A few years ago, my family and I went through the hardest trial we had ever thus far known. There were days the stress was so overwhelming that I did not know if we would make it.
We repeatedly cried out to God the most oft-asked question of a child of God: Why? There were tears, broken hearts and fears for the future.
During that time, God, for reasons I will not go into here, used the trial to motivate me to write more. I had already published one book, but the severe trial became a tool in his hand to convince me of the wisdom and even necessity to really dedicate a great deal of time and effort on the product of the pen.
One thing he seemed to drive me to do is what you are now looking at: a weekly faith column. It would be often lighthearted and humorous, sometimes poignant, usually self-deprecating, but always with a Scriptural admonition and a spiritual goal in mind. After months of effort, a local paper picked up the column, then another and another. The column now runs in 11 (and sometimes 12) papers in five states.
Which brings me to this: Just a few hours ago I received a phone call. A man who ministers in prisons told my father-in-law that a man behind prison bars read one of my recent columns and accepted Jesus Christ as his savior.
Before I started writing the column, my family and I went through a trial so severe that at times I felt I could not even speak. The feeling of not being able to speak moved my hands to write. The writing now has produced more than a dozen books, hundreds of newspaper columns and, partially because of one of those columns, a precious soul has been redeemed.
It never would have happened without the agonizing pounding of the master sculptor's hammer. You see, quite often the best hammer God has at his disposal for molding a servant or furthering the Gospel is the hammer of trials and hardships. It was when violent persecution fell on the church at Jerusalem that Acts 8:4 says, "Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word."
Later, Paul, the very man who started that persecution, got saved, and God sent him into the service of the Lord. God told Ananias concerning Paul: "I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake."
Fanny Crosby was blinded in childhood by a doctor's careless mistake. She spent the rest of her days in darkness, yet it was that very trial and trauma that God used to mold her into the greatest hymn writer of all time.
Corrie Ten Boom suffered incredible loss in the concentration camps of World War II. Out of that trial came the book "The Hiding Place," perhaps one of the greatest books on forgiveness ever written.
The spiritual blocks of rock that we are come unshaped, unwieldy, bulky and very much indistinguishable from all the other spiritual blocks of rock around us. Those that submit themselves to God for service cannot expect to remain in the shape they are. What they can expect is for the master sculptor at some point to pull out his best hammer, that of trials and hardships, and begin to ruthlessly beat away everything that does not resemble exactly what he has in mind for a finished product.
The process is not pleasant. The product surely is.
Bo Wagner is pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, N.C., and the author of several books available available at wordofhismouth.com. Contact him at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.