The Trouble with Trials

"To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." Revelations 3:14-22

In my day, which is not very much I’ll admit, I have heard quite a few versions of sermons on these verses. It is, as these preachers say, a note of guidance to wake up. The question for me is what does the part about being spit out mean? Does that mean we leave the arms of Christ altogether? I don’t think so. It says nothing can separate us from the love of God, so it would have to be a purposeful walking away to take us away from those arms altogether. I am talking about not being a Christian anymore.
Is it possible, I am not a pastor so I could be wrong, that this passage, the spit you out part, is about something entirely different?
One of the biggest questions, Christians get faced with, is ‘why do bad things happen to good people’. Now this could be just quoted in with the part about it ‘raining on the just and unjust’. I think it may be more than that.
It is incredibly rare to find a lukewarm Christian who has gone through trials. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing you faith produces perseverance” (James 1:2-3).
Much of the time, it is possible to know when someone has been through something. When something tests the person’s belief that God loves them and he is powerful enough to cause the blind to see, the lame walk, the dead to rise, and heal the broken hearted. These things, not a miracle most of the time but a tragedy, causes the person to have to face the precipice like Indiana Jones and decide whether to take a step or not. It’s the decision to believe that God has everything under control even though for some reason he lets a ten year old girl watch her mother die of a brain tumor.
The question is what does this do to this little girl? Does she become bitter because she can’t stop remembering the look on her mother’s face when she realizes she can’t control her brain anymore? Or, does she become a better person for it because she has to rely on God every step of the way?