Trials create a deep and profound need for wisdom.  Whatever adverse circumstance you face, there is, more than likely, a desire for answers, a need for direction, a longing for resolution.  Have you ever met someone going through a difficult season only to say things like, “I just don’t know what I am going to do” or “I need some answers?” Such perplexity is not foreign to adversity.  Mel Lawrenz said, “No day should pass without asking God for wisdom.  To look for wisdom only sometimes is to risk foolishness most times.” To “risk foolishness” by not seeking wisdom …

With all the time-constraints that engulf the ministry, the preacher of God’s Word must be a good steward of his sermon preparation. If he is not, he will feel the crunch come Sunday. One of the reasons we have such powerless, anemic, insipid preaching in the pulpit is because we have such flippant, ill-managed, frivolous preparation in the study.  E.M. Bounds said it a little more tactfully, “A preacher who is enslaved in his study will be free in his pulpit.”

What may seem like 30 minutes of spoken exposition is really the manifestation of hours in books, in prayer, …

“Fiery trials,” said Spurgeon, “make golden Christians.”  Perhaps this is what Job had in mind when he pronounced, “But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).  Fire authenticates, it refines, it makes palatable. It produces a better product. The fire of faith is not the most hospitable of circumstances to endure, but I assure you, like the three Hebrew boys, you are always better off for having gone through it.

Consider what James said about this truth in his epistle, “Knowing this, that the trying of …