Luke 22:31 - 33

 Part 1

How many times have I heard someone tell me that God is just trying to teach me something every time I endure some trial in my life?  Or maybe they suggest that I have been bad and God is just trying to discipline me.   I could get sucked in to believing that line of thinking very easy.   I don’t know everything so I always could learn something new, and for sure I am never going to be perfect.  And I must admit that in some of my worst days I have learned a lot about myself, God and the world I live in… maybe more than if life had always been smooth.  But that does not explain the times when the trials seem out of proportion to the need to learn something or the need for a kick in the pants. 

Over the past few months I have had a very personal struggle with keeping my farm dream alive.  I went broke farming last year and used up all my savings to pay bills.  This year the peaches did not set fruit, the hay crop was ruined by the rain, and the bobcats have killed all but a couple chickens.  I started a part time job which left very little time for farm chores so the potatoes never got planted, the peas and raspberries did not get picked,  the star thistle is waist high, the livestock is being neglected, the firewood is still unsplit and I am trying to get the greenhouse completed…. Shall I go on?  Last week the well quit, a rock put a hole in the transmission of my car, my wife’s car developed a coolant leak in the heater core, my 87 year old mother fell and was hospitalized, and the coyotes became brave enough to come all the way to the house and kill one of our pet cats.  

On the evening before Jesus was arrested and led off to execution the Disciples thought they were prepared for anything.  They were ready to die for Him.  I think they were at a pretty high point in their faith in Jesus and confident about what lay ahead.  Jesus pulled Peter aside and told him point blank that Satan was about to sift him and the rest of them “like wheat”.  It was going to be so bad that Jesus also said he was praying for Peter so that he would not lose his faith altogether.  

So why the sifting?  Were Peter and the others in need of learning something?   Were they in need of correction and in need of severe discipline?    What if instead the sifting was Satan’s attempt to prove to God that the disciples were all really more like Judas?   Betrayers.   They really only stayed with Jesus because he protected them, fed them, cared for them.  Remember the story of Job?  Satan told God the same thing.  Job only is faithful because you bless him.  Take away the blessings and he will curse you! 

I think that in regards to my personal trials: 

1. Sometimes I learn something.  (Trials that stimulate my personal growth)
2. Sometimes someone else learns something.  (Someone else’s growth is stimulated by my trial)
3. Sometimes no one needs to learn anything.  (These trials are for reasons only God can explain and he usually has chosen to keep his mouth shut.  God usually gets blamed for these too.) 
1. Trials caused by the laws of nature.  Gravity, natural disasters, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.
2. Trials caused by evil men and women on purpose.
3. Trials caused by accidents, errors in judgment, miscalculations, human mistakes.
4. Trials with causes that lie beyond this physical world. “Life sifting events”.