We're glad you're joining us for a new beginning with Greg Laurie, a podcast supported by

Harvest Partners. Get more encouraging audio content when you subscribe to Pastor Greg's

Daily Divos. Learn more and sign up at harvest.org. God allows trials in our lives so we will grow up

spiritually. We may not like trials, but Pastor Greg Laurie points out that God can often refine us

best during those times of challenge. God has a plan, God has a purpose, iron is entering your soul,

God is toughening you up for something he has in the future and remember this even when things

look bleak all things work together for God's glory and your ultimate good.

What it's been split and saw sanded and shaped can make some fine furniture, but if our

compassion should get the best of us and we didn't want to see that would face that stress,

well most of us would just have some chunks of trees sitting in our living rooms.

Today on a new beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie points out how the sanding and shaping in our lives

helps us mature into the kind of people God wants us to be. Good encouragement coming today.

Sometimes in the dry wastelands of life, I will find God more than I find him anywhere else.

I would love to perpetually live on a mountain top never having an emotional low,

but the reality is spiritual fruit does not grow on mountain tops, it grows in valleys.

But why do I have to go through trials as a follower of Jesus? Here's the answer, James 1,

verse 2, Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way,

consider it an opportunity for great joy. And know that when your faith is tested, your

endurance is a chance to grow so let it grow. And when your endurance is fully developed,

you'll be perfect and complete. We'll stop there. So if you're taking notes, here's point number

one, God allows trials and the life of the Christian so we will grow up spiritually. Again,

God allows trials in our lives so we will grow up spiritually. So iron will enter our soul.

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