Trials Turned to Gold

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

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

Pastor Aaron is the student pastor here at Celebration.

This week we've been focusing on discipleship, and today Pastor Aaron is going to share with us how our trials can turn into gold.

Pastor Aaron, in your devotion today, you talked about how you had cancer when you were only 27.

That must have been really difficult.

How did that affect your spiritual life?

Well, it was it was not a fun time.

It was one of those times though that I knew I needed to lean on God, and I knew He was gonna do something great out of it.

And through that trial, um my wife walked with me every step of the way.

I found out you kind of find out who your life, your friends are that you're living life with, and and so there were some neat things.

The whole the treatment seemed cut and dry, and it seemed like there was uh you know complete light at the end of the tunnel.

Did you have a hard time trusting God through all of that?

Through the first time, not so much.

Um the cancer that I thought was just gonna be a one-time thing and one-time treatment at first, which was surgery and radiation and all that, and it was done, um, came back 13 months later.

Oh, geez.

So a little over a year, it showed up in the rest of my system, and so then I was gonna have to go through chemotherapy.

All the things I felt like I had learned and gleaned from what God was doing, I kind of had to revisit and relearn.

And so that was that was hard for me because I thought, oh, this thing isn't over yet.

This chapter isn't closed, and God, now what are you doing?

And uh why are you allowing this to happen again?

Is those those are the kind of questions that come up.

So, yes, there was a very uh visible struggle within me that second time.

Wow, yeah.

So, was there a specific passage of scripture or a word of encouragement that helped you get through this time?

Yes, Romans 8.28's always been my life verse, and uh it's it's basically uh for we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

And uh you can't um you can't leave out Romans 8.29 that that purpose is to make us more like Christ and give God the glory.

And so I knew through that process that, okay, God, you're gonna use this.

This is gonna be a trial, this is not gonna be fun, but you're gonna make use this to make me more like Christ.

You're gonna teach me a lot of stuff through it, and to be honest, going into cancer, I didn't really know what to expect or what to be scared of, so I really knew I had to trust him.

Yeah.

You mentioned in the Live Bolie Devotionals that your friend was diagnosed with cancer later on.

Did he battle some of the same spiritual struggles that you did?

He did.

He actually had that same situation happen where he had the initial diagnose of cancer, was treated with radiation, and then it came back.

And so I was able to most importantly have empathy for him in that situation.

But he he struggled with the same things, kind of like, why is this happening again?

Um, what was I supposed to learn the first time that I didn't learn?

Those kind of things, things that we ask ourselves, almost guilt questions, when really God's just doing something, he's moving and he's continuing the work that he already started, which he we know through scripture he'll be faithful to carry it on to completion.

So, so yes, it was it was, and we could joke around about you know, about common things.

And you know, if you if you miss going through radiation, you can just go and heat up a burrito in the microwave and get real close to the microwave.

No, it doesn't work like that.

But but you know, we we could joke, and uh there was a deepening of the relationship that we would have never had otherwise, not having to kind of be brothers going through the same thing.

Yeah, that's awesome.

So, what would you say to encourage someone that God really can turn their trials into gold?

I would say look all throughout scripture and you see how God used incredibly bad circumstances to turn those things into those trials, turn those people into people who did great things for him.

In fact, God even used, for the most part, God used not so great people to do great things.

And you may ask yourself, why would God do that?

Well, it's not about those people, it's not about us primarily, it's about God and his glory.

And so as we look at trials in our own lives, we know that they turn to gold, not just for us personally, but they turn turn into praise and glory and thanksgiving that other people will see and want to give to God.

That's awesome.

Pastor Aaron, I really appreciate you being here today.

And to all of our listeners, thanks for joining us.

Make sure to follow Celebration Baptist Church on Instagram and Facebook, and go ahead and subscribe to our YouTube channel as well.

That way you can keep up with our current sermon series, live boldly, and explore everything else that's happening in our celebration family.

Pastor Aaron, would you pray for us today?

Sure.

Thanks for having me.

Heavenly Father, lift up our church family, our community at this time.

And I just pray that we will look to you.

Even when things get bad, even when things get rough, we will know that you're in control.

We will know that you will carry us through, and in the end, you will get glory.

And so help us to take peace and rest in that, and help us to live our own lives so that they may glorify you and so that we may enjoy you.

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

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, Pastor Aaron.

Be sure to tune in again tomorrow as we continue our conversation with Pastor Aaron about why God allows us to go through hardship.

We'll see you then.