This was not the first time that I had been caught in a storm of fury. It seemed that every so often a test would emerge opening my eyes to a truth that I had never understood before.



It wasn't until the storm subsided and my fears were calmed that I would hear the faint whisper. God would renew my strength and give me the courage to once again stand strong against the forces that were rising up to defeat me.

When I first began to hear the voice of God I did not listen. But with maturity and passing many tests, I discerned the difference so I could defeat the every day trials of life.

It was as if I was in a cloud. A dark dense gloom that circled my life and kept me bound until the day that God would set me free with a simple truth. A truth that revealed itself in light.

The Bible refers to light as wisdom. While the darkness is the blindness placed on us to keep us from understanding the purpose of our lives.

I am sure that if I had walked with the knowledge as to why bad things happen to people in this world, at the very beginning, I would not have gone through the tests that opened my eyes to the truth about my own life purpose.

I would have run from every storm that desired to trap me and punish me for being so blind. I would have stopped the test to prevent the suffering that would have occurred.

To understand life we must begin by reading the story of Adam and Eve. We must walk out of the storms of life and into the light. When Adam and Eve ate the apple they wanted to be like God. They wanted to know the difference between good and bad.

You see in order to see through the clouds of this life we must read about the purpose of this world. We must gain wisdom from the stories we find in the Bible. In the third chapter of Genesis we begin to see through the temptation of Satan how the lives of men changed.

Adam and Eve walked with God naked and had no shame, but when Satan tempted them to ignore God's warning about eating the fruit, a war of spiritual forces arose. A God of goodness versus the evil temptations of Satan emerged showing us the difference between good and bad.

Belief in God and His way of living life opens our eyes to good. Getting caught up in this world and the desires of this world chain us to Satan and evil. This is one of the first things I had to learn in my quest to discover the difference between right and wrong!

In order to learn from our choices we had to have repercussions for choosing evil and rewards for doing right. Adam had to work hard all of his life and Eve born children in pain and was subject to her husband.

Now whether we sin or we don't sin we must learn. Job illustrates a spiritual value in suffering that put a twist to the consequences that Adam and Eve suffered from sin.

Job is considered to be the oldest book in the Bible. A book that opens our eyes to the storms all people will face in life. A battle that takes the form of destroying everything a person values in this world in order to get us to understand the difference of following God or giving into Satan.

Job 1:9-12, Satan replied, "Would Job worship you if he got nothing out of it? You have always protected him and his family and everything he owns. You bless everything he does, and you have given him enough cattle to fill the whole country. But now suppose you take away everything he has-he will curse you in your face.'

'All right,' the Lord said to Satan, 'everything he has is in your power, but you must not hurt Job himself.' So Satan left."

Satan took everything Job had in this world, his children, servants, livestock and later he even took his health. Three friends came to Job and confronted him telling him that he was being punished for sinning.

The final chapters of Job reveals that everything he went through was a result of a battle between good and evil. A test that showed God, Job's heart. A heart that remained faithful not only to God, but to doing good even if the tests made him look bad according to the belief system of his faith.

Jobs life opens up the biggest revelation of them all about this world. It parts the clouds of ignorance and lets us see the purpose of all human life.

This world is more than what it seems. It is a playing field. A game that takes our lives and teaches us truth. Everything we go through has a purpose and a Great Awakening of why the path that leads to understanding is better than the path of temptation.

So many people hold onto the example of the prodigal son and his sin. How the son chooses the world and the evils of this world over following God. His suffering was a direct result of sin.

Jesus proclaims a celebration when the fallen son returns changed by seeing that his life was nothing without God. Jesus opens up the mystery to how we grow even when we sin.

Job learned through being tested that God was still the one to follow in this world. The prodigal son proved that even if we stray from God that He will welcome us back.

Each story proves that our world is not what it seems. Revelations 1:8, "'I am the first and the last,' says the Lord God Almighty, who is, who was, and who is to come."

God has always been. Our world was created so people would go through life and be changed through the trials that they face. Satan is given power to give us choices.

To hold onto God during the storms of life is to experience each trial for the test that it is. A test that reveals if our hearts are filled with evil or if we pass the tests of life and choose to become like God and do good.

The rain ended, the hail stopped and the clouds left as quickly as they came. The darkness broke forth revealing the colors of a beautiful rainbow. A promise that every trial has an end.

A promise that when this world ends and our learning process is over a more perfect sinless world will appear. An eternity where we will be rewarded for every bad thing that ever happened to us here.