How can we glorify God in the midst of trials?

In this video, Brian Borgman talks about how glorifying God in hard times is important. As Christians, we should have a motivation to do everything for the glory of God. However, there are times when life is incredibly hard and we aren't walking in the brightness of God's sunshine. In those moments, we can still glorify God by recognizing His sovereignty over our trials. Borgman shares his own experience of being diagnosed with a brain tumor and finding comfort in the fact that every single cell of that tumor was under the sovereign control of God. By recognizing that God is good and does good even in the midst of trials, we can honor and glorify Him.

Another way to glorify God in trials is by exhibiting the conviction that Christ is enough. Even if we lose everything, if we have Christ, we have everything we need. We can trust in God's goodness and kindness and bank our hope on Him. We don't become stoics or act like pain and fear aren't real, but we trust God through the tears and through the pain. We don't need to understand what God is doing, but we can trust Him through what He does.

Ultimately, in the midst of trials, we rely on God's grace to suffer well for the honor of His name. We can cling to His promises and rest in Him, knowing that He is doing more than we could ever imagine. We honor and glorify God by taking Him at His word and trusting Him.

Psalm 34:17-19 (NKJV) says, "The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, And delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the Lord delivers him out of them all."  

Glorifying God in the hard times is in a sense when it really counts. Paul tells us whether you eat or you drink, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. So there should be a pervasive motivation in the Christian's life, that we're doing everything we do to the glory of God. But there are going to be times where we aren't walking in the brightness of God's sunshine, We aren't walking under the blessing of His smile and life seems incredibly hard. The trials seem incredibly acute.

And we glorify God in those trials by, first of all, I believe, recognizing His sovereignty over those trials. If I treat those trials as if they were something that came to me outside of God's sovereign hand, there's no way that I can actually glorify God by having that thought. And so in 2016 I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and it was kind of scary. And yet, there was a sense where every single cell of that tumor was under the sovereign control of God. God had decreed that tumor, God was sovereign over that tumor, and that brought my wife and me and our kids and my church family incredible amount of comfort.

And I think that recognizing that God is good and He does good even in the midst of our trials really honors Him and glorifies Him. The other thing that we do in trials is that we, this course comes by faith, by resting in Him, by trusting Him, but we exhibit the conviction that Christ is enough. And even if I lose my life under these trials, and of course with the brain tumor, that was a very real possibility, that Christ is still enough. If I have everything and I have Christ, I don't have anything more than the person that only has Christ and has nothing. And so I bank my hope on that.

And so we don't become stoics. We don't act like pain isn't real. We don't act like being afraid isn't real, but what we do is we trust God through the pain, we trust God through the tears, and we bank our hope on His goodness, His kindness. We trust Him. God never asks us to understand what He's doing, but He asks us to trust Him through what He does.

And so I think that that that really does honor and glorify God. Luther in his treatise on, I think it was the freedom of the Christian, makes the comment that the greatest way to glorify God is to simply take Him at his word to believe him and to trust him. And Luther points out that the greatest insult is not to believe somebody, not to trust somebody. And the greatest way to honor somebody, and in this case, especially God, is simply to trust. And so we cling to the promises, we rest in Him, we realize that He's doing 10, 000 more things than we could ever imagine in the midst of our trials.

And I think for the sake of brothers and sisters, we rely on His grace to suffer well for the honor of His name. You