God Prepares You for Trials

Talking Points:

• Just a week before his motorcycle accident, Ken had learned a worship song calling out for God’s mercy. While laying on the asphalt being treated by a paramedic, Ken began singing the song to himself. This song carried him through six months of intense recovery. God had provided words of encouragement beforehand that Ken would need to make it through his accident and recovery.
• Mary had recently come to know Jesus and married Ken. She had two teenagers – then she got cancer. God knew what was coming, but he had provided Ken for her to help her through cancer at just the right time.
• Isaiah 41 says that God will uphold us with his righteous right hand. He knows everything and is all-powerful. In Ken and Mary’s lives, they already had the strength from God they needed to get through the next trial. 
• Jesus Christ told the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9 that his power would be perfected in Paul’s weakness. This means that Paul (and we, too) needed to discard the idea that he would accomplish God’s will on his own strength. The “weaker” Paul became, the more God’s power was evident in accomplishing his will with Paul as the tool and God as the craftsman. This is in essence a metaphor of the Christian life. Ephesians 1:19-20