Testimony Sunday (1 Peter 1:6-7...Grief, Loss & Suffering)

<sup>This week's verse...

6</sup>In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

I know of this passage quite well within my life. Within my thirty-three years on this earth, I have already lost my Maternal Grandparents, never knew my Grandfather's (but have 'felt them' near), my Mother, my Paternal Grandmother and two pregnancies, and my Paternal Great-Grandfather.


With the exception of my Grandfathers, my Maternal Grandmother (too young) and my Great-Grandfather (again, too young to understand), my Christian faith was rocked to the core from these losses. Especially the loss of my mother and my last miscarriage in 2003.


For years after my mom's passing I despised God, His love, and anything else to do with Him. I wanted nothing of Christ. He had nothing to offer me. Except pain, grief and internal agony within my spirit and my heart.


The Lord made me suffer within some very deep Valleys. I saw the Mountain tops. Every time I would get halfway back up that Mountain, it seemed that the Lord would push me off a cliff, back down to the Valley floor.


It took a few years worth of soul searching, internal 'tug-of-wars' and finally seeing God's Truths behind Satan's snares and lies that the demon fed me. 


You know the kinds..."If God really loved you, He would not have taken all those people away. Especially you mother and baby". "God is punishing you for being a bratty child, so he took your mother for all the lies you told her". Those are just a couple of the thoughts that I had...The 'gem' of them all came when I lost my second pregnancy. "The Lord has taken away your child because you are not worthy of His love. An eye for an eye. You rejected Him, now He has given the ultimate punishment....Your child for His".


It took much prayer, much Scripture reading and much one-on-one with my Heavenly Father to finally realize that none of the above was true.


What is true now, as it was back then is that He will test you. He will put you through "trials by fire" and He knows that you indeed will suffer. Loss, grief, anger due to the loss, and walk through some pretty deep Valleys in order to climb to the top of that Mountain.


But never once will He forsake you. He is with you every step. Even when it seems that you are alone. Jesus Christ is there. And in the end, when your grief and suffering are over, He will be there waiting to take you in His arms and let you know that He never leaves His children to ever fully fend for themselves. And that the Mountain Top is always attainable for all.