Premature

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.
~ James 1:2-4 (The Message)

These verses are always so rich regardless of the translation as they challenge us to look at all circumstances as a gift from the Lord, something being used by Him to refine us in character and righteousness.

However, this is what struck me today: "So don't try to get out of anything prematurely."

Like a knife directly into my heart are those words. I've written of this before; this quest for patience and the hope that I will allow God to do His refining work through the trials without running through the valley just to emerge on the other side.

I tend to measure required length of time in a trial by how much I believe I can bear. Once I feel this has been reached then I begin to believe that the time for movement has arrived and God must be done with His work because I surely can't be expected to stay in the trial any longer. How wrong I suspect I often am!

I am not the one who decides when I've learned the lessons that God has for me. Oddly enough I'm also not the one who really knows how much I can bear or when I am ready to move out of the valley or, for that matter, what the valley's end looks like! I squirm in the fire and fight the trial and see so much of my humanity in the middle of it. This is a challenge for me though - to not attempt to get out prematurely. What this really says is that I have to wait on God to show me when my exit is no longer premature because He's the one who knows the lesson plan.

As always, a call to utter dependence on Him. A challenge to step away from my desires for immediate gratification or release from struggle. Yet in it all, a blessing: that if I wait until God moves I will become "mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way." How can I say that that's not worth the waiting?