Trials Are Opportunities

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. – James 1:2-4 
 
Mandarin is one of the more popular dialects or families of the Chinese language. In doing some research on Mandarin, I learned that the Chinese use symbols as a means of expressing words. Recently I came across something that I found quite interesting. I learned that in Mandarin, the word “crisis” is expressed by two symbols, one meaning danger, the other meaning opportunity.  
 
The point is that out of danger, crisis, and difficulty, comes opportunity. As I reflected on it, I thought that the Mandarin dialect gives us a good way of looking at those moments in our lives when we are confronted with trails. In the grand scheme of things, trials, whatever they are, are nothing more than doors of opportunity to make us better, to make us stronger, to give us greater clarity, and to lead us to our destiny.  
 
As followers of Christ, we should be frequently asking the Lord to equip us by the power of the Holy Spirit to navigate those moments in life that hurt us—whether attacks, losses, grief, breakdown, break ups, tragedy, layoffs, let downs, heartaches, struggles, stress, and pain— so we can use them as opportunities to bless us.  
 
While loss is not easy to experience or comfortable to endure, the good news of the Bible is that if you are committed, determined, and steadfast in your walk with the Lord, you can turn every loss into a win, every setback into a setup, and every defeat into a victory.