"For Our Benefit" -2

"The secret of the LORD is with them that fear Him; and He will show them His covenant." (Psalms 25:14) I am constantly amazed by the way God continues to reveal His love to us; even through our trials, as hard as many of them might seem, His love comes forth as the loving Father that He is. Take the situation with my wife, as much as it hurts my heart to see her the way that see is, I know that God is still working in us and that His love is being echoed in our relationship. The whole reason that we have trials in our life is to be taught how much He loves us; and I know that might sound strange to some, but fundamentally the only time we really pay attention is when we are facing some sort of trial in our life. The meaning of the word "secret" that David is speaking about is that of a familiar conversation; which might be hard to understand what that is communicating, especially when it comes to secrets, but it is kind of like that old saying, "Just among friends"; in other words, there is a special way that we communicated among our friends, that is remarkably different then the way we speak among strangers. The whole point is that of intimacy with God, and how we feel as though we can speak freely with Him; telling Him our every secret, primarily because He knows already, but also because the more we open up to Him, the more He opens up to us and reveals Himself within His marvelous Light. Now that we somewhat understand that, let's put those two thoughts together and see how our trials cause us to pause long enough to be able to have a "familiar conversation" with God. Given that we are all pretty much prone to the same sinful nature; after all, we are all sinners from the womb to the tomb; but the sinfulness that I am talking about is that of slipping out of fellowship with God; not because you had planned it or anything like that, but because you just had gotten caught up in your own busy life, and somewhere along the way you lost communication with your Father in heaven. Solomon attributed that to vanity, and how we get so wrapped up in ourselves, that we forget about God's plans and requirements He   has for our lives. Trials are to make us stop what we are doing and to focus upon Him; to see what He has to say for the situation that we have found ourselves in, and to ask Him for help in our time of need and trouble. It is in such times that we are reminded how much He loves us, and that He causes us to listen when He has our full attention... "The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?" (Ecclesiastes 1:1-3)