And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us (Romans 5:3–5 NKJV).

What does this passage mean? Is it describing some masochistic bent in which we get pleasure out of pain and suffering? Is it describing a god that requires suffering, pain, or some other type of recompense for our sinful lives?

Or is it describing an aspect of reality—how transformation, renewal, growth, development, and healing occur?

Once there is brokenness or woundedness of any kind, there are no pain-free options. There is only healing or not healing.

We are all born in sin and conceived in iniquity; it is not our fault as individuals that we were born this way. None of us chose to become sinners from a sinless state of being. We are not guilty for being born in sin, yet we still have this condition inherited from Adam.

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned (Romans 5:12 NIV84).

We all sin because we are born sinners; we are not all sinners because we chose to sin from a sinless state.

We are all born into the world animated, motivated, energized, driven by the spirit of fear and distrust of God that we inherit from Adam. That spirit, that motivation, causes all humans to seek security, safety, comfort, protection, and survival; thus, we come into the world distrusting, fearful, and self-motivated to do what we must to protect, advance, and promote ourselves.

Our natural state is not selfless love built upon trust in our Creator, but distrust and fear inherited from Adam.

Therefore, as we grow, as we experience life, we internalize life experiences through the spirit of fear and survival. We form beliefs, attitudes, understandings, and attachments framed in the context of what makes us feel secure, empowered, safe—or what is painful, threatening, scary. We seek what feels good and avoid what feels bad.

We bring into our hearts all kinds of things that comfort us. Some may be, in their own objective design, healthy for us, if they are in the right orientation to our heart, such as forming attachments and relationships with parents, siblings, neighbors, church family, or doing physical exercise, or having a healthy diet.

But if human relationships, diet, and exercise are internalized to occupy a space in our soul, our hearts, our identity, our sense of self, our reason for living, our security, beyond what God designed them to occupy, then these healthy elements can become unhealthy in our engagement and use of them.

If we form our identity, our inner sense of security, wellness, goodness, peace, from these things instead of from God, then they become barriers to salvation, and our condition worsens. We become a person who finds their identity in their fitness, their healthy living, their religious rule-keeping—like the Pharisees in Christ’s day did. Exercise, healthy diet, and religious practices may in and of themselves have a healthy place, but if done from a spirit of fear, for the purpose of making one feel valuable, worthy, righteous, then it becomes a barrier to salvation. And one will not have peace, but eventual exhaustion and discouragement, as no matter how hard they work, they are still filled with fear.

For instance, the co-dependent seeks a relationship not to engage in mature, other-centered love but to find their identity, to find validation, affirmation, from the affection of others so that they can feel good about themselves. But no matter how much their partner or friends affirm them, it can never take away their fear and insecurity.

We all come into the world fearful and insecure, looking for security. The spirit of fear we all inherit drives the formation of our inner world, and we form all kinds of attachments that bring us security and comfort—but, ultimately, until we come to a living trust in Jesus and surrender our spirit of fear and are reborn with the Spirit of God, we are slowly decaying, and things will always get worse over time.

It is inevitable; the only outcome for breaking the laws of health is worsening health.

Now, what is interesting about how God created us is that our individuality, our consciousness, emerges from the living operations of our brains. And our consciousness, our thinking, which is our minds, react back upon the brain, causing the brain to change, to encode, to be structurally altered to align with what our minds and hearts choose, conclude, and internalize.

The spirit of fear twists and distorts how we internalize life, making us more insecure and inflaming selfishness. Thus, we create beliefs, understandings, conclusions, expectations, and responses that align with the spirit of fear rather than the Spirit of God.

But God’s Holy Spirit strives with us. We do not find peace outside harmony with God’s design for life; we recognize that something is not right. Despite our efforts, despite our hard work, despite our apparent success in this world, without Christ deep inside, we are restless, feel a void, recognize something is missing, long for something more than this world has to offer—just like the rich young ruler who came to Jesus asking, “What do I lack?” Jesus told him he needed to let go of his heart’s attachment to wealth so he could attach to His Creator.

Our inability to find peace from the things of the world, our own comfort measures, is the impact of reality, truth, and the work of the Holy Spirit upon our hearts, seeking to motivate us toward life.

Transformation Through Tribulation

So how does all of this fit together with tribulations?

What brain science demonstrates—and I will go into this in more detail during our God of Reality program in August—is that as we go through life and form our understanding of the world, we are encoding into both the networks and the substructures of our neurons our conclusions about our life experiences. These conclusions, once formulated, cause electron clouds in shared tubulin molecules to collapse, changing the architecture of the microtubules. This alters the harmonic, the frequency, of the microtubules in which the felt meaning, gestalt, sense of what is real and valuable encodes. Facts, events, and habits encode in the synaptic connections and wiring. The deeper felt meaning, sense of gestalt, “this matters,” the motivational drive, the science points toward that encoding in the microtubules.

Once encoded within our brains, our internalized experiences become stable systems, modes, perspectives, attitudes, which become a predictive model in which we filter new life experiences that is neurologically stable and reinforcing of itself.

In order to change this conformation—and what I am describing is structural, literal encoding in the molecules of your brain by your choices—we must make new choices, new conclusions, encoding different and corrective experiences. This requires us to more than merely cognitively comprehend a fact; it requires us to value it with enough energy that we say yes, that it is important enough that it is what we choose, what we hold to, what we want to be part of our life. When we make that type of choice, it causes more than synaptic learning of data, it causes the deeper motivational change. The electrons collapse onto the tubulin molecules, change their shape, and encode that felt experience into the microtubules. They structurally lock into a stable position that makes that encoding a part of our being.

In order for real change to happen, the electrons that have collapsed and locked the tubulin into the current position must receive enough energy to cause them to “uncollapse” and to enter back into a position of uncertainty, open and ready for new encoding.

There are at least eight different life experiences that provide the energy necessary to cause a locked tubulin system to enter into a position of uncertainty where new encoding can happen, where new truth can be assimilated, where we are legitimately open to receive truth and encode it, and therefore, be transformed.

The Bible describes all eight, and God uses all eight.

One of those eight experiences is trials and tribulations that do not fit our framework or understanding.

When we experience a trial or difficulty that does not fit our understanding, those experiences produce enough emotional importance, value, and concern that we step back and legitimately ask, “What is going on? What is happening?” Those questions are the mind’s expression of the brain entering into a position of uncertainty; structurally, both neural networks which encode formal understandings and the tubulin molecules which encode the felt reality enter a position of openness where truth can be heard and assimilated.

If truth is received and chosen, then more than just new facts are accepted, the deeper change is when the electrons collapse, and the tubulin structure changes in a new conformation, resulting in a new harmonic, a new inner state of emotional and motivational energy. When truth encodes, we literally are changed to be closer in harmony with God and the Holy Spirit, and we are more sensitive to the movements of the Holy Spirit. As we continue to choose truth, then truth by truth the encoding continues, our brains change, and our character matures just as the Scripture describes.

Thus, we glory in trials and tribulations for they are the opportunities for real transformation and growth.

However, these trials provide only the opportunity for change; they do not determine the change. They merely distress the system enough to create an opportunity for reevaluation, wrestling through old attachments, priorities, coping or comfort measures, and choosing to let go of what was maladaptive and encode what is healthy.

But, it is also possible for people to enter that state of uncertainty, where opportunity for real change exists, but instead of choosing truth, they reject it, deny it, and reencode their long-standing patterns, beliefs, preferences, and lies; thus, instead of being healed by the truth, their choice to reject it causes their heart to harden. They now don’t just have the same structures of the brain encoded in error; the new experience, with new energy, requiring a new evaluation, if reencoded with more lies, expands the encoding error, recruiting more neurons and more microtubules, encoding new systems with the same error, and thus, we slowly become less sensitive to truth, harden our hearts, and eventually are beyond new truth and love providing sufficient energy to create new opportunities for change. What I have just described is the searing of the conscience, hardening the heart, as Pharaoh did—changing one’s self by persistent rejection of truth and love to the point that the encoding errors are so solidified that nothing can move that person out of it.

This is why we are to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2 NIV84). We are to filter life experiences through the truth and love of God as brought to us by Jesus!

The Healthiest Approach

Recently, I read a story that depicts this healthy approach to life experiences:

One evening, as the sun dipped over the horizon, a girl was walking home when a dark storm blew in. She quickened her pace, knowing there was still a way to go. A lone raindrop fell on her cheek, then another, and, before she knew it, she was drenched. She started to run toward the front door of her home, where her father rushed to meet her. He had been watching her from the front window. As he wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, he asked her, “I saw you just now, in the rain. Why, with every bolt of lightning, did you stop running to look up and smile?”

“Oh, I stopped to look up,” she said, “because God was taking my picture!” (Adult Bible Study Guide, 2Q 2026, “Growing in a Relationship with God,” p. 88).

This story beautifully depicts the reality that there are events—and there are interpretations of events. What impacts us, what changes us, is not the event itself, but it’s how we interpret, internalize, and encode the events that matters!

This girl interpreted the experience of the lightning in a positive way. Before the storm, she had already been forming beliefs and experiences about God that encoded love, trust, and security. She was living under the umbrella of God’s grace; her life was secure in her relationship with Him. Like Jesus sleeping in the boat, she didn’t need to fear the storm. Her previous encoding about God, self, and life became a filter through which she interpreted the experience of the storm.

I once had a patient struggling with panic and paralyzing fear of riding in cars. The history was that they were in an accident in which their car was hit by another, knocked off an overpass onto the interstate below, and then hit by a semi going about 70 mph. Their car was crushed, flipped, and spun around. In the aftermath, they were paralyzed by fear, terror, dread. Their thoughts after that event were, “I almost died. Life is not safe. Cars are not safe.” They were suffering from daily panic and the inability to drive.

But the interesting thing is that despite the dramatic wreck, they walked away with only some bruises. After getting to know the patient, I observed that there are events and there are interpretations of events, and one interpretation is, “I almost died. I could have died. Cars are not safe.” But another interpretation is, “I didn’t die; in fact, despite this terrible wreck, I walked away with just bruises. God has His angels watching over me. I do not need to fear what this world can do to me, for I live in His care.”

The facts of what happened do not change, but how one encodes and interprets them can. Healing interpretations require harmony with truth. When we encode lies, error, falsehood, we move ourselves out of harmony with reality and will always experience problems.

My patient was struck by my alternate interpretation. They reflected deeply on it, and because they were still in a state of distress, meaning that despite the belief that they were currently encoding, they were not at peace with that interpretation; thus, they remained open to a new encoding—they were seeking a better interpretation, a better understanding, longing for truth to set them free. So when they heard my alternative view, it resonated with their previous beliefs about God and life, and they chose to say yes to it and encode it; the neurons settled, and their panic resolved.

What I believed happened to this person is the opposite of what Paul was describing in Romans, the opposite of rejoicing in trials that build character. Paul was describing how trials that don’t fit our model cause our perspective to enter uncertainty through the distress and allow for growth by encoding new truth.

My patient experienced an event that, in reality, fit their model—they were safe and God protected them, but they failed to see the truth and, instead, they interpreted the event by encoding a lie that they were not safe, and that lie did not fit the model and caused the system to destabilize and enter uncertainty through which they were struggling until they were again able to process the event in a way that was consistent with truth and harmonized with the true belief they already had about God.

This is how reality works. It is how God created us. It is how we have real freedom and how we are changed. I encourage you to make Jesus your focus, spend time every day talking with Him, reading His Word, encoding His truths, and when trials come, don’t focus only on the event, but go to Jesus and seek to interpret it, encode it, in harmony with His kingdom of truth and love.

If you do, then “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32 NIV84).