A test of worthiness

We face many challenges in our lives. And if we're not even done with an obstacle, another new challenge comes our way. We are on the edge of giving up on conflicting threats. Disasters have recently changed the way we look at things, whether natural or man-made, and can measure our human strength or weakness.

And as we celebrate our Savior's coming, we feel we are not prepared and unworthy to meet him. We are so worried about restoration, about what is going to rescue us from our pitiable state.

For example, the global coronavirus pandemic, which has brought death to hundreds of thousands, extreme disease to millions more and financial hardship to the world as a whole, also presents us with profound spiritual questions and real challenges everywhere.

We encounter too many trials before each year ends, calamity after calamity. These measure how far in the year we can brace ourselves. In our lives, we also want to give up towards the finish line because we feel that such distance will take us eternity without even understanding that it will take our last deep breaths to brace through it.

God challenges us to see how far, amid our impurities and imperfections, we can face him. It's a test of how we can finish when we feel drowning at times and when we feel down and abandoned, we believe our screams are unheard.

The coming of God means the end of all our shortcomings and relies on his hand to bring us all through the finish line. He is not the end, but a hand that allows us to reach the end, forever and ever. His hands reach us all to the end of the human spirit, but the beginning of his plan for us, where we want to finish. A plan which will bring us into harmony with the Father.

All forms of trials and temptations temporarily harass us. This is no mistake, our faith happens to prove it. As believers, nothing by mistake, comes into our lives. It's all Father-filtered. God causes all to work together for the benefit of those who love him and are called, including the difficulties, the irritations and the interruptions, according to his intention for them.

So how does God want us to respond to challenges? Count ourselves blessed as all sorts of trials come our way, for we know that the outcome is the ability to survive when our faith succeeds in facing those trials. To test the faith, God uses difficulties, and we grow in faith as we consistently rejoice and maintain a positive outlook despite things not going right.

Every trial has become a fundamental test of faith in God and his providence, whether it is a calamity or a pandemic in itself and it invites us to seriously re-examine their relationship with him, each other and the natural world. And when we remain grateful and positive and continue trusting him even in the middle of difficulties, our faith and our worthiness is stretched for his coming.