will be imperishable.

We must also remember that we are being renewed here on earth, molded on Gods anvil, changed into the image of God as we run the race He has laid before us.  He is using the very circumstance we are in to make us into the person He desires us to be while we are here on earth.  Remembering that and Gods promise, and it becomes much easier to see Gods plan, rather than mans circumstances.

"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." 2 Cor. 4:17-18

When traveling have you ever ended up at a completely different destination then originally intended when you left your house?  That can happen, but it would be rather unusual.  I would suspect if we had airline pilots who told us "I am going to take you to a completely different destination today as a surprise!" we would not generally consider that a good surprise.  Even if we ended up in a beautiful tropical location we always dreamed of visiting, having intended to go to a family reunion!  Our reaction might be one of shock, surprise, dismay, and eventual utter disarray and confusion.  The reaction can be as varied as the individual.  The outward reactions might be anything from humorous to scary as a matter of fact.  The internal reactions however would be where the real fight took place, and what really would matter when the plane landed at its destination.  How one reacted to the original news, and handled the flight int he middle, would determine how one would react to the news of where they eventually landed.

Our internal reactions is where we battle everyday when we are faced with major U-turns in our life.  The big trails that test us for the long term.  The trails that continue for longer then a bump, a detour, or road block.  These trials are the trials that completely alter the course of our plan and place our trust in Gods plan on an every day basis.  We start asking "God what exactly are you doing to me?"  How we react is in our control, and we can choose to run to God or away from Him.  Which we choose to do is going to make a dramatic difference in what we focus on during the trial.  That focus will determine our state of mind, our emotional well being, and our spiritual strength as we run the race that lays before us.  We are to fix our eyes on Christ, who endured the cross and sat down at the right hand of God. (Heb 12:1-2 ).

Focusing on Christ is what will determine our ability to withstand the trial, because He is where our focus lies, the goal is the prize of heaven and its reward (Phil 3:12-14 ).  When we began to lose our focus that is when we stumble, and it becomes easy for the enemy to attack us with lies.  How do we stay focused in our trial, in the midst of a U-turn?  First, we remember that God knew it was coming and intends it for our good (Jer 29:11 ).  Second, we recall that God does not change regardless of our circumstances (Mal3:6 , Jas 1:17 ).  The third step requires action on our part, we need to be sure we are an active participant in our relationship with Christ.  What does that mean exactly?  Prayer, reading Gods Word, and fellowship with believers.  Even if you are in a place in your relationship with Him where none of that is happening, it can.  The smallest gesture on our part connects us to God in a powerful way.  He desires to connect to us, He wants a relationship with you so badly He sent Christ.  So if you are in a place of confusion or disarray, simply go to God with a "Help!  I need you!"  He is there waiting to hear your voice.

If you don’t have that relationship because you have never trusted Christ and what He did on the cross, that is where it begins.  The story of how I trusted Christ can be found here:  www.LayingOnGodsAnvil.com .  I hope that you would take the opportunity to read it, and pray that you trust Christ and what He did on the cross for you.

Trusting God while we are afraid of what is going to come next in our lives, afraid of what might happen, is a difficult thing to do.  How do we manage to overcome fear in a very real trial, a very real dilemma, a very real situation?  Is it possible to trust God when we don’t know what might happen in the next month, week, day, hour, or even minute?  In yesterdays post we discovered that God knew what was coming next, even when we did not.  He is aware of what is going to happen even when we plan for something completely different in our lives.  So how about when the possibilities are scary?  Scary situations in our lives do not change God, often however it changes our response to God.

God does not change, His attributes do not change, and His promises do not change (Mal. 3:6 , Jas. 1:17 ).  When we are in a situation that is outside of our plan, different then we expected, we react.  That reaction is going to effect every area of our life including our relationship with God.  There is no way to avoid our human reaction, no way to to turn off our human emotions and feelings to what is going on in our life.  How we deal with God while we are having that reaction is going to determine whether the trial strengthens our relationship with the Lord or scars our spirit, making it difficult to heal in the end.

The initial reaction is often fear.  Fear of the unknown, the known, the news, how we’ll handle it, how others will react to the news, how we will get through it.  Then come the mights, the maybes, the what ifs.  We began dwelling on the things we don’t even know about yet.  As humans we start to wonder about all the unknowns.  That is our very nature because we want to control what we can’t control.  If we trust that God knows what is happening next and he intends it for our benefit, fearing the unknown and the mights the maybes and the what ifs moves our focus to the wrong place.

Psalms 56:3-4 says "When I am afraid, I will trust in you.  In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid.  What can mortal man do to me?" (NIV)

We need to be sure we are praising God because we trust Him despite our situation, the fear we feel is not where our trust comes from.  Our trust comes from the knowledge that God is the same despite our situation (Heb 13:8 ), that He is trustworthy (Psalm 33:21 , 2 Sam 7:28 ), and that He is with us (Deut 31:6 , Deut 31:8 , Josh 1:5 ).  Our fear does not change those facts.  We need to base our trust on that solid foundation which we can prove to ourselves every day despite the changing conditions we are enduring.

Might, maybe, and what if is not very mighty and God is a mighty God.  I don’t find much strength in dwelling on what might happen next.  As a matter of fact it swells the fear.  What I have discovered is that if I spend time with God, in His word, and in prayer asking Him to mold me while we lay on His anvil into who He wants me to be in the trial, I am able to withstand the trial easier.  Why is this?  Because the more time we spend focused on God, where we should be, the less time we have to dwell on our temporary circumstance.  After all our focus doesn’t belong on our temporary situation.  That emmediate reaction of fear is normal, but to rely on that reaction as our means of determining how much we trust God is not how we should run our relationship with Chirst.  Our relationship with God should be determined by what we know to be true.  And those facts do not change based on our temporary circumstance and our emotional reaction.   God is going to use the Anvil to mold us and help us see His purpose in the trial if we trust Him to do so despite the fear, and He will take that fear away as we trust Him to use the circumstance towards His purpose in our lives.

As humans we always want to plan, we want to have it all together, we want to say our future is all tucked in and ready to go.  We make plans, we chart our course, we put away money, we have short term and long term goals, calendars, and all kinds of reminder systems.  Then something comes along to change that.  What? This could be a small bump in the path or a long detour in the roadway.  Somehow we always react with “That wasn’t in the plan”.  God always knew it was coming.  It is no surprise to God that something different happened then what we expected.  Now He is about to use this detour, or bump, to shape us into the person He wants us to be.

God was fully aware of what was about to come in our life, and He intends it for our good and to prosper us.  Jeremiah 29:11 makes that very promise to us.  “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” (Jer. 29:11 NIV)  God not only knew what was coming (Job 23:10), He is going to use it for our benefit.  That benefit may not always be the easiest to see in the midst the circumstance, as a matter of fact I will admit it is often impossible to see, but it is there.  God promised us the benefit is there.  I trust His promises.

In the midst of the trial, the bump, the detour in our plan, we need to be looking to what God is doing.  Knowing that He has made a promise to prosper us and give us a hope and a future, to mold us and refine us, allows us to focus on Him rather then the circumstance.  Though that benefit may not be immediately obvious to our human eyes, we can ask the Lord to help us focus on His work in us, rather than the temporary situation around us.  He knew the bump, the detour, the change in plans was coming, so we can trust that He is going to fulfill His promise once again, as He always has.