I love the inspiration I get for the Hustle with H.E.A.R.T. podcast and this blog from the faith leaders I follow, like Lysa Terkeurst, Dr. Charles Stanley, Steven Furtick, Priscilla Shirer and Craig Groeschel. Recently Craig posted about “a faith that has been tested, is a faith that can be trusted.” WOW. I mean…w.O.W. I had to unpack this for us God-centered entrepreneurs!
1 Peter 1:6-7 says, “In everything, in all circumstances, you greatly rejoice though now for a little while if need be, you have been grieved by various trials that the genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Dr. Charles Stanley, in his Life Principles Bible NKJV comments, “How would we ever know and learn to trust God if we never experienced a situation where only He could help us? This is why adversity is a bridge to a deeper relationship with Him.”
As entrepreneurs, we face some trials, don’t we? We face difficult clients. We face difficult team members. We face feast and famine in our business, peaks and valleys, and the bottom line is, we learn more in our valleys than we do in our mountain tops. But the only way we can learn to really trust the Lord is through testing of our faith. We can walk around with faith all day long, but if nothing challenges us, if we don’t have adversity, there is no way that we know how God shows up. There’s this saying I’m sure you’ve heard: “She believed she could, so she did.” On a recent Bob Heilig podcast, his guest said, “I actually don’t like that. I like to say it this way: She couldn’t. So He did.” I LOVE that! Because friends, if we don’t face situations that we don’t believe that we can conquer, how will we ever know how the Lord shows up?
How will we be able to trust that He allows faith to be refined by fire just as gold is so that every impurity, anxiety and frustration bubbles to the surface? I’ve had my desperate prayers prayed just beyond the edges of what I think I can control. I have my hindrances to fully trust Him because I think I’ve got this and don’t want to give up my control. In those moments, I don’t really believe that God’s going to come through because that means relinquishing my control…I don’t really want to surrender. Yet the only only way to see Him move is to have our faith tested!
The only way to know His truth in all this is spend time in the Word daily so we can learn His character and see how He operated in the lives of the saints of the Bible – from there we see He do the same for us, but the only way we can do that is to go through the tests and the trials so that we can learn to lean into Him. Remember Jesus told us in this world we will have trouble, but he has overcome the world (John 16:33). The victory is already there. We just have to believe and trust in it and watch him work in our lives.
