Formative times in the desert

Pain and sadness can create in us attitudes that, interestingly, or destroy us on the one hand and incapacitate us, but on the other hand they can also prepare us to see the positive aspects of life, to see spiritual things, not to get into the vanity and superficiality of youth and childhood, and to turn our attention to eternal things.

That is what the Scripture says, that many times God uses the sufferings, the brokennesses, the pain to prepare us to think in a more real way about the positive things in life.

We can quickly think for example how God used Peter's moral and spiritual failure when he denied Jesus to make him a deeper and more powerful man who could later be the great apostle who wrote the two beautiful Epistles of the apostle Peter and who could come to be one of the foundations, one of the pillars of the Church.

If Peter had continued in his impetuous and proud temperament, and a little shallow, he would probably not have reached much in the spirit world, but the Lord Jesus Christ through trial prepared him to be a deeper man, more understanding about himself. himself and his own limitations.

The apostle Paul also struggled with his thorn that tormented him but the Lord said to him: Paul, do not ask me to remove that thorn because I am using it to perfect you, My Power is perfected in weakness so get used to it and commit yourself to My Grace.

Again and again we see that great characters of God like Moses spent a long time in the desert, for example Moses broken, lonely thinking about spiritual things there in the desert while taking care of the goats and the sheep, and there he was spiritually prepared to arrive. to be the great liberator of the Jewish people, and we could be here for a long time seeing how many times the times of sadness, of pain, can be formative times that if we see them in the light of God's great purpose for us, including the great tragedies and losses that we have experienced in the past, if we see them in the light that this can be for something positive, they end up being an ally for our lives. The Word says that for those who love God, all things work for the good, including the sufferings and difficulties of life, it all depends on the lens through which we see them.

So Jabes through his pain creates a substantial personality, a heart that prepares him to attract God's favor and I want to dwell on this in this segment, the importance that with our character, we do not allow the circumstances of life to convert our heart in a bitter heart, resentful, hurt towards God, excessively sensitive to the rejections of others, a sometimes manipulative heart, ambitious, because our heart, our attitude, our character is what can attract or take away the blessing of God.

There is a verse in Second Chronicles chapter 16 verse 9 that many of us know, it says: "For the eyes of the Lord look on all the earth to show his power in behalf of those who have a perfect heart towards him."

In other words, there is something that when the heart of a man, like the heart of Jabes, is a heart tender and willing towards spiritual things, submissive towards God that prefers the honor of God to any other type of honor, that loves God for Above all, when a man's heart honors God, God is willing to favor and bless him. Moreover, it says that the eyes of God are continually examining the entire Earth to find those people that God is pleased with them for the Lord to bless them, prosper them, use them, defend them and cover them from all evil.

Obviously, Jabez's heart was that type of heart and we have as much as possible to guard our heart and continually submit it to God so that He can treat it, because many times in us there are impurities, there are defects, there are imperfections that hurt us and We must always ask God to always be forming, trying, perfecting our hearts.

The psalmist says: "Examine me O God and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, and see if there is in me wicked way, and guide me along the eternal way" because our heart is the foundation of our life.

And we have to ask the Lord to continually examine our personality, and that if He finds something in us that He does not like, that path of perversity to which the psalmist alludes, to change it, to subject us to a treatment plan so that our personality can be reconfigured according to God's preference, favor, approval.

Because that quality of our heart, today we would say our personality our psyche, its configuration is what will determine if God is going to bless us or not, or if we are going to have within us the necessary qualities to, at a given moment. , cry out to God in the right way, or have the necessary desires within us to make God bless us then.

All this to say that, paradoxically, that sad formation in Jabes's childhood prepares him for, at a critical moment, when God's eyes are as if looking over him, Jabes conceives a feeling of longing for something different, he is tired, he is Fed up with his situation, he hates that sad life he is living and dares to conceive something different, this wonderful prayer that records verse 10 that we will then be able to examine in detail and also see how it contains a series of very great spiritual values and also a way of us to pray and turn to God.

I hope this is a blessing for your life because I myself am blessed to discover these things and share them with you. May the Lord bless you and until our next segment.