“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires [“lusts” as KJV says] that battle within you?” James 4:1

I was unhappy, very unhappy--and didn’t know why. I snapped at my wife and was impatient with my boys. I felt very tired. There was no sweet spirit of peace and pleasantness flowing out of my heart; instead there was the acrid stench of selfishness.

Situations like this explode out of me periodically and I am taken by surprise when I act so badly. However, our gracious Lord, who knows all and controls all, was simply giving me another lesson in faith.

While this upheaval was going on, 1 Peter 1 came up in my devotions; verses 6 and 7 spoke clearly to this situation: “…for a little while you have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials, those have come so that your faith…may be proved genuine…”

Aha! One reason for the coming of these inner pressures is the Lord showing me where my faith is not genuine. I expect myself to be “spiritual” when in actuality I am a redeemed but desperately wicked sinner in need of God’s constant grace.

Turning to James, I read in chapter 1, “Consider it pure joy, brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance” (Jam. 1:2-3). Again, here is the truth: God was using this distress to make me grow by giving new revelation of the depravity of my heart.

This was the essence of revival!  And my responsibility? To give thanks even though I felt the opposite, and then ask forgiveness from God and from those I’ve trampled on and to repent, being kind to them instead.  More to come on this.