Category: Bible Studies

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 11:18

“In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it.” (1 Corinthians 11:18, NIV)

“First of all, in your church meetings I am told that cliques prevail, and I partly believe it.” (Moffatt)

What draws me most in this verse is Paul’s mature reaction to the gossip. He does not let it change how he thinks of his children. He determines to know the truth of them, and he knows them well enough to see this is a pitfall they could easily fall into.

Not at Face Value

Paul is not accepting gossip at face value. He is weighing the reports he hears against what he knows to be true about his children in the faith. His wisdom and understanding of them, and of human nature, will not let him dismiss the stories as gossip to be ignored. But he knows them well enough to believe it could be happening. So he says, in effect, I can see how this could be happening; it is possible. Moffatt has him say he “partly” believes it; the Jerusalem Bible, that he “half” believes it.

A good parent who knows her children and hears a wild story about one of them doesn’t swallow it whole, and she doesn’t throw it out either. She weighs it against what she knows of her child. A loving heart will not fully believe repeated gossip as factual truth. Gossip is often enlarged by the teller, and a story traveling across the country could be greatly embellished by the time it reached the ears of Paul. As Proverbs says, the first to tell his story seems right until another comes and questions him (Proverbs 18:17).

But neither will a loving parent ignore the story or let the opportunity pass her by. She will go to her child personally, and with a parent’s loving care discover the true heart of her child and nurture what needs nurturing, using even the gossip to support her child as they continue to grow and develop. That is exactly what Paul is about to do with this letter.

A Hospital for Hurting Souls

Paul’s heart of love sees his struggling children in Christ and realizes they need guidance. He needs to give them the mature wisdom none of them has yet developed, before the church implodes and fails to serve its purpose as a hospital for broken, hurting souls looking for the healing only the life of Christ in us can bring (Mark 2:17).

The problem he has been told of is that they are not of one heart. The factions have set their stakes and refuse to be moved or to hear the other side of an issue. They have stopped working together as the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12–27). And notice where it is happening: when you come together, at the very gathering meant to make them one.

A Church Too Young for Its Leaders

Paul also understands that the leaders in Corinth are not yet mature enough to carry the load they are under. The whole truth of Christ and His church was brand new. Except for those who had spent personal time with Christ, no one was truly mature enough to lead a new and growing congregation. Paul would later warn against putting a new believer into leadership, lest pride take hold (1 Timothy 3:6). Even those who had walked with Jesus needed that connection reestablished every day; the council marveled at Peter and John, ordinary, unschooled men, and recognized that they had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13). And the work was tremendous. The whole known world was being evangelized, and it all went out in one generation (Colossians 1:6, 23). What a huge undertaking, and what a need to grow up quickly!

Every Member a Blessing

Without strong, wise leadership, any group will fail to carry on for long. Yet a strong personality carries its own danger. Unless that leader stays connected to the mind of Christ, human pride gets in the way, and soon we have our followers, our little congregation, and Christ is lost in the shuffle. People begin modeling after their leader instead of after Christ. Corinth had already been down this road: “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas” (1 Corinthians 1:12–13). Paul’s answer then was simple: Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?

In the beginning of our walk, leaning on a leader is natural, because we don’t yet know Christ, and those who bring us to Him hold a very special place in our hearts and minds. But if they do their duty well, they will take the connection we have to them and show us where it truly belongs. That is what Paul meant when he said, “Follow me as I follow Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). That is not happening in Corinth. The reports show them falling into rule keeping instead of loving each other and following Christ, their true Leader.

Christ set up His church to be a blessing to every member. Those of more mature experience in the things of God keep growing as they hone their people skills supporting the babies in the faith. There is never an excuse to sit back in inactivity, letting our talents rust. In this life we continue to be a blessing, to develop our talents, to expand our minds, to learn new things, to see new and wonderful truth in the word of God. All this is our daily fare until we draw our last breath. The Lord provides the Holy Spirit to be with us constantly, directing our attention, minds, hearts, and even our physical bodies to the place we need to be.

Leaving the Results in His Hands

Paul is seeing more than the gossiping reports. He is seeing the danger his beloved children are falling into. He is not present with them, and letters take time to arrive. This is us in our daily life: we can only do our best in any situation the Spirit makes us aware of, and then we leave the results in His hands. Paul planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6–7). Paul understands this, and he is allowing the Lord to guide his pen as he continues to counsel his beloved children.

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:15

“The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments.” (1 Corinthians 2:15, NIV)

The Living Bible says the spiritual person’s insight “bothers and baffles the man of the world, who can’t understand him at all.” Goodspeed puts it beautifully: “the spiritual man is alive to all true values, but his own true value no unspiritual man can see.”

The Jesus in me can be seen only by the Jesus in you.

The Holy Spirit, who knows the mind of God, lives within us and lets us see His mind and heart in another of His children. The currents of Life, Love, and Truth flow between us, and we sense the presence of the Father in each other.

Each day we will discern more of Him. The Fires of Truth and Love clear more and more of the blockage from our souls, hearts, and minds, and we become more like Jesus. We think as He would and love as He loved.

Our lives are ours to live. We are free to choose the good for ourselves, free to be good and to do good. And as He works in us, we find we can trust ourselves not to break faith with ourselves, with the Father, or with those we support and care for.

You sustain us, Lord, giving each day its duties. We are surrounded by Your Fires. Heal our hearts, and burn out all the sin sickness still within us.

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:14

“The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 2:14, NIV)

Phillips says it plainly: “you must be spiritual to see spiritual things.” Dr. Tim Jennings of Come and Reason Ministries, in The Remedy, shows what the “foolishness” really is: the truth “about God’s character of selfless love; such absolute love is foolishness to them.” To a heart still ruled by self, Love that gives everything simply doesn’t make sense.

But the heart that is healed is able to understand the truth about our God. The Holy Spirit brings this truth home to us. We love the truth because the Spirit of Love living in us is open to all that the Spirit of God brings.

The Fires of Truth and Love are removing the selfish blockage from our hearts and minds. As they do, we can take in more and more of the Fire flowing from God. The current needs to flow unhindered, in perfect circulation through us and out to others.

I see this every day in my healing work. Anytime there is blockage, there is pain and disease. And the other side is just as true: when there is pain, there is blockage somewhere. Whether a disease is clogging up the system or an injury has created it, pain comes from blockage.

Fresh pain is a good thing. It tells us there is something that needs our attention. But in time we can grow numb to it. We can ignore it long enough, or numb it: with drugs for the body; with food or other poor substitutes, so we don’t feel so bad and can ignore our need of emotional healing; or spiritually, by making up rules for everyone to follow, so we can feel good about ourselves for keeping all the right ones while our hearts are still empty of saving grace.

The priests who nailed the Savior to the cross wanted Him taken down by sundown, so they could keep every rule and go home to celebrate the feast, having just murdered the very One it pointed to.

All of this is blockage: old, useless stuff clogging the healthy circulation of our bodies, our hearts, and our minds. It needs to be cleared out.

Each day we choose to do the hard work and allow the Lord to heal the painful places in our hearts. Each choice clears a little more of the blockage, and more of the healing Fire can pass through.

We will pass through the valley of the shadow of death more than once. Again and again we will surrender another cherished habit or comfort we have clung to for our own security. But the Lord is our fortress and stronghold. He is all we need. We may feel alone except for God, but what a great exception He is. We are completely surrounded with all the support, love, and care we could ever need or want.

The way into that support is to let go of the selfish, self-comforting habits we hold onto, and allow the Fires of Truth and Love to clear those places, so the Lord can fill them with what truly comforts and heals.

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:13

“This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.” (1 Corinthians 2:13, NIV)

Paul says the message he carries isn’t dressed in the polished phrases of human philosophy. It comes in words the Spirit teaches. Williams calls it “fitting spiritual words to spiritual truths.” The Living Bible says it simply: “So we use the Holy Spirit’s words to explain the Holy Spirit’s facts.” Dr. Tim Jennings of Come and Reason Ministries puts it this way in The Remedy: “the very secret thoughts of God – his true nature and character of Love taught by His Spirit – expressing the life-giving truths in ways we can comprehend.”

This isn’t only for apostles. The Spirit brings to our minds the truths that fit the moment we are sharing with someone. I see it every day as I work with the members who call with their questions and concerns. As a young mother, I was constantly amazed at what came out of my mouth: wisdom and truth, spoken exactly as my child could grasp it. In church, sharing in a study class or teaching the adult class, I have felt the Spirit fill the room and bring the conversation to the things we all needed to know. This is not an uncommon thing in the life of a Christian.

But the same truths land very differently in a heart that hasn’t welcomed the Spirit. Without the indwelling Spirit, the truths about Christ, about salvation, and about the Love our Father has shown toward humanity are not welcomed. They can’t be understood without the Spirit of God in the life to bring them home to the heart and mind. They stay only words. Facts. Cold facts.

The spirit of the world filters every truth about God before it reaches the mind and heart. What a believer hears as beautiful, loving words of truth and healing, another hears as folly, of no value at all.

Without the Holy Spirit to help us see what reality really is, who we are, and our need of Christ, His sacrifice would be of no avail to our fallen race. Ellen White put it this way: “The Spirit was to be given as a regenerating agent, and without this the sacrifice of Christ would have been of no avail” (The Desire of Ages, p. 671). Without the Spirit drawing us to Christ, we would not even want to be saved. What Christ did for us would never reach our hearts without the Gift of the Holy Spirit applying the truth to them.

But every gift heaven has to give is ours for our salvation. Our only contribution to our own salvation is to accept it and place our will on the side of the Lord. We choose with our hearts and minds, and act with our will, to move in the direction the Spirit is leading.

The moment we do, we have the power: the Fires of Truth and Love from the throne of God, brought home to us by the Holy Spirit. He is constantly drawing us and supporting us as we keep choosing to follow the Lord.

Truth is a powerful knowledge. The more we dwell on it, spending time with the Lord in His Word, the more we want to. The mind-numbing fare we once fed our minds on loses its appeal. We are changing: what we like, how we spend our time. As the Fires of Truth and Love burn out the dross in our minds and hearts, we are becoming more like Him. The quality of who we are is being refined, and we live the life of joy, because joy is what Love produces.

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:12

“What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.” (1 Corinthians 2:12, NIV)

The Living Bible says the Spirit is given “to tell us about the wonderful free gifts of grace and blessing God has given us.”

Two things stand out to me in this verse.

First, Paul sets two spirits side by side: the spirit of the world and the Spirit who comes from God. The spirit of the world is the selfish, me-first way of thinking we were all born into. Changing from one to the other isn’t a matter of squeezing out the old. It is a matter of building new pathways in the mind.

Each decision we make draws us more in tune with the spirit we have chosen to follow. Choosing to be loving feeds that pathway, and the more we use it, the stronger it becomes. The pathways we stop using are, in time, pruned away. So with each choice we are becoming more like the spirit we are following.

You are your choices. If you want to be something new, let new things into your life. All you have to do is choose them and do them. Each choice feeds a habit, and a lifetime of habits makes a character: your life, who you are.

And changing the direction of your life takes only one single choice. It’s called turning around. Head in the other direction.

Second, Paul tells us plainly what the Spirit came to do. The translations bring it out beautifully. Goodspeed says the Spirit is given “to make us realize the blessings God has given us.” Williams says, “that we may get an insight into the blessings God has graciously given us.” Phillips puts it softly: “so that we can understand something of God’s generosity towards us.”

God’s Spirit is here to open our eyes to what He has done for us. It is the Spirit’s job to bring these gifts home to us. He sets them in our hearts and minds in a way we can take hold of, until they become part of who we are.

We can know that Jesus died for us, that He became our substitute, and still hold it only as head knowledge. Head knowledge alone doesn’t heal. What heals is realizing the truth of this gift in our hearts and seeing how it touches the way we live each day. That is when the healing power comes alive in us.

Healing begins when we understand that there is power in the truth about God to heal all the damage done by the nature we were born with. This gift is our only way out of this sinful mess alive, our only escape from being destroyed by that old nature.

Dr. Tim Jennings of Come and Reason Ministries puts it this way in The Remedy: “We have received God’s very own thoughts, attitude, methods and principles – brought to us by his Spirit – so that we may understand God and all he has done for us.”

And here is the gentle part. The Spirit brings this knowledge to us as soon as we are ready to know it. He doesn’t push or hurry us, and He doesn’t hold back. He waits for an open heart, then brings the gifts home.

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 11:17

“In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good.” (1 Corinthians 11:17, NIV)

“Because your meetings create a toxic environment which causes damage and does not heal injuries, I am not going to sugarcoat the following prescription.” (The Remedy)

Paul comes right to the point. Their coming together was hurtful to the body of believers. The energy, love, and emotional currents of their meetings were not uplifting, ennobling, or even loving. There was no care being expressed for each other, and God was not being honored by their coming together to celebrate His great Love for them. Paul’s words of reproof were as kind as he could make them.

How It Should Be

When we meet with fellow believers, there is an expectation of acceptance, of being with those who share the journey you are on. Each one, in their own way and with the talents they have, is doing their part to show the Love of Christ to those within their sphere of influence. The opposition they come up against daily wears on the emotional reserves. Coming together means being with friends you can speak freely around, with no need to guard your words. Each member is there to catch up with and encourage the others. The flow of positive love and energy makes the room a place of warmth, a refreshing environment to just come and sit down, to feel the refreshing from above and from each other.

This is how it should be, but instead, the baby church had developed a toxic environment, which was causing more harm than good. The children there had not yet learned to play well together. Paul had already told them they were still infants in Christ, ready only for milk (1 Corinthians 3:1–2). The ABCs of Love still needed to be taught.

Love Is Learned

Love, loving, caring for others: this is not something we do naturally from birth. It is not innate. It must be learned, and it cannot be book learning. It can only be learned by experiencing it yourself.

We naturally move toward a love that feeds and supports the self. His Love meets that need and draws us to Himself. “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Maturity comes with growth and acceptance of the love we have experienced; the mature are those who have been trained by practice (Hebrews 5:13–14). Once this has occurred, you are free to choose to give that love to others.

Emotional, spiritual, or physical babies are incapable of showing selfless love. They have yet to understand what it is, or that life beyond their own little self exists. Those new to Christ must come to know His wide open, all-encompassing Love before they have the ability to show it to others. So it is no surprise that the baby church in Corinth lacked the emotional maturity to create a loving, warm environment. The entire congregation was first generation, and newly into the truth at that. There were no mentors to set the spirit of the meeting, and Paul had his hands full trying to mentor from a distance.

Someone Has to Say It

This verse is just stating the facts. Paul is letting them know that what is happening among them is not the way it should be. How can we know something is not right if no one says it, if no one shows us a better way?

Human nature is self-focused from birth. We learn to love because there is a presence in our small, unfocused little life meeting all our needs, keeping us warm, fed, and safe. All we have to do is express, in the only way we can, usually loudly and with utmost urgency, that something is not as it should be. Suddenly loving hands lift us up from our wet, hungry, messy existence, change us, make us warm and dry again, feed our little belly, and touch us with the warmth and loving energy that says, “I love you, you are safe with me.” Our world is perfect again.

Growing past this stage of life is necessary to be able to give love to others freely. We have freely received; now we are able to freely give (Matthew 10:8). Paul had to support them, show them the Love of Christ, and protect them from themselves until they matured enough to walk alone.

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:11

“For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:11, NIV)

The Living Bible says no one can really know “what he is really like, except that person himself.”

Just as only a person’s own spirit can truly know their mind, so only the Spirit who proceeds from the Father (John 15:26) can know the true intentions, the heart, and the understanding of the mind of God. No one knows the mind of God but the Spirit of God Himself. And this same Spirit, who knows God’s heart, comes to live in ours.

The study of ourselves is the hardest work there is to do: the ability to look into your own heart and own the real intentions that live there. This is the real work, done with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. An honest friend can point out obvious flaws, but the truth of our hearts is known only to us, if we are willing to know it, and to the Holy Spirit. “The heart is deceitful above all things… who can know it? I the LORD search the heart” (Jeremiah 17:9–10).

This is a work that cannot be done haphazardly, but in the kindness and Love that flow freely from the Father of lights (James 1:17). It is not a hard road to walk with the guidance of the Spirit. Dealing with yourself is actually less painful than spending your entire life with blinders on, tripping over every obstacle you refuse to acknowledge or look at. That is a hard way to spend a life in this hard world.

Wisdom says: own your life, flaws and all. Learn to love yourself, all parts of you, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is much kinder to yourself to grow up into the maturity of a real saved and healed Christian than to stumble around lost and alone, bleeding from your wounded soul until life feels unbearable.

But life can be joyful, regardless of what was done to you or what you have done to yourself. All the damage can be healed. Own your life; deal with yourself. The Lord is there to carry you through all the hard places, and you will find yourself living in the Light and Joy of heaven here, now, in this world.

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). So wake up, and enjoy your morning of truth and light.

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:10

“These are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:10, NIV)

Montgomery calls them “the abysmal depths of God.” Knox says, “there is no depth in God’s nature so deep that the Spirit cannot find it out.”

The word “searches” appears only six times in the New Testament. It points to careful, penetrating inquiry, never a casual glance. It pictures someone moving from the surface to the depths, separating truth from appearance until the matter is fully laid bare. And here is something wonderful: Scripture uses the same word both ways. The Spirit searches the deep things of God (1 Corinthians 2:10), and God searches the depths of our hearts (Romans 8:27; Revelation 2:23). He searches the depths of God to show Him to us, and He searches the depths of us to heal what He finds there. Both searches are Love.

God has opened all His intentions to us through the gift of His Holy Spirit. The Spirit probes the deepest parts of God’s mind toward us and reveals them to us. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil” (Jeremiah 29:11). Only the Spirit of God could reveal His inmost intentions. Jesus promised, “he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you” (John 16:14).

He shows us the true, unvarnished character of God. No paint, no polish, no distortion: only who He really is. And what does the Spirit find in those deepest depths? Amazing Love.

Words fail me when I see my Savior’s Love for me. I can only bear a small part of that realization at present, but that small amount floors me. The God who created this entire universe cares about me personally, and He has stood by me throughout my entire life: the little girl so lost and alone, the teenager confused and abused, the young woman trying to make her way in the world without a mentor or guide. Alone except for God, but what a great exception He is.

I can look back over my life and see Him holding me close when I cried, keeping me from destroying my life as I flared out in pain and anger. Always He was there to help me pick up the pieces. Always His Love surrounded me. Now, as I am older and no longer able to do all the things a younger person can do, I still see His loving presence. He meets me where I am and carries me along as fast as I can go. There were times in my life when the only thing moving us forward was my willingness and His strength to carry me. And yet His healing never stopped flowing into me.

At the age of 57 we began climbing Mount Everest together, and He turned it into a valley we walked across together. I lost all that emotional baggage in about fourteen months, an entire 240 pounds, with no medical intervention, just intermittent fasting. He is still faithful, still showing me each day His Love in so many little ways.

Life goes on, and there are still mountains to climb, but now I look forward to them. I want to know the Lord’s power in my life, so I can honestly say, “Bring it on, Lord, but make sure You are there when ‘it’ arrives!” Together I know we can face anything needed for the healing the Lord is doing in my life.

This is my life, and it is for the Glory of God. The devil tried to destroy me before I ever got to live my life, but the Lord has made it all pure gold. When all the doors are closed, turn around and find the open window, because the Lord has just given you wings to fly!

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:9

“However, as it is written: ‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived’—the things God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9, NIV; Isaiah 64:4)

We often read this verse as a promise of heaven only, and it is that. But Paul goes right on: “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit” (2:10). The Remedy puts it in the past tense: “what God has done for those who love him.” The better things He has prepared are not all waiting for heaven. Many are within reach now.

It’s all good. That has been my signature statement since the beginning of my mature life. It means the pain and the embarrassment are all for my growth, and I am better off facing them head on than pretending they never happened. “It’s all good” means: find your blessing, make way for the healing, get out of the way of the Lord, and learn to rejoice, because the Lord is healing a damaged area in your life.

As Dr. Tim Jennings of Come and Reason Ministries often says, once there is brokenness there are no pain-free options; there is only healing or not healing. Most people understand this on the physical side of life but completely miss the emotional and spiritual equivalent. They go through life trying not to touch any emotional pain or deal with anything spiritual that upsets them, so the brokenness festers and becomes worse. It will not heal until you do the work to clear it. That means you will feel some emotional pain. Deal with it; deal with yourself. The payoff is worth any cost in the moment.

I am not speaking as one who has read books on emotional healing. I had to write the book, Whatever Good May Come, to do my own healing. There is no way to get to the other side without combing through the debris of the broken life you are in now. But the Father will give you the strength, and you will find you are a lot stronger than you ever believed you could be. “All things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28). Like I said, it’s all good!

The Father is standing with us, helping us grow through the hard times. Again and again we pass through the valley of the shadow of death, saying goodbye to yet another deeply embedded habit or comfort we used to console our broken self. But we can know there is something better. We will only find it when we let go of the hurtful thing we are holding onto, in the very place where the new and better belongs.

Open your hands. Be willing to let it all go. The better thing is waiting for a place to live in your heart and mind, and the old must be released before the new can come. Jesus said no one puts new wine into old bottles (Matthew 9:17). “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it?” (Isaiah 43:19).

Look for the new. Sometimes it is easy to find. At other times we may need to do a bit of heart searching, to truly turn around and see with new eyes what will be most helpful. Explore all the good the Lord is placing within your reach, and find the best fit for you. We are all different, and our journeys will not all be the same.

Truth will come. Love will grow. You will become more for having passed through the fires.

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:8

“None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” (1 Corinthians 2:8, NIV)

The Remedy says these were leaders who “value the survival-of-the-fittest principle,” the opposite of the self-giving Love of God. TEV puts it starkly: they “nailed the Lord of Glory to a cross.”

Why didn’t they understand? It wasn’t for lack of evidence. They had seen the sick healed and Lazarus raised from the dead, and their answer was to plot His death (John 11:47–53). Understanding truth is as much a choice as stopping a bad habit. We have to choose to know, and grow to love the truth.

Remember, His Glory is His character. When they crucified the Lord of Glory, they nailed Love itself to the Cross and did not recognize it. And Love answered, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

This is where the Glory of Love and Truth repulses those who choose not to know it. It brings them real pain, because the lies they have been hiding behind are burned away when they stand in the presence of the Fires of Truth and Love. Christ was full of this fire. Those longing for truth were drawn to Him, but those who had chosen to refuse the truth had their world rocked by the fire that flowed freely from Him, and it caused them real emotional pain. We see it again in the death of Stephen. His face shone “as it had been the face of an angel,” and they “stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, and cast him out of the city, and stoned him” (Acts 6:15; 7:57–58). Those who have no power to hurt will seethe with the hate they feel; you can feel it when you are in their presence.

So we must open our thinking, our wanting for something new and better. This is where trials are such a blessing. In painful times we are able to embrace, want, and long for something better. By choosing to praise God while we embrace all the truth and learning a trial brings, we are changing our very hearts and minds to be more in line with the character of Christ. “Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience” (James 1:2–3).

Our trials help us to see where we are still in need of healing. They let us know the worst of our case and send us to our knees, asking for healing and Grace to overcome and rise above, if for no other reason than so we never have to go through that trial again! God is faithful, and He will take us over the same ground again and again until we overcome it or it overcomes us. Israel circled the wilderness for forty years so the Lord could “humble thee, and… prove thee, to know what was in thine heart” (Deuteronomy 8:2). We cannot move forward until that issue is decided.

We are choosing to stand in the flow of the Fires of Truth and Love, which can burn away all the sinfulness and selfishness in our hearts. The more we understand the truth about the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, the more we are healed, because the power for healing is in the truth of who They are. As we learn the truth, we shed the lies about God from our hearts and minds.

No matter the heartache or pain, it is all a chance to grow. We are being given the opportunity to become more with every trial and every heartache we embrace. “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11).

This is the healing Glory of God.