Every day is a day of Testing

We should all be aware that every day is a day of testing. Reading Paul's Letters in the New Testament, he had the wisdom to recognize that God's power can be experienced in trials and God does not always delivers us from trials but that He brings us through trials more like Christ and closer to Him. Reading Paul's Letters and aware of his afflictions that we can learn much truth from such trials, some of it depressing and some altogether elevating and wonderful. Reading 2 Corinthians 12:9 says "God said 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." Christ is our strength, our enablement. We are hopelessly weak in ourselves but powerfully strong in Him! Spiritual maturity requires great care and a true knowledge of ourselves to distinguish a spiritual burden from irritation around us but at the same time, we cannot close our minds to everything that is happening around us. "Be very careful, then, how you live--not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil." (Ephesians 5:15-16) The Scriptures and Christian history have taught us ways to have spiritual endurance with the encouragement from the Holy Spirit. The question is this: Are we learning the circumstances? Quote by A.W. Tozer The ideal to which the Christian aspires is not to walk in the perfect way but to be transformed by the renewing of his mind and conformed to the likeness of Christ. The regenerate man often has a more difficult time of it than the unregenerate, for he is not one man but two. He feels within him a power that tends toward holiness and God, while at the same time he is still a child of Adam's flesh and a son of the red clay. This moral dualism is to him a source of distress and struggle wholly unknown to the once-born man. Of course the classic critique upon this is Paul's testimony in the seventh chapter of his Roman epistle.