How Trials Turn What You Have Heard About God Into What You Know by Revelation
🌿 Before I Heard, Now I See: What Trials Reveal About God
“I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes. I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.” — Job 42:5 (NLT)
Job did not say this after God restored his flocks. He said it while he was still sitting in ashes, before a single possession was returned to him. Whatever changed in Job happened before the story had a happy ending, which means the trial itself, not the outcome of the trial, was what moved him from hearing to seeing.
On this page
- Before I heard, now I see
- Job’s righteousness was never the question
- What comfort never taught Job, loss did
- Daniel’s first test: will you compromise?
- Daniel’s second test: who gets the glory?
- The furnace: when your position becomes the test
- Will success interrupt communion?
- From interpreting dreams to meeting angels
- Sense knowledge vs. revelation knowledge
- What this means for you
- Prayer
Before I Heard, Now I See
Have you ever wondered why some of the people closest to God in Scripture went through some of the greatest trials?
Job feared God and stayed far away from evil, yet Satan was permitted to test almost everything around him. Daniel was faithful in exile, yet his faithfulness did not exempt him from the lions’ den. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to compromise, yet their obedience still led them into a fiery furnace. If these were people already walking with God, why did God allow them to go through such things?
Perhaps because there are things about God that hearing alone can never teach you.
You can hear that God is a Provider, but there may come a day when everything around you disappears and you must know Him as your Provider. You can hear that God is a Healer, but there may come a time when your own body is challenged and that knowledge must become more than something you read in the Bible. You can hear that God is a Deliverer, but it took a den of lions for Daniel to know Him as the God who shuts the mouths of lions.
There is a difference between hearing about God and knowing God by revelation and experience. Job discovered this difference the hard way. After losing his possessions, his children, his health, and almost everything that gave him comfort, Job came out of his trial holding something greater than what Satan had attacked. He said, “I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes.”
What happened between “I heard” and “now I see”? Trials happened. Testing happened. His knowledge of God was put under pressure until it broke open into something new.
People of God, as we grow in our relationship with God, a moment will come when what we say we believe about Him has to face the realities of life. Yesterday’s knowledge may have carried yesterday’s trial, but a deeper walk with God will require a deeper knowledge of Him. This is why every trial is not evidence that God has moved away from you. Sometimes the trial is the very environment in which God reveals Himself to you in a way you have never known Him before.
“A time of testing is a time to strengthen one’s relationship with God.” — Prophet TB Joshua
The question, then, is not only, “Why am I going through this?” Ask also, “What is God preparing me to know about Him that, up to now, I have only heard about?”
There are challenges in life that sense knowledge alone can never overcome. As you grow in your relationship with God, only revelational knowledge of Him can carry you through the next phase of life’s trials and temptations. Sense knowledge says, “I know God is faithful because Scripture says so.” Revelational knowledge says, “I know God is faithful because I have depended on His faithfulness when everything around me said otherwise.” There are things about God you can learn in a Bible study. There are other things you only come to know when what you learned in that Bible study is tested by life.
Jesus Christ said, “There will always be temptations to sin.” — Luke 17:1. Since temptation is guaranteed, your tests and trials will be measured according to your position in Christ Jesus, which is really another way of describing your present knowledge of God.
“Your tests and trials will be measured according to your position in Christ Jesus.” — Prophet TB Joshua
Job’s Righteousness Was Never the Question
Job already knew God before his trial began. He feared God. He lived uprightly and stayed away from evil. God Himself testified about Job’s character before the trial ever started, and Satan was the one who had to go looking for a weakness, because none was on the surface.
“Then the LORD asked Satan, ‘Have you noticed my servant Job? He is the finest man in all the earth. He is blameless — a man of complete integrity. He fears God and stays away from evil.’” — Job 1:8
That commendation was not flattery. It was a legal description of Job’s standing, recorded in the opening verses of the book before a single calamity fell on him.
“There once was a man named Job who lived in the land of Uz. He was blameless — a man of complete integrity. He feared God and stayed away from evil.” — Job 1:1
His humility was the outward measure of his position before God, a position God valued highly enough to boast about it in Satan’s hearing. When Job later said, “I had only heard about you before,” he was not confessing ignorance. He was being humble. Ordinary sense knowledge of God, the kind that characterizes many believers today, could not survive one percent of what Job endured, and Job’s own hearing-level knowledge had already carried him through decades of uprightness before it was ever tested at that depth.
This matters because it removes a common excuse. We often assume trials come because something is wrong with us, some hidden sin, some deficiency in devotion. Job’s story refuses that explanation. God had already called him blameless. The trial was not correction for failure. It was an invitation into a deeper dimension of knowing God that righteousness alone, however genuine, cannot manufacture on its own.
What Comfort Never Taught Job, Loss Did
Everything Job lost, he lost quickly. His oxen, donkeys, sheep, camels, servants, and then, in the same chapter, his ten children, all taken within what reads like a single devastating day (Job 1:13–19). Chapter two adds his health, boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head (Job 2:7). What Satan could not touch was Job’s integrity, and what Job discovered in the wreckage was not a new doctrine about God but a new depth of God Himself.
“A genuine spiritual experience needs to be tested in the face of the real situation in order to expose the reality of the experience.” — Prophet TB Joshua
Job’s fear of God had been genuine before the trial. But it had never been tested against total loss, and there is a category of knowing God that only total loss can open. Comfort teaches you what you believe about God. Loss teaches you whether you actually know Him.
Satan’s argument concerning Job was essentially this: Job only loves You because of what You give him. Strip away the hedge, and the relationship collapses (Job 1:9–11). God permitted the possessions to disappear, then the children, then health, then comfort, then even the understanding of his three friends, who accused him wrongly for thirty-plus chapters. The question underneath all of it was simple: will Job still relate to God when every benefit associated with serving God has been stripped away?
At the end, Job possessed something greater than what Satan had attacked. Not merely restored livestock. Not merely a doubled inheritance. He said, before, I heard. Now, I see. God had not changed during those chapters. Job’s knowledge of God had changed.
“The hour of your trial marks the dawn of your testimony.” — Prophet TB Joshua
Job’s testimony did not begin the day his fortunes were restored in chapter forty-two. It began the moment his knowledge of God shifted from hearsay to sight, while he was still sitting in the ashes with nothing yet returned to him.
Daniel’s First Test: Will You Compromise?
Job’s trial came all at once. Daniel’s came in stages, each one deeper than the last, and each one followed by a fresh dimension of God being revealed to him. Watching Daniel’s tests in sequence shows something Job’s single catastrophic trial does not show as clearly: that trials do not stop once you pass the first one. They escalate with your position.
Daniel enters Babylon as a young exile, and the first recorded test is comparatively simple. Will he defile himself with the king’s food?
“But Daniel was determined not to defile himself by eating the food and wine given to them by the king. He asked the chief of staff for permission not to eat these unacceptable foods.” — Daniel 1:8
Daniel resolves that he will not. It costs him nothing dramatic, no public confrontation, no threat of death, only the quiet decision to refuse what everyone around him considered ordinary and acceptable. Then Scripture tells us what followed that decision:
“God gave these four young men an unusual aptitude for understanding every aspect of literature and wisdom. And Daniel could interpret the meanings of visions and dreams.” — Daniel 1:17
Apart from wisdom and understanding, God gave Daniel a specific ability to interpret visions and dreams, a rare spiritual gift and the reward of a consistent relationship with God, not a random assignment. Faithfulness in a small, unglamorous decision led directly to spiritual capacity that the rest of Daniel’s story would depend on. How many believers today would have made a sensible-sounding excuse to eat that food? Most of us would have called Daniel’s stand “too spiritual” and moved on with our meal.
Daniel’s Second Test: Who Gets the Glory?
Now the stakes rise dramatically. Nebuchadnezzar demands that his wise men tell him both his dream and its interpretation, on pain of death, and none of Babylon’s magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, or astrologers can do it (Daniel 2:1–13). Daniel and his three friends are caught in the same death sentence as everyone else, and Daniel’s response is not panic but prayer. God reveals the mystery to him in a night vision (Daniel 2:19).
The real test here was not whether Daniel could interpret the dream. It was what he would do with the credit once he could. Daniel could easily have presented himself as extraordinarily gifted before the most powerful man in the world. Instead, before he even begins the interpretation, he redirects the glory:
“But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and he has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the days ahead.” — Daniel 2:28
Daniel gave all the glory to God Almighty, and promotion followed.
“Then the king appointed Daniel to a high position and gave him many valuable gifts. He made Daniel ruler over the whole province of Babylon and placed him in charge of all his wise men.” — Daniel 2:48
The same elevation reached Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, because Daniel requested that they be included in the promotion (Daniel 2:49). But promotion is never a finish line in this story. It is only the doorway to the next test, and their temptation was now sized according to their new position. Because they were now in charge of provincial affairs, they faced a new level of temptation: to bow down and worship the gold statue Nebuchadnezzar erected (Daniel 3:1–7).
The Furnace: When Your Position Becomes the Test
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had already been promoted. Then came a test that could take the promotion away. So the real question became: do you value the position God gave you more than the God who gave you the position?
Their answer is extraordinary, and worth reading slowly, because most of us stop halfway through the sentence they actually finished:
“If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your power, Your Majesty. But even if he doesn’t, we want to make it clear to you, Your Majesty, that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up.” — Daniel 3:17–18
That is conviction with no strings attached to the outcome. Their relationship with God was no longer dependent on what God would do for them in that moment. They walked into the furnace not knowing whether they would walk out of it, and God met them inside the fire itself, not only after it. They passed the test, and they were promoted to even higher positions in the province of Babylon.
“Then Nebuchadnezzar promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to even higher positions in the province of Babylon.” — Daniel 3:30
Notice the pattern building. Obedience in a small matter revealed capacity. Glory rightly given led to promotion. Promotion introduced a sharper test. Passing that test led to still greater promotion. Every level of advancement in Daniel’s circle came wrapped inside a proportionally greater trial, and every trial passed opened a deeper measure of God to them than they had known before it.
Another Test: Will Success Interrupt Communion?
Time moves forward. A new king, Darius, now reigns, and Daniel is no longer an obscure exile. He is enormously successful, so distinguished among the administrators that Darius planned to place him over the whole kingdom (Daniel 6:1–3). His rivals, unable to find any corruption or negligence in him, conspire to use his devotion to God against him, convincing Darius to outlaw prayer to anyone but the king for thirty days (Daniel 6:4–9).
Will Daniel, in his exalted position of honor, dishonor God by breaking his relationship and daily communion with God in prayer?
“But when Daniel learned that the law had been signed, he went home and knelt down as usual in his upstairs room, with its windows open toward Jerusalem. He prayed three times a day, just as he had always done, giving thanks to his God.” — Daniel 6:10
He does exactly what he had always done. He opens his windows. He kneels. He prays. Success had not moved him, and neither had the guarantee of death that came with continuing his prayer life. Daniel passed the test, and God’s name was honored, but he also enjoyed great prosperity under the reign of King Darius:
“So Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.” — Daniel 6:28
The lion’s den reveals something about Daniel’s position before God that prosperity had not been able to change. Promotion had changed Daniel’s position before men. It had not changed God’s position in Daniel’s heart. That is the exact test that success sets before every believer who rises in visibility, influence, or comfort: does prayer survive the very blessing prayer produced?
From Interpreting Dreams to Meeting Angels
Watch where Daniel’s relationship with God goes after these repeated tests. In his youth, he interpreted other men’s dreams. Later, God begins showing Daniel his own visions, visions so overwhelming that Scripture records his physical reaction to them.
“This ended the vision. Daniel writes, ‘I, Daniel, was troubled by my thoughts, and my face turned pale with fear. But I kept these things to myself.’” — Daniel 7:28
That is not the composure of a man reciting facts he heard secondhand. That is a man now encountering realities of God directly, in a category his younger self, the one who merely refused the king’s food, had not yet touched. Later still, while Daniel is praying and confessing, God sends the angel Gabriel to give him understanding and insight (Daniel 9:20–23). Gabriel does not come to a stranger. He comes to a man Scripture calls “greatly beloved” (Daniel 9:23), a description earned across a lifetime of tested faithfulness, not granted on the first day of exile.
Daniel’s entire life demonstrates an increasing depth of communion, testing, faithfulness, and revelation, each stage building on the one before it. Our deeper relationship with God always attracts new tests and trials, not as punishment, but as the doorway to what could not otherwise be shown to us.
“It is our failure to give Christ His proper position in our heart that is actually responsible for the crisis of our faith.” — Prophet TB Joshua
Many of us have failed to rise to the level of seeing God with our own eyes because we fail to give Christ His proper position in our heart, and because of that, we fail to pass the very temptations, tests, and trials that would have carried us there.
“The greatest thing satan aims at in tempting good people is to overthrow their position as children of God, cut off their dependence on God, their duty to God and their communion with God.” — Prophet TB Joshua
That is exactly what was on trial at every stage of Daniel’s story: not his talent, not his intelligence, but his position as a child of God and his ongoing dependence on, duty to, and communion with Him. Every test Daniel faced targeted one of those three things directly, and every time, he held his ground.
Sense Knowledge vs. Revelation Knowledge
Scripture and experience describe two very different ways of knowing God, and the difference between them is exactly what separates Job’s “I heard” from his “now I see.”
| Feature | Sense Knowledge (Only Heard) | Revelation Knowledge (Now I See) |
|---|---|---|
| Source | Sermons, books, other people’s testimonies | A trial in which you personally depended on God |
| Confession | “I know God is faithful because Scripture says so” | “I know God is faithful because I depended on Him when everything else said otherwise” |
| Stability under pressure | Can crack the first time life contradicts it | Has already survived the contradiction |
| How it is gained | Repetition and information | Testing, patience, and personal experience with God |
| What it produces | Correct doctrine that has not yet been lived | A testimony no one can argue you out of |
“People who are seeking experiences always walk by the senses, which are temporal and have no lasting value.” — Prophet TB Joshua
That warning is not against experience itself, since Job’s own breakthrough came through the most painful experience of his life. It is a warning against building your confidence in God on sensation, comfort, or circumstance rather than on a settled, tested knowledge of who He actually is. The apostle Paul describes this deeper category of knowledge in terms that echo exactly what Job discovered:
“That is what the Scriptures mean when they say, ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.’ But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit.” — 1 Corinthians 2:9–10
Revelation knowledge is not something you construct through better study habits alone, though study matters. It is something God gives, often through the very fire that sense knowledge alone could never have prepared you for.
What This Means for You
Job did not choose his trial. Daniel did not request the lions’ den. But both men responded to what they could not control in ways that positioned them to receive what hearing alone could never give them. There is something in that response worth naming, so that your own trial does not simply pass over you without producing what it was sent to produce.
- Stop asking only “why,” and start asking “what.” “Why am I going through this?” is a fair question, but Job’s book never fully answers it. “What is God preparing me to know about Him that I have only heard about?” is the question that actually moves you forward.
- Refuse to let comfort be your only teacher. Comfort confirms what you already believe. Trial tests whether you actually believe it. Do not despise the trial simply because it is uncomfortable; ask what it is exposing, “what is God teaching me through this trial?”
- Guard the small obediences. Daniel’s entire trajectory started with a decision about food, not a dramatic stand before a king. Whatever small refusal to compromise is in front of you right now may be the exact door to the next dimension of revelation.
- Give the glory away the moment it is offered to you. Daniel’s promotion followed the moment he pointed Nebuchadnezzar to God instead of to himself. Watch for the same instinct in your own life whenever credit comes your way. When somebody says, “if not for you, my life would have been worse than this”. Immediately, give that glory to God by saying “No not me, If not for God who rescued you, who knows what could have happened to you”
- Let success test your prayer life, not replace it. Daniel kept the same posture of prayer after promotion that he kept before it. If your current level of blessing has quietly reduced your communion with God, that is the test speaking, not merely a busy season. Some of us are so busy with the blessing and we completely forget the Giver of the blessing.
- Do not measure the trial by what you can see returned to you. Job spoke his greatest declaration of faith while still in ashes, before restoration ever arrived. Whatever you are waiting to be restored, do not wait for the restoration before you let God reveal Himself to you inside the trial itself.
“Trials and temptations are the soil in which the man of faith flourishes.” — Prophet TB Joshua
Soil does not look impressive. It looks like dirt, and sometimes like ashes. But nothing grows without it. What you are standing in right now may be exactly the soil your revelation of God is waiting to grow from.
There is a knowledge of God that comes by hearing His Word, and there is a deeper, revelational knowledge that emerges only when what you believe about Him survives temptation, testing, and trial. Trials do not necessarily mean God has moved away from you. Sometimes they are the very environment in which what you have only heard about God becomes what you have personally come to know about Him.
🙏 Prayer
Lord, I do not want to only hear about You anymore. Whatever trial You are using to bring me from hearing to seeing, give me the grace to stay faithful inside it the way Job did, the way Daniel did. Where I have compromised in small things, correct me. Where credit has come to me that belongs to You, help me give it back. Where success has quieted my prayer life, restore it. Let this season of testing become the very place where what I have only heard about You becomes what I know by revelation. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Good Morning 🌄 and PROSPER ✨ today!
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