Marg.

Q1. (1:2-4) What value have trials had in your life? Have you let Satan destroy you with those trials? Or allowed God to refine you? How have you changed? I have decided to copy and paste the questions here so I don't get distracted on one point. God's Blessings, I wouldn't exactly call it value. The trials in my life drove me even further from God. It wasn't until my friend asked if I could go to Bible study with her that I started to see things differently. It took a long time, years even before I was able to see that God wants what is good for us, but to His way and not our way. We can't see the future, we often think we can and we plan accordingly. Sometimes not even to stop and ask God in prayer if this is His will. We figure that God will go along with us and not the other way around. God is patient with us, and with me. I still have my favourite sins that I indulge in, but they are less and less. At times I find myself saying something to my husband about my faith and then I wonder to myself "were did that come from, it certainly wasn't planned by me." It has been little things like that, that has made me trust that God will get me through trials that come along. God is working in me to change and when I sometimes rebel I very quickly comply, becasue I love Him. Blessings Margaret

God's Blessings, If we ask God with all our heart to give us widsom He will. He gives it freely, and He will not condemn us when we ask. We can come to Him broken, and crying, and sinstained and He will not turn us away. He delights when we ask for His wisdom and not for things like more money, a better wife/husband. Trials are there to bring us closer and closer to God and to teach us to rely on Him every time, all the time. Praying without ceasing to our wonderful Lord and Saviour. Margaret

God's blessings I never knew what double minded meant and some one explained it to me this way; you pray but in the back of your mind your thinking if it doesn't work out I can always do it myself. God wants us to rely soley on Him for everything. It is very hard to break away from "doing it myself but I will pray just in case". We are born in sin and we turn there every time. God wants to be the only thing on our minds make that our hearts because what is in your heart is on your mind. Trials make us grow in faith, becasue we learn that we can trust God. He will do what He says, in His time but He is reliable and true and loving and soverign.

Hi me again. People blame God because they need to blame someone other than themselves. They are trying to do it all on their own, I can relate, and it is just not working so they blame. Arrogance and pride I think come in here, too proud to blame themselves so lets blame . . . I know God. If they only knew how much it hurts God when we hurt and how much He wants to comfort us and love us, they would be floored. We are naturally sinful, but we don't like to think of ourselves as bad or evil or no good we look for a scape goat and it is usally God, not the devil. The devil is very crafty and will direct our thoughts to blaming God! That is his nature to pull us away from the good and into the bad and evil as far as possible, maybe even to joing him and his gang. When we read the Bible we are warned about satan and what do when he comes to tempt us, flee the devil and come into my arms, flee the devil with scripture, he hates that, although he can quote scripture too but not in the loving way in his own preverted way to get us to come to him. God is in control of all things even the bad things that happen in the world, after all He made it and He can destroy it, like the flood and Sodom and Gamorrah. But He wants all of us to be saved before the end times so He gives us chance after chance, but there is a limit, God will not be mocked. God is so awsome, I love Him and His precepts and I am comforted when He tells me in His Book that He is in control. Margaret

Hi at the time of my trials I didn't think that they were from God or from the devil, I just knew that I had to do something and let's go and get it done. Years later I returned to God, nobody can ever leave God completely and then it become evident to me that in all my trials God was always there leading me, loving me, and gently leading me back to Him. I have been home with Him for more that 15 years and I am not leaving, because only He can get me through the tough stuff, even if it is His way and not mine. Even now when I reflect on what has happened in my life I am amazed that I didn't relize that it was God and not me. I have tried to pass on my experiences to others with little or no effect, now, but I am sure that in the future that person will have an aha moment and return to God too.