HOW CHRISTIANS
RESPOND TO THE TRIALS OF LIFE
This
past summer I asked the ministerial to read the book of James and come ready
with reflections to our first meeting of the season. Many good thoughts were
shared and you will hear them embedded in these messages on the book of James.
One of the first ones to stick out
in my mind was the comparison of the practicality of James to an operator’s
manual. The person who shared this was probably thinking “tractors” but I
thought of “cars.” Some people, when they buy a new car, will take the owner’s
manual out of the glove compartment and ask, “How do you drive this thing?” Not
me, heavens no, but some people.
Life often seems like some kind of
foreign machinery that is left in our possession and we are expected to operate
it. When the thing hits the ditch we can either leave it there or figure a way
out of the predicament and move on. If we choose to leave it there we can moan
to our friends about our bad luck, or look for someone to blame. If we read the
manual and seek advice, chances are, the next time we get stuck we will know
what to do.
James gives us a few pages out of
the operator’s manual specifically aimed at dealing with the challenges of
life. In the first few verses he introduces his three major themes for the rest
of the book: trials, wisdom and the tension between the rich and the poor.
It is inevitable that we will all
face these challenges in life. The question for us today in this message is:
How should we as Christians respond to the trials of life? What James wants to
teach us about this is easy to say and not so easy to live by. He says Christians
should respond to trials with joy knowing that God uses those trials to mature
us in our faith.
All well and good, you say. Nice
philosophy, you say. But is this true? Is this practical? How do I live it? To
answer this we must go deeper into James 1:1-12 and pull it apart. James gives
us two commands per section and so we will follow these commands as an outline.
1.
Responding to trials with joy
a) An unnatural
reaction
– James does not waste time telling us that he is the half-brother of Jesus, or
by giving us credentials as to why we should listen to him. He says simply he
is James, “a slave of Jesus Christ who is
God and Lord,” a rendering the Greek would support.
Skipping a proper opening to ancient
letters, he jumps right in and gives this command: “Consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials of many kinds, because
you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance,” (1:3). He
is talking specifically to believers because he addresses his readers as
“brothers and sisters.”
Now what is this joy he is talking
about? When you face a challenge to your well-being, your health or your life,
how do you react? Not with joy typically. To face difficulties with joy is an
unnatural reaction. Exactly! This is what James is calling for as Christians
face trials. Joy is an unnatural reaction of deep, steady and unadulterated
thankful trust in God.
This is clearly illogical unless we
understand what is inherent in the trials of life. “Trials,” as James terms
them, are “afflictions sent by God.” In his day it is likely that the trials
the Jewish Christians faced were economic exploitation by rich non-Christian
landlords. These people were poor because of their faith in Jesus, which
explains the presence of this theme in his letter.
My impression is that our prayers
are focused mainly on safety for the day or the absence of trouble. But here we
see that God is testing us. We often scoff at the person who says God is
testing him or her saying God wouldn’t do that. But maybe he is testing us. The
question then is: how do you react? James says, with joy, and here’s why…
b) Towards
Christian maturity
– According to James, the testing of our faith produces perseverance. So here’s
the second command, “Let perseverance
finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything,”
(1:4).
We have trouble with accepting this
command. The reason we find this unacceptable is that in North American
Christianity there is no place for pain. We have a distorted perception of
pain, and we do not look for God’s hand in our troubles but only for his
comfort and deliverance. Embracing pain’s role in our maturing process is the
last thing on our minds. As someone said, “Most people count it all joy when
they escape trials. James said to count it all joy in the midst of trials.”
Here is something disturbing to
those with this mindset: God’s will is not our happiness, but his glory. He is
not waiting on our prayers to fulfill all our dreams and wishes. God wants us
to grow in maturity and thereby glorify him.
The testing of our faith could also
be said to be the approval of our faith. This world is the proving ground of our
faith. Can we believe in God when life gets rough?
The prophet Habakkuk exemplifies
this faith and joy in his declaration: “Though
the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the
olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in
the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD. I will be
joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength…” (Hab 3:17-19).
One thing these verses do not claim,
however, is that everything that happens to us is somehow good and therefore a
reason for rejoicing. Perseverance molds in us a militant patience, not passivity,
but an engaged waiting upon the Lord who is our joy. So we do not rejoice in
the trials but in what God is going to do in and through those trials. We will
be mature, not lacking anything.
2.
Responding to trials with wisdom
a) What trials
reveal about you
– When I face a new challenge as a homeowner, let’s say in the plumbing realm,
one thing becomes very clear to me – I don’t know what I’m doing.
The trials of life are very good at
revealing what you lack. The way James uses that phrase “lacking” it means
falling short. In this context it suggests a falling short in moral or
spiritual realities.
To be blunt, trials reveal where we
fall short in trusting God. We have trouble seeing much sense in our suffering.
Some troubles are often unfair and we wonder why God would allow such hurt into
our lives.
Here’s where James issues his
command: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you
should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will
be given to you,” (1:5).
Why would you ask God for wisdom if
you thought you didn’t really need wisdom? It’s the same as asking God for
forgiveness when you really aren’t concerned about receiving forgiveness, or
asking for mercy when there is no place for mercy in your life. Trials are
there to remind us of what we lack. And what we lack more than anything in
times of difficulty is wisdom.
Why do we need wisdom in trials? So
that we will not waste our sufferings and miss the spiritual growth that could
result.
When we think of asking God for
wisdom we are prone to think of God giving us clarity on every decision or
problem we face. What James means by wisdom, however, is the ability to discern
how God would have us live. Wisdom is the endowment of heart and mind which is
needed for the right conduct of life. It is the practical living out of what we
believe.
This is what God generously gives,
regardless of our blunders or slowness in asking.
b) When we ask
for wisdom
– James puts a prerequisite on our asking God for wisdom. He says in his second
command in this section, “But when you
ask, you must believe and not doubt, because one who doubts is like a wave of
the sea, blown and tossed by the wind,” (1:6).
Here’s a difficult stand – trusting
God that he has our growth in mind when life hurts. But this is the test. Can
we trust God and believe in him and act accordingly in our struggles when a job
is lost or your child has cancer?
In times like this we are to ask for
wisdom and not doubt. When we doubt God in times of trial, James says that we
are like the bobbing sea. He is not picturing a storm but the ordinary
instability of the sea where there is a constant moving up and down of waves
without consistency or pattern. Doug Moo writes, “The picture here is not of a
wave mounting in height and crashing to shore, but of the swell of the sea,
never having the same texture and shape from moment to moment, but always
changing with the variations in wind direction and strength.” A person like
this swings from faith to skepticism, unable to trust Christ fully or stay the
course in faithfulness to him.
James goes on to say, “That person should not expect to receive
anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they
do,” (1:7-8). Os Guiness describes this kind of doubt when he says, “When
you believe, you are in one mind and accept something as true. Unbelief is to
be of one mind and reject that something is true. To doubt is to waver between
the two, to believe and disbelieve at the same time, and so be in ‘two minds,’”
Or as the Chinese say, “Doubt is standing in two boats, with one foot in each.”
Do you believe that God loves you
and has your best interests at heart? Do you believe that God would allow hurt
into your life just to watch you squirm? Or do you believe that God allows
these trials into your life to shape you and develop your character for his
glory? If you doubt God’s intentions or love or purposes, don’t ask God for
wisdom, because even you don’t know what you want in that case. But in your
pain or suffering or trial, believe God and ask him for wisdom to act like a
person of faith.
3.
Responding to trials with a new perspective
a) The advantage
of being poor
– The theme seems to switch now from trials to poor believers and rich
oppressors. In fact, we are still talking about how Christians face life’s
trials.
Two more commands emerge. The first
is this: “Believers in humble
circumstances ought to take pride in their high position,” (1:9).
Now remember that the
Jewish-Christians were likely facing tough economic times because they
professed faith in Jesus. Not only did the rich take advantage of the poor, if
the rich were not believers it is possible they hated these Christians. The
test for the poor believers was to remain faithful while scratching out an
existence.
Now what advantage does James think
the poor believers have in this circumstance?
It is quite simple. Jesus taught
that you cannot serve two masters; you cannot serve both God and money (Mt
6:24). The advantage that the poor believer exults in and gives glory to God is
that he does not have two masters. In the poor person’s trial he or she
realizes how much more he or she needs God. They have nothing to fall back on
except the wealth of spiritual blessing that God is eager to give.
This high position is not poverty
itself. If it were we should all give away our stuff and claim bankruptcy. No,
this high position is this so-called advantage that the material possessions of
prosperity do not hold them back from the promise of heaven.
b) The
disadvantage of being rich – The contrast must be obvious with the
disadvantage of the rich. We have here the paradox of the “rich poor” and the
“poor rich.” G. K. Chesterton defined such a paradox as “truth standing on its
head shouting for attention.”
We have a great reversal here where
the rich, who tend to gloat in their material gain, are told to boast or take
pride in their humiliation (1:10).
This disadvantage of being rich is
that having wealth makes a person turn to his or her own resources before
calling on God for help. In their time of trials they have much to fall back on
but usually call on God last.
James writes that they will pass
away like a wild flower. “For the sun
rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its
beauty is destroyed,” (1:11). In other words, the rich for all their social
connections, business plans and financial gains, are going to die like everyone
else. James rewrites the modern slogan that “the one who dies with the most
toys still dies.”
Who are the rich? I have been
haunted all summer long by something I read in a book by David Platt called
Radical. In it he says that if you make 50 thousand dollars a year, you are in
the top two percent of the world’s wealthiest people. Hard to believe isn’t it?
But then we just heard last Sunday that the average laborer in Puerto Lopez,
Ecuador brings down only three thousand dollars in a year.
When we face trials, where do we
run? When we have a sewer back-up we call our insurance broker. When we are ill
we have medical insurance to go to the doctor. When we are in a car accident we
call autopac. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure glad we have those monetary safety
nets. But when do we turn to God and say thank you for reminding me that this
world is temporal and when all things pass away I still have you?
Show
me your faith
When
I first preached on this passage here in Kleefeld 12 years ago, I humbly
confessed that I had not faced any real trials and did not know what I was
talking about. Then the hammer fell on my innocence. I faced several physical
and mental trials. I quickly found out what I was lacking. It has been a
painful journey at times but I sincerely praise God for what he has shown me in
my life. Facing the darkness of depression presented me with a fork in the
road: Can I trust God when nothing makes sense and everything hurts?
In this series on James we are
focusing on the theme “Show me your faith.” When there are “no sheep in the
pen” can we rejoice in God our Savior? Do people see our faith in good times
and in trials?
There’s a little story where a
daughter complained to her father that her life was miserable and she was tired
of fighting life’s battles.
Her father didn’t say anything but
simply took out three pots of water and placed them on the stove. In each
boiling pot he placed a different item. In the first he placed potatoes, the
second eggs, and the third ground coffee beans.
After a time he took them off the
stove and showed them to his daughter. Potatoes, eggs and coffee. Of course,
the potatoes were soft, the eggs hard-boiled, and the coffee was rich and
aromatic.
“What does this mean?” she asked.
The father replied that the potatoes, eggs and coffee all faced the same
adversity – boiling water. However, each one reacted differently. The potato
went in strong, hard, and unrelenting, but became soft and weak in the boiling
water. The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its soft
interior until it met the water. Then the inside became hard. However, the
ground coffee beans, after they were exposed to the boiling water, changed the
water and became something new.
Then he asked his daughter, “Which
are you?”When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? In life,
things happen around us, things happen to us, but the only thing that truly
matters is what happens within us.
In your trials, God is proving your
faith for his glory. 12 Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because,
having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord
has promised to those who love him.
AMEN
No comments:
Post a Comment