Some trials can seem so severe or never-ending that we feel like we are at our end and all hope is gone. Our vision, which once seemed clear and bright, has become faded and dull, and night after night, we lay awake soaking our pillow with tears. All we can cry out is, “Why God, why? And “When God, when?”

James wrote:

“My brethren , count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”

James 1: 2-3

The Lord wants us to come to the place where we stand perfect and complete, lacking nothing. But the journey to this place comes as we learn to endure with patience and count it all joy during our trials. These words are easy to say, but they must be lived out. Smith Wigglesworth said:

“If God is ever disappointed when you wait in His Presence, it will be because you are not fervent. If you are not serious and intense, you disappoint God. If God is with you and you know it, be in earnest. Pray and believe: ‘Hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end. If you do not, you disappoint God.”

The Lord wants us to come to this place of maturity where we fully submit to His authority in our lives so that we may walk with His authority demonstrated through our lives. In the place of maturity, we know the Word not alone but also the God of the Word. Further, before all our circumstances bow to the Name of Jesus, we bow to it. Smith explained:

“If you are let alone with God and you cannot get to a place of victory, it is a terrible time. You must never let go whatever you are seeking…”

We must come and get alone in the Secret Place and earnestly surrender to Him. Here, we learn how to bring our whole being into surrender to Him. Smith explained:

You must always master that with which you are wrestling. If darkness covers you, if a fresh revelation is what you need, or if your mind needs to be relieved, always get the victory. God says you are not earnest enough.

We may find areas of our life in which we struggle are revealed clearly in the midst of such severe trials. We can choose to seek His face and the circumcision of our flesh so that we can enter our Promised Land, or we fall back into the old life or make excuses and complaints.

“If you are definite with Him, you will never go away disappointed. Divine life will flow into I you, and instantaneously you will be delivered. Jesus is just the same today, and He says to you, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’ He has an overflowing cup for you, a fullness of life. He will meet you in your absolute helplessness. All things are possible if you will only believe. God has a real plan. It is very simple: come to Jesus. You will find Him just the same as He was in days of old.”

There is always more at stack, and the Lord plans to achieve more. We are caught in a trial that seems so large and overwhelming, yet what He seeks to do is so much greater. If we could only see what is happening in the spiritual realm and behind the scenes, we would not quit. Smith said:

“Many things may happen in our lives, but when the veil is lifted and we see the glory of God, His tender compassion covers us all the time. How wonderful to be where God is. Jacob experienced twenty-one years of wandering, fighting, and struggling. Listen to his conversation with his wives: ‘Your father has deceived me and changed my wages ten times, but God did not allow him to hurt me’ (Gen. 31: 7).  To his father-in-law, Jacob said: ‘Unless the God of my father… had been with me, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God has seen my affliction and labor of my hands.

We must get past walking on the natural plan and based on our human reasoning. Our brain tissue revelation always falls short of God’s plan. Sadly, we tend to walk doing things by our human ability and we fail to truly seek His face and receive His plan. Smith put it this way:

“There is a way that God establishes. In our human planning, we may experience blessings of a kind, but we also undergo trials, hardships, and barrenness that God would have kept from us if we had followed His way. I realize through the anointing of the Holy Spirit that there is a freshness, a glow, a security in God where you can know that God is with you all the time. There is a place to reach where all that God has for us can flow through us to a needy world all the time.”

If we will hear His voice and walk the path of obedience, His ways will always achieve greater results and impact the lives of others. In this place, the deaths we die become seeds sown on the altar that He touches with His resurrection power and produces a glorious harvest. Smith said:

“The heritage of the Church is to be equipped with power that God can lay His hand upon any member at any time to do His perfect will. There is no stopping point in the Spirit-filled life. We begin at the Cross, the place of disgrace, shame, and death, and that very death brings the power of resurrection life. Then, being filled with the Holy Spirit, we go on ‘from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3: 18). Let us not forget that possessing the baptism in the Holy Spirit means that there must be an ever increasing holiness. People know when the tide is flowing; they also know when it is ebbing. How the Church needs divine anointing. It needs to see God’s Presence and power so evidenced that the world recognizes it.

We must learn to come into the Secret Place daily and present our whole self in worship before Him. Yes, we bring our emotions, thoughts, and whole being and present them as a well-pleasing sacrifice by the Holy Spirit to Him. Here, we learn how to walk faithfully before Him in the small things that He promotes, such as ruling over greater things. Smith said:

“When we please God in our daily service, we will always find that everyone who is faithful in the little things, God will make you ruler over much.”

As we get our eyes on Him and off the trial, the circumstances, the symptoms, or the problems, we find He is making us. As we choose to rejoice in Him and count it all joy, we seem to stand in a place of weakness, but it is a place of reconstruction. Yes, the place where we stop trying to make things happen and trust Him, His promises, and His ability to fulfill His Word, He makes us. Like Abraham, He calls on a journey of obedience where we walk by faith, trusting that He is the Almighty God. Smith said:

“If you are to be really reconstructed, it will be in a hard time. It won’t be in a singing meeting, but a time when you think all things are dried up, when you think there is no hope for you and you have passed up everything. That is the time that God makes the person. And out of the experience, we will have a story to tell about what God has done for us. When the trial is severe; when you think that no one is being tried as much as you; when the trial is so hard that you cannot sleep and you do not know what to do; ‘count it all joy’ (James 1: 2). You are in a good place when you do not know what to do; look to God for the answer.”

It is here where He lifts us above the trial to the place where we are strong and gain a far surpassing victory in Him. We come to know Him and how He is the Almighty God and the Most High; the One is above all and before all. We come to know His power and authority and as we submit to Him, we find that our trials no longer walk dominating over us, but we walk with authority over them. As we walk with Him in complete surrender by faith to Him, He purifies us and makes us pure gold, a vessel of honor that brings Him glory.

“It is when you are tried by fire that God purges you, takes the dross away, and brings forth the pure gold.”