It may sound strange to our ears that instead of complaining and murmuring over temptations and trials, we are told to accept and even rejoice in them. The Holy Spirit is not saying we should be hypocrites and put on fake plastic smiles for others to see. God doesn\u2019t ask us to deny reality, but He does ask us to view life through eyes of faith.<\/p>\n
How do we view life with faith? 1 Thessalonians 5:18 tells us: “In everything give thanks for this is the will of God concerning you in Christ Jesus.” Notice that it does not say, “For<\/em> everything give thanks” but “In<\/em> everything give thanks.” Why? Because even in trials of health, relationships, finances, accidents, and job losses, we thank God, because none of these things are able to separate us from His love. In fact God will use them all for our growth and His glory. We do not rejoice because we have a difficulty, but we rejoice in the midst of difficulty because we know that God loves us and that He will use anything that happens to us for our good.<\/p>\n The word count<\/em> means \u201cto deliberately look at something.\u201d We are to evaluate all situations and then make up our minds once and for all to choose to be joyful about it. Although we cannot control most of the circumstances that happen to us in life, we can control our attitude and how we respond to them. Victor Frankl, a Jewish prisoner in a WWII Nazi concentration camp wrote:<\/p>\n They striped me naked. They took everything\u2014my wedding ring, watch. I stood there naked and all of a sudden realized at that moment that although they could take everything away from me\u2014my wife, my family, my possessions\u2014they could not take away my freedom to choose how I was going to respond.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If we choose to respond with a good attitude, then the “testing” or heat from the difficulty we are going through, purifies our faith. The word translated “produces” in Greek is in the present tense, meaning that it is a continuing, on-going process. Believer we remain “under construction” until we take our final breath here and our next when we see Him in heaven.<\/p>\n “LORD, we choose to have a good attitude in the midst of difficulties this day and trust that You will bring fruit from it.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It may sound strange to our ears that instead of complaining and murmuring over temptations and trials, we are told to accept and even rejoice in them. The Holy Spirit is not saying we should be hypocrites and put on fake plastic smiles for others to see. God doesn\u2019t ask us to deny reality, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11867"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11867"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11870,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11867\/revisions\/11870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}