EXTREME HONESTY

Sirach 2:1 My son, if you have decided to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials

Advertisements are meant to be catchy thus normally, we would have expected that to get others to follow, we will need sweet words to coax and draw them in before we ‘drop any bombs’ on them. But it sometimes amazes me as to why the word of God can be so brutally honest. God seems not to care about any sugar-coating but instead, requests us to brace ourselves for trouble the moment we come on board.

On the surface, this may seem like a campaign message from His competitors to prevent us from drawing near to Him; however, what is actually happening is the fact that God is making us aware of what lies ahead so we will be better prepared to follow the right path and allow him to take care of us.

He would not alert us of trouble ahead if He had no way of guiding us through hence the three piercing questions asked in verse 10:
1. Who has ever trusted in the Lord and been confounded?
2. Who has persevered in fear of the Lord and being abandoned?
3. Who has called upon Him and not been heard?
That confident assurance to enable us respond ‘No one’ to all three questions is his reason for being so brutally honest with us.

It is written that ‘as gold is tested in fire, so are those acceptable to the Lord tested in the crucible of humiliation.'(vs 5). We know for a fact that gold is tested in fire because it has the potential to withstand the heat- the same applies to us. We pass through the crucible of humiliation because God has equipped us with what is needed to come out refined.

Remember # God is right there with us in the crucible.