All Believers Will Face Fiery Trials

 As Christians, we are citizens of heaven who are passing through a cursed world which is filled with condemned sinners who are in need of Christ's forgiveness; and God has given us everything we need to live a victorious Christian life in this fallen world. But too many Christians wrongly think that a victorious Christian life is a happy, trouble-free existence where every whim of our heart is magically fulfilled by some person in the sky, cherry-picking Scriptures that 'prove' this false interpretation of the Word while proclaiming that the problem of others results from their lack of faith. This could not be further from the truth. But how few even turn to Scripture to discover the principles and practices of what it really means to live godly in Christ Jesus?
 Over and again, we are warned that All Believers Will Face Fiery Trials which will come to us in many shapes and disguises. Nevertheless, we are promised Christ's sufficient grace because we are in union with Him, and His strength is perfected in us as we depend upon Him.
 We have already received all spiritual blessing in abundance, simply because we are in Christ, and in Him we have all that we need to live godly lives, but nowhere in Scripture are we told that we will have the trouble free life that much of Christendom teaches today, rather we are informed of the opposite.
 Our life trials are not, as some suggest, a lack of faith or God's punishment, but a purifying tool that God uses to hone and refine His children, to develop our trust and dependence upon Him.
1 Peter 4:12 Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.

Our United Prayer:
Heavenly Father, there is a part of us that wants to have a nice, easy, trouble-free existence and yet we know that this life is a training ground to draw us closer to You and to conform us, day by day, into the likeness of Christ. May we not be surprised at the fiery ordeals that we are called upon to endure, but embrace them as Your gracious children training and program us to make us more like Christ. Use us in this sin-sick world to comfort others with the same comfort that we receive from You. In Jesus' name we Pray, AMEN.