James - What You Know Must Override What You Feel
Tom Shrader draws on James 1:2-4 to argue that trials function as spiritual aerobics, producing perseverance in the believer's life. He outlines five anchoring truths for navigating stress: God is in control, God forgives sin, this life is temporary, God works all things together for good, and God does not change. The sermon's central call is that knowledge of God's character, sovereignty, faithfulness, and promises must govern a believer's response to the wear and tear of living.
“Father, I find myself remembering what You've forgotten and condemning myself for what You've forgiven — teach me never to forget Your forgiveness, because I will only be at peace with myself when I'm at peace with You.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: GCU: Chapel Services
Recorded: 2015 at Grand Canyon University
Duration: 28 min
Themes: trials, perseverance, suffering, stress, faith, God's sovereignty, hope, trust, struggling with anxiety, going through hard times, college student, young adult, new believer, feeling overwhelmed, questioning God, facing uncertainty
Scripture: James 1:2-4, 1 John 1:9, 1 Corinthians 6:11, Romans 6:11, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Romans 8:28
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, divine sovereignty, theodicy, God's immutability, perseverance of the saints, providential care, spiritual formation
Full Transcript
Introduction: The Universal Problem of Stress
I want to give you something practical. Something you can use. Not an ethereal devotional that someday maybe will pop into your mind. So I thought, what is the thing that you all have in common? And then it is bigger than that — it is all of us. It is the world.
The American Medical Association says that what I want to talk about is the number one cause of patients' visits to see doctors. The British National Health Association says the whole Western world experiences this. I want to talk about stress.
Let me give you the definition. Stress is essentially the wear and tear of living. Stress is life. You had it this morning. I had it. I got up this morning and said, I have never been to GCU. I have some physical issues — you would never know by looking at me — but I have some physical issues. I thought, where am I going to park? I do not know where to park. I better go early. I was supposed to meet Tim at 10:45, so I got here at 9:30.
I did not know where to park, and they told me the big garage. Then I thought, how am I going to get down from the garage? Well, there is an elevator. And then I thought, I will never get to the arena from the garage. There was a guy in a golf cart who looked at me and obviously figured I was not one of the freshmen, and asked if I needed a ride. I said, "The arena." That is the wear and tear of life.
Turning to James Chapter One
Reading through the Bible and discovering things is an amazing experience, especially when you see them for the first time. There are those passages that bring you up short. So I want to show you one.
James chapter one, verse two.
Consider It All Joy
"Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials." When you read that for the first time, is that not odd? The word *consider* means to analyze, to think about it. So we are told to consider it joy — and then comes the unexpected part: when you encounter various trials. The word *when* means this is inevitable. These things — trials, tests, difficulty — are supposed to produce joy in my life.
The word *various* means multicolored. So there are the trials of relationships. Half the people here — the guys — are thinking: Will I ever get a date? If I get a date, will she ever come out with me again? If she comes out with me again, will she ever stay with me? And now she has stayed, and I do not know what to do next. So I will do what 47% of guys in that position do — send a text that says, "It has been great to know you. Thank you." Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials. How can that be?
What You Know Trumps What You Feel
Here is the big point. Verse three tells us how we can consider it joy: "I know that the testing of my faith produces endurance." That is the key. What you know trumps what you feel. When life is spinning around you, what you know must override what you feel.
My wife is the opposite of me in a variety of ways — she is very active. Last fall she took her daughter and they hiked the Grand Canyon. She asked if I wanted to go, and I said, "Hey, we have the Discovery Channel. I do not need to go down there." I have been to the Grand Canyon one time, and when I got there it looked exactly like its pictures. I said, "My golly, what a gully," and we were gone. That is just not me.
She wants to live life. She runs. This morning at 4:45 she was up to go swimming — not casual swimming, but a master swim program with a coach, three miles. Then she came home, we had coffee, and at 9:30 she taught a Bible study for ladies. Right now she is at South Mountain changing clothes to go hike for an hour and a half. I would rather not discuss what I think about hiking South Mountain.
Spiritual Aerobics
Here is the connection. What she does is aerobic activity. The more she does it, the better she feels and the farther she can go. James is saying that testing is spiritual aerobics. God will take you and He will test you — so that you have perseverance.
To watch you come in today and sing "Jesus Paid It All" — it was stunning. But here is the thing: you may not fully grasp what perseverance means yet. I think every day about finishing strong. I pray that I finish strong. Do you want to finish strong? Well, here is what James says — that is perseverance. And if I want perseverance, I need trials.
So if you run into somebody today and they ask what was said in chapel, here is the takeaway: what you know trumps what you feel.
Five Things You Need to Know
When it comes to stress, the experts say three things: eat correctly, exercise, and sleep. That third one was the subject of an article I read just last week — there is an epidemic in this country, and the group it affects most is men and women ages 18 to 25, and that is lack of sleep. So eat correctly, exercise, and sleep.
But I want to give you five things you need to know — things that, as life spins around you, must anchor what you feel. There will not be anything here you do not already know.
**Number one: God is in control.** It feels like no one is in control. Last week you turned on the television and there was a man in a cage being set on fire. You are driving down the freeway, minding your own business, and someone comes over in front of you and there is a life-changing accident. Someone you love deeply tells you they do not love you anymore. Or you get a note from your parents saying they do not love each other anymore. It feels like things are out of control — beyond your control and mine. But they are not out of God's control.
I have a grandson who is nine years old. Last week he was figuring out how old he would be when Halley's Comet comes again. What is remarkable is that we can sit here, decades in advance, and predict exactly when Halley's Comet is coming. This cosmos, this universe — it is expanding, it is giant, it is beyond our imagination. But we know when Halley's Comet is coming again. Why? Because there is a system in control. And God has things under control. It does not always feel like it — but what I know trumps what I feel.
God Forgives Sin
**Number two: God forgives sin.** The presentation earlier alluded to it, and we sang about it. 1 John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sin, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us." Paul was writing to members of the church at Corinth — a historically wretched place. Whenever someone from Corinth appeared in Greek literature, if it was a woman she was portrayed as a prostitute, and if it was a man he was portrayed as —
What You Were Is Not Who You Are
Paul writes to the Corinthian church — a congregation drawn from every kind of broken background — and in verse 11 of 1 Corinthians 6 he uses the past tense deliberately: "Such were some of you. You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified." In Romans 6:11 he writes, "Consider yourself dead to sin" — sin no longer reigns in your body. That is what you were.
Some of you are walking around under extraordinary guilt, saying, "I can't forgive myself." But you don't need to forgive yourself. You didn't sin against yourself — you sinned against God, and He has forgiven you. He has washed you clean. You are a new creature. That is what Scripture says.
It is Satan and the world that keep bringing that old identity before you, insisting, "This is who you are." No — that is who you were. You are not that anymore.
I was in a small group with a friend of mine one day, and he prayed — I don't know whether it was spontaneous or memorized. I sent him an email and said, "Can you put that in writing and send it to me?" And he did. Here is the prayer: *Father, I find myself remembering what You've forgotten and condemning myself for what You've forgiven. Teach me never to forget Your forgiveness, because I will only be at peace with myself when I am at peace with You.*
Those chains are broken. I was what I was, but I am no longer under the curse of sin. I am free from the penalty of sin, free from the slavery of sin, and free to be who God has made me to be. He has made us all different and unique, and that is part of the body of Christ.
God Is Our Only Hope, and This Life Is Temporary
Number three: here is what you need to know — God is our only hope, and this life is temporary. 2 Corinthians 4:16 says, "Do not lose heart, though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day."
Paul is saying the body is eroding. We have a great house — small, but great. In our bathroom, when you get out of the shower, there is a floor-to-ceiling glass mirror. It is not a good design feature, and it is not something I want to see early in the morning. My body is decaying. In the last year alone I have had a six-hour open-heart surgery, during which they discovered my lungs are hardening. I have had kidney stones. I have lupus, which is my biggest problem right now — a disease that ninety percent of the time strikes women between eighteen and thirty-five. When I heard that, I said, "I cannot wait for my first support group. This is going to be great."
The outer man is decaying, but the inner man is being renewed day by day. All of this — the wear and tear of living — Paul calls "momentary light affliction," and he says it is producing for us "an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we do not look at the things that are external but the things that are internal, not the things that are seen but the things that are not seen, because all of this is temporary."
It is not to say that none of it matters. But if our faith, hope, and trust rest in anything other than Jesus, we will ultimately be disappointed. I said this my first time on this campus: this is a great building, but not too long from now they are going to knock it down and build a new one. All of this is temporary. Our hope is in Christ.
Here is what Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4: "If we believe that Jesus died and rose again" — and a whole lot of you seem to, based on the way you were singing — "God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep." He is talking about the end times, about the return of Jesus. "For this we say by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord." That is how this ends.
So often, whether I am watching others teach or reading on my own, we stop at verse 17. But look at verse 18: "Therefore comfort one another with these words." Life is tough — the wear and tear of living is real — but what I need is an eternal perspective. Perspective becomes everything.
I came home the other day and Sandy said she had found a great picture of me. She said, "You look so tall in this picture." I am not a tall person, so I was intrigued. I looked at it, and I did look tall. It was a picture of me and the eight and nine-year-olds I was coaching in Little League. I towered over most of them. That is a perspective problem.
When you go to get your eyes tested, the doctor puts up that chart and asks, "Which is better — this, or this?" I take it very seriously. I always ask him to do it again, and he gets impatient with me. But here is what I need: I need my perspective adjusted. My hope comes from understanding that this world is temporary, that it is passing away.
God Causes All Things to Work Together for Good
Number four, and we have about two minutes and fifty seconds left: God causes all things to work together for good. I want you to look at that carefully. If I could give you an assignment, I would say unpack that on your own. Notice the word "know" — there it is again —
God Works All Things Together for Good
We know God causes all things to work together for good — not to everybody, but to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Oprah says — and I love Oprah, I like listening to her, I think she does some great things — she says, "Everything happens for a reason." You've heard it. Well, I would love to sit down with Oprah someday, not in a combative way, and say, "Oprah, if that's true, if everything happens for a reason, then there must be something working things together. If everything happens for a reason, there has to be a grand purpose." And we know that God causes all things to work together for good.
So even in the midst of the hard stuff, even the junk in life, God will use it. Even the stuff you would never choose in a million years. I've been through so much with my body in the last two years, and I had never been sick before that. I hate it, and every day is a battle — but you know what it has made me? It has made me sympathetic to the hurting person.
I got behind a lady the other day at Fashion Square, and it took her a long time to get on the escalator. Two years ago I would have said, "Get out of the way, I need to get up the escalator." But now I know what she means. Once you put your foot on there, you are committed. I get on there and my ankles are shaking. I would have never chosen any of this, but God uses it for good.
I was in a parking lot the other day trying to turn the steering wheel and I couldn't, and there was a young kid behind me honking his horn. I thought, I would get out and say something — except it would hurt me more than him. God causes all things to work together for good.
God Does Not Change
Here is the key point, and it is one you could easily overlook: God does not change. All the things we have talked about are true, and He does not change. You can count on that.
You change. Haven't you changed? You have got old pictures where you looked completely different — you have changed. God does not change.
So here is where we land: what you know trumps what you feel. Our hope is rooted in four things — the character of God, the sovereignty of God, the faithfulness of God, and the promise of God. If you get just that, you can figure out pretty quickly that this is not about you. It is about God.
Closing Prayer
What you know trumps what you feel. Stress is part of life. Go ahead and eat right, sleep right, and exercise — but if you know these things, all of a sudden there is perspective.
Father, thank You for these truths, for this day, for this place. Thank You for Tim and his leadership, and the band, and Hosanna, and the students, and this time together. We love You, we worship You, we praise You. We know life is going to be hard along the way, but You are a God who lifts us up and carries us and strengthens us, and You use even the hard things for our good and Your glory. We pray in Christ's name, amen.