I remember an Elvis Presley song and a line that sings…

“Sweetened through the ages just like wine…”

I’m pondering how going through trials and hardship makes one sweeter.

I was listening to a woman the other day share about a preacher she heard and something was missing. I asked if he was a green man? Basically, a preacher who knows only theology but has never experienced what he supposedly believes. She got it. Yes. Years of heartache and experience was missing from his teaching.

Today, I read this after listening to Murray Dueck speak on seasons in life…

Jeremiah 48:11  (ERV)

“Moab has never known trouble.
Moab is like wine left to settle.
Moab has never been poured from one jar to another.
He has not been taken into captivity.
So he tastes as he did before,
and his smell has not changed.”

One’s teaching and authority becomes sweeter when they have been sifted/ gone through trouble…

Character is who you are in the dark.
Your heart is revealed under pressure.
Gold refined in the fire – 7 x will burn out any dirt.
What kind of oppression does it take to get you depressed?
Do you believe the same thing about God when you go through trials?

The reward from a season of favour is a season of pruning to regift you, change your belief systems.

When God calls you into the dessert, He wants to spend more time with you! (I get this.)

God will ask…

Am I enough for you… if you never minister again?
Is your love for ministry greater than your love for me?

Often the very place we were wounded, is the place we are sent back to stand.

But, we first must learn to rest in the Lord.

He desires relationship with us and longs to teach us our value is not in doing, but in being with him.