Refiner's Fire

Hello and welcome to the Live Bully Podcast, brought to you by Celebration Baptist Church.

I'm Jessica and today I have Pastor Aaron here with me.

Today we are discussing why God allows us to go through hardship in order to grow us deeper in Christ.

Pastor Aaron, your devotional today included two of my favorite things, the Beach Boys and Romans 8.28, which has been a verse that has often encouraged me during times of hardship.

How has this verse influenced your life?

Hey Jessica, thanks for having me.

That verse particularly, which happens to be my life verse, is uh is was pivotal in my life, particularly remembering that Romans 8.28 can't be separated from Romans 8.29.

And um so to know that God works all things together for the good, we know that's primarily going to be for his glory, but also we get to be included in that, and so uh we can celebrate that God works everything together for the good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

Um and so there's your clearinghouse, and that's where that's where the Christian falls into line because they love God through the work of Christ Jesus, and then they are called according to his purpose, if nothing else, maybe not a vocational call, but maybe it's just a great commission call.

And to love God, love people, and then um and then to go out and make disciples.

And so that's huge.

And then to know that all those things work together for good, this what good is that?

And that the what I tried to kind of per convey was that that good is uh to make us more like Christ.

And so some things may be painful, and some people, some people don't want to go through trials, and I don't, I'm one of those people, but I often realize that that is truly how I grow leaps and bounds in my faith, is uh is having to go through trials and having to keep my eye on him.

That's awesome, Pastorin.

So now in your devotional, you also mentioned a difficult time for you was when you and your at the time fiance were long distance for almost two years.

That's really hard.

How did that affect your relationship?

It uh and I think I say it in in my write-up is that it it made our it made us never take for granted having each other close, not just proximally, but being able to depend on each other um no matter what.

And so that prepped us for future hardships.

And though that doesn't necessarily sound like a hardship all the time, like, oh, they were so far apart and they had a long engagement, boohoo.

But it really was, it really was formative in that it made us be prepared that life wasn't always gonna be easy.

And so it deepened our love for one another and it made us never take each other for granted.

How do hardships affect our relationship with God?

So hardship makes us react one of two ways, in my experience, and that is the first way, and probably the easiest way, is to get bitter and be angry at God and wonder why he would allow something like this and and uh forget anything that he's done in our lives in the past.

Um, the other way, which is of course the better way, is to thank God for what he's already done and to to trust that he's and and pray that he will take care of the situation and to trust him that he's gonna bring something good out of it.

And so it each time we go through a trial, each time we go through a hardship, our faith gets stronger because we can depend more on God because our faith has been built through those hardships and through him constantly over and over delivering.

I've never seen a time in my life where God hadn't come through.

And sometimes it takes six months, sometimes it takes six years, and one day I know there's people that could give testimony, it took 60 years, but he came through.

And so that in essence is how your relationship grows.

So, when we're going through difficult seasons, what are some ways that we can stay encouraged that God actually is working out everything for good?

Well, the best way I know how is to have an attitude of thanksgiving.

And that's not just, you know, an auditory, thank you, God.

That's not just mentally praising him for what he's done, but going back and remembering these faith-building moments where he delivered and he came through.

And it'll surprise you because, like I said before, there's never a time where he doesn't come through in some way, shape, or form.

It may not look the way we want it to look, but he will come through.

And and the second way I would say, you know, is uh submitting to his will.

You know, whatever his plan is, whatever he wants to happen, it's hard because we want to control things and we want to make it happen, but to submit to his will and kind of rest in that, that takes a lot of weight off of us and it enables us to trust him more.

Yeah.

So you ended today's devotional with this really powerful sentence.

Let me read it.

It says, discipleship is walking with Christ even in his suffering to become more like him.

That's an amazing statement.

Can you go a little deeper into that for us?

I mean, uh the example of the apostles is is huge because they walk with Christ as long as they could.

And then, you know, you come to the end of Jesus being on earth and he is he's about to ascend.

And I always think of that as like a the end of a, you know, I always think of casts of movies must be super sad when they get done with the big epic trilogy or the big epic series of movies.

That the disciples must have felt that times 10,000, you know, and but it wasn't over.

In fact, I think because Jesus ascended into heaven, he wasn't there physically with them anymore, it totally resolved them to say, Hey, I'm going all the way for this thing.

And and I'm and they did.

They went to the end of their lives, most of them being martyred for the faith.

And but it was so life-changing, they followed him all the way to the end, even when he wasn't physically there.

Yeah.

Pastor Aaron, thank you for continuing this conversation with us.

To all of our listeners, don't forget, follow Celebration Baptist Church on Instagram, Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

There you can keep up with our current sermon series, Live Boldly, and explore what else is happening in our celebration family.

If you haven't received your Live Boldly magazine yet, let us know and we'll get one for you.

Pastor Aaron, will you pray for us today?

Yes, thanks for having me.

Heavenly Father, I lift up our church family.

And I just pray that you will guide us through these next steps as a community.

And Father, I pray that though we'll go through good times and bad, I pray that we can always have our eyes on you and have faith that you are going to come through.

We love you and we praise you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, Aaron.

Be sure to tune in again tomorrow as we continue our conversation with Pastor Aaron.

We'll see you then.