Answering trials with adherence to God’s character whitens your garments.1 When you respond to trials with insufficient trust in or obedience to God, you dirty your garments and cut yourself off from his blessing.2
Trials are not just hard times. By definition, a trial is not just a time where you experience undesirable things, but a discovery of a more accurate idea of the worth of a thing. When you try something, you evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, its costs and benefits, and its relative value compared to alternative options.
Trials are opportunities to change your beliefs, feelings, or actions to reflect the new appraisal of value they bring.3 As you adjust what you value and by how much, and change your behavior to align with your new appraisals of value, you draw nearer to God in how you feel, think, and act.
Trials reveal the insufficiencies in what you previously considered necessary, adequate, or desirable. Reductions in perceived value can increase the urgency and benefit of finding something better, and this replacement is one way that God makes weak things strong.4
All trials are an opportunity to grow towards God. When you are subjected to changes in the value of what you have, hope for, or give, you have an opportunity to adopt greater trust in and affinity for God.5 When you respond correctly, trials purge6 from you from what keeps you from ascending to a greater relationship with and blessing from God.1704
Footnotes
- 1. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you.... (John 15:3-4) And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. (Revelation 7:14) And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. (Revelation 6:9-11) ↩
- 2. ...As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me....without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. (John 15:4-6) ↩
- 3. Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand. (Daniel 12:10) ↩
- 4. And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them. (Ether 12:27) ↩
- 5. Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; (Hebrews 5:8) Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. (Psalms 51:7) ↩
- 6. Some of the wise will fall, so that they may be purged, purified, and made white, until the time of the end, for it is still for the appointed time. (Daniel 11:35, MEV) ↩