I’m not your typical blogger. I don’t post often enough and when I do, I post larger amounts of information than are usually found in this format. But today I just want to share a brief thought that I hope will have long-lasting impact. What are the most productive things in your life? Who are the people that bring out the best in you? What are the situations that seem to cause you to function at your optimum level? What are the things that you can point to and be very confident that they have worked for you and possibly through you? Now, if you have taken the time to give those questions some thought and answer them honestly, I have one more to add, what if you are wrong about what, where and who create the most productivity in your life?
In Romans 5:3 Paul wrote, “tribulation produces . . .” Hold on for one moment before going forward, tribulation is productive? The Greek word that has been translated tribulation (suffering, trouble, difficulty in other translations) means “a pressing, pressing together, pressure.” So, Paul writes that the things in your life that cause you pressure, the events and circumstances that squeeze at your mind, your heart, your lifestyle, your faith and your fear, those things are actually serving a very important purpose, they are producing! I usually assume that those things are trying to slow me, attack me, sometimes even kill me, but Paul, who was pressed more than any of us, says that the pressure you are experiencing is actually doing something great within you and is producing something enormous for you.
So, what is your first reaction? Do you believe it? Are we willing to believe and accept and even trust God’s sovereignty to the point in which we can accept that our tribulations are productive? The truth of the matter is what is already written, “tribulation produces.” There is fruit, there is gain, there is outcome from your trials and tribulations, not in spite of them. No matter who causes them or where they come from God’s word has promised that they are purposed to be productive. There are many injustices in this world but there are no accidents. Maybe today we need our faith stretched beyond our understanding and to have our hope built beyond our expectation so that we can see, accept and some day reap the benefit of the goodness that is being produced. God won’t allow our tribulations to be wasted, neither should we, take courage and find joy in Paul’s words today, while you may only see trouble, God sees outcome and even your trouble is being used to finish the work that He has begun.