James 1:2-4

Tom Shrader explores James 1:2-8, examining how believers should respond to trials and testing with joy rather than resistance. He explains that trials are spiritual aerobics designed by God to build endurance and maturity in the Christian life. The teaching emphasizes asking God for wisdom during difficulties, trusting in His character and faithfulness rather than doubting His purposes.

“God loves me so much that He causes or allows these trials for my good, for His glory.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Blue Jean Theology (2011)

Recorded: 2011

Duration: 38 min

Themes: trials, endurance, wisdom, joy, testing, faith, humility, perseverance, facing hardship, going through trials, struggling believer, seeking guidance, new believer, discouraged christian, questioning god's plan, needing strength

Scripture: James 1:1-8, Ephesians 5, Proverbs 1, Ephesians 1:18, 2 Corinthians 1, Job 5:7, John 9, Job 42:6-8

Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual maturity, divine sovereignty, biblical wisdom, faith development, spiritual growth, god's character, trust

Full Transcript

We are in the second week of what will probably be 11 weeks of studying the book of James. Let me read you what James Montgomery Boyce writes in his commentary on the book of James, and I think it fits into what I said last week. He said we know about James. The problem is that although people know about James, many do not read it. Why is this? Here's the nugget: I'm convinced that for the most part, James is neglected simply because it's so practical.

James talks about wealth, how to use it, gossip, hypocrisy, how we choose friends, and other very practical things. We find ourselves saying, "I don't like that. Give me a lecture on theology. Teach me about grace and justification. Better yet, let's talk about eschatology." Those subjects are interesting, but when you talk about who my friends should be, what I should do with my mouth or my money, my disposable income, you're meddling where you shouldn't. That's what I said last week about the book of James.

As you read it, I find myself having to creatively do some mental gymnastics to say, "Well, that can't possibly be what He really meant to say," and in fact, it is. I use the imagery of the Bible as a mirror that I hold up, and I see myself as I really am. I see myself accurately, and if ever there's a book that can serve that purpose of the mirror, it's the book of James.

James the Bondservant

In chapter 1, verse 1, James identifies himself as the writer, and he describes himself as a bondservant. In the Greek, he had four or five different words that could be translated slave, but he chose the one that shows the individual as the most utterly destitute, dependent, totally based for their housing, food, resources on their master, and fully committed to doing their master's will. That's James. He's a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We can read humility into this. James is the half-brother of Jesus. If I'm writing, and I'm James, my tendency might be to introduce myself this way: "James, you might know my brother. You might know my mom. I don't know if you know me, but I'm one of the three guys that are the pillar of the church in Jerusalem." He had a lot of options, but he showed himself as he really is. He's James. He's a bondservant. He's a humble guy.

Remember, we said his nickname was Old Camel Knees, that apparently his knees were distorted, swollen, disfigured from spending hours on them in prayer. That's the kind of guy he is.

Writing to the Scattered

He's writing to, and this becomes really important—anytime we study a book, we want to know context, we want to know what's the author's intent, who's he writing to—"the 12 tribes who are dispersed abroad, greeting." He's writing to Jewish believers who have been scattered outside of Palestine. We speculated last week that they were scattered for likely one of two reasons, or both.

One, their conversion to the Christian faith had cost them everything—economically, socially, family networks gone, persecution high—and they said, "You know what, we'll just get out of here. I'd rather go somewhere where nobody knows me and I can start over." Or they are dispersed because they are obediently following what Christ charged them to do: "Go and be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the remotest parts of the earth."

In either case, I'm not sure it matters, but it's important to understand he's writing to refugees, to aliens in a foreign land. I don't think it's a big leap to say he's writing to people like us. Our citizenship is in heaven. We kind of feel like, or understand, once we live out this faith, that we don't belong here, that we're here as salt and light to influence.

From Zero to One Hundred

In the midst of James writing to people who are scattered, and the leap I made to us, is where he goes in verse two. It's like he goes from zero to a hundred in about three seconds. "Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials." He goes right to the idea of trials. If you're living in a foreign land, and you don't have those roots, and you don't have that support, you're going to experience trials.

We learned that trials are inevitable—they're going to come. They're varied—there's a trial of adversity, there's a trial of prosperity. Another way of saying that, they're multicolored, many shapes, sizes. They arrive unexpectedly, they are there to produce perseverance, and they demand that we respond to them.

So these trials come: "Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials." You can pick right out of there some key words: when, encounter—that has with it in the Greek the idea of unexpected—various trials.

The Key Word: Knowing

Here is the word that's highlighted, or underlined, or has a box around it: the first word in verse three is "knowing." "I know something, I know the testing of my faith produces endurance." There's the formula: along come these trials, along come these tests, and those tests produce in us endurance. The phrase that I like to link up is: the tests become spiritual aerobics. I know, in verse three, that the testing produces spiritual endurance.

The Physical Picture of Endurance

Let me give you a physical picture from verses one, two, and three. When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives, brother, don't resist them as intruders, but welcome them as friends. How can I do that? I realize that they come to test your faith and produce a quality of endurance. The physical picture, to me anyway, helps in the spiritual sense.

Sandy works out a lot, and tomorrow she has a friend in a group - and I don't know anybody that wants to join this group. They're swimming Saguaro Lake, Apache Lake, maybe Bartlett. It's three days of swimming, and tomorrow's swim is 19 miles. That's a long drive - that's a real long swim. Sandy's not swimming, but she has a friend who is, and she is his kayak support. The kayak can't support the swimmer directly - there are a lot of rules - but the kayak's there for the liquid nutrition, for the encouragement, the re-strengthening fluid. In an open water swim, that kayak is also providing direction.

I don't know if you've been watching the news, but tomorrow's supposed to be unbelievably windy, 25 to 35 miles per hour up where they're swimming. Sandy's been all over this. I've never seen Sandy train like this. She swam the nine-mile event last year and didn't train, but she's been training for this kayak support - she's kayaking every day. When I came home yesterday, it was like the rapture. All of her stuff was there, but she was gone. Her car was there, her phone was there, but she was gone. Then I realized to go look out the back door - she'll be out on the lake. She was out there grinding. When she got out, I said, "How do you feel?" She goes, "It gets a little easier every day."

From Physical Training to Spiritual Endurance

That's the physical aspect. What James is saying is: you want to hang in there to the end. You want to cross the finish line. The thing that's going to give you that endurance are tests and trials - things that are either caused by God, allowed by God, or self-inflicted. As I power through those tests, I begin to see God work, and I understand something greater, something bigger.

I got this email a few years ago after I had taught a similar session on this. The guy wrote, "The message you brought Sunday was a great reminder of the Lord's involvement and care over things in our life." I've edited it, so if it doesn't flow, it's my editing, not his writing.

"By the grace of God, I've had a chance to live through some of the things you taught. Six years ago, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In the ensuing time, I've learned that His grace is all that it's advertised to be." That's a great line. "He didn't allow me to think, 'Why me?' but instead, 'Why not me?' My biggest problems were taken care of when He drew me to Himself and forgave my sin. The health matter is an inconvenience."

Living as One Who Is Trapped

"Even more, it's really a privilege, a mission. I'm trapped in a body over which I'm slowly losing control, but there are many who are trapped in circumstances they can't control. Troubled marriage, poor health, family difficulties, money difficulties - most of our own sin. The Lord has given me many chances through this to tell them that there's a God who cares, and each day, He gives me strength to match the difficulty. Life is good. I can say it as one who's trapped, like them. I live where they live."

"Humanly speaking, I have the certainty of an unhappy ending, but in Him, Jesus, we exult in our tribulation. If my health were to return, you would never hear me say, 'I have my life back.' Abundant life has never left me. I had life this whole time in the truest, greatest sense of the word, because I've always had Him."

I read that and go, "Wow." But I couldn't get to that wow moment if it wasn't for that test, that challenge, that trial. That's why Philip says, "Welcome these things as visitors. Don't push them away."

The Natural Response vs. God's Way

The most natural thing when suffering, hardship, or difficulty comes is to try to get rid of it. We're not saying don't be wise about it. We're not saying just suffer for no reason. But I want to finish the race. For those of us, what that means is: I want to live a full life for Christ all the way to the end, no matter how it ends.

I told you the last couple of weeks, I've started reading about aging. I had lunch with one of my old friends yesterday, and I told him I was doing this. He said, "Why?" I said, "I can't answer that yet. I don't know." I'm doing all this reading on aging, and I come across some interesting stats of people they surveyed who are 100 years of age or older: 19% have a cell phone, 12% are on the internet, and 3% of people who are 100 or older have had an online date. I don't know why that strikes me as funny, but it tells me something about the human condition and dating and the power of the internet.

Breaking the Tape

That's all the stuff I'm reading as we're looking at aging. We're looking at that thing and saying, "How do I break the tape? How do I hang in there to the end?" God is saying to you and me, "I'm going to tell you how to hang in till the end. I'm going to test you." This is universal. It's unavoidable.

I got a text from my daughter Haley the other night, and it is a picture of something Yale wrote. Just to fill in the gaps, Haley's my youngest daughter. She has four kids: Brayden's 11, Yale's nine, Lucy's six, Harmony's five. Brayden is this sweet, kind, caring kid, and Yale is this little guy.

I'm at a game two weeks ago, and Yale's catching. This lady came up that I didn't know - very attractive lady. I figured she was hitting on me because I was there alone. I knew she wasn't by her opening pickup line: "Are you Yale's grandpa?" I said, "I am." She said, "I love to watch Yale play." I don't know this lady from anything. I said, "Really, why?" She goes, "He doesn't care. He doesn't care if he fails. He plays all out. He's that guy. He's that kid."

My grandson Yale has always had this questioning nature. He's all boy. When I had my prostate cancer surgery, I had a catheter. This is not revelatory. Nobody gets this.

So the boys come over, and I've got a bag hanging on my knee. Brayden comes up, and he's going, "Oh, Papa, are you okay? Oh!" And Yale's going, "Well, how does that hang in there? How does that work? And who put that in?" I said, "Okay, go away."

So that's Yale. Haley sent me this the other day. Yale wrote it for school: "My brother Brayden is more precious than gold. One, he is so nice to me. Two, he helps me in the bad times. Three, he plays hockey with me. Four, he loves me. Five, he is an amazing baseball player. Six, he cares for me. I love him so much."

Now I told Haley, better laminate that baby, because you're going to need it in about a week when they're beating each other with a hockey stick. But I read it, and if you're a parent or a grandparent, that's what you want. But there's a line in there that's really interesting from a nine-year-old: "He helps me in the bad times."

What bad times? I mean, Yale's biggest problem is if he doesn't get enough cookies. Here is what I want you to see. Everybody has these trials, and they're kind of age-graded, as God brings them. There's a lot of lessons in there. I was thinking I could exegete those whole six points.

The Need for Community in Trials

In trials or difficulties, you need people around you. I read this sentence the other day, and I'm not sure I haven't thought it through completely, so I shouldn't be test-driving it now. But the sentence caught my eye: "Fierce independence is a secular virtue."

This independent, "I'll fix it, go it alone" mentality—the Christian faith comes exactly the opposite of it. I need community. And I really need it in times of trials. And God is saying to you, "Here you go, it's going to be okay."

Perfect Endurance and Spiritual Maturity

Now let's take our time and work verse four through eight and pull out the big points. "And let endurance"—so this endurance that the trials produce—"have its perfect result." Perfect means mature. "So you may be mature, complete. You lack nothing."

Everything you have that you truly ultimately need, you have in God.

Wisdom in the Context of Trials

Verse five, again, if you're kind of a little bit familiar with scripture, you've had verse five somewhere in your life: "If anyone lacks wisdom, let Him ask God and He gives it generously without reproach, it'll be given to Him. But He must ask in faith without doubting. For the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven, tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that He will receive anything from the Lord. He's double-minded."

But on verse five, if anybody lacks wisdom, let Him ask. I've sat in hundreds of church meetings where somebody will say, "Well, before we begin, let's pray." And they'll say, "Bob, you pray." And Bob will inevitably say, "Father, you tell us if we lack wisdom, all we need to do is ask." He's praying this verse. "We want wisdom."

When we get to chapter three of James, He's going to provide us a short discourse on wisdom. He's going to sort it out. It's very interesting.

What I think and what I wrote, and I have it highlighted on my sheet, I wrote "verse five, context, context, context." The wisdom I'm asking for—okay, big point. This is a big, big, big point. The wisdom that I need is in the midst of the trials.

The Trap of Self-Absorption

I'm in these trials, these challenges, these difficulties, and I start to get in them and I become self-absorbed. I decided on Monday that I'm not going to talk in my conversations with people about three things. I'm not going to talk about how I feel, I'm not going to talk about weather, and I'm not going to talk about sports.

Now, here's what I found Monday afternoon. There's not much left after that. All that's left is Trump and the Democrats, and that was—I'd rather talk about the weather.

One of the things I've noticed, and I do it, and I know I'm doing it, is you start talking about how you feel, and it starts this whole process of being self-absorbed. If you're hurting, if you're somebody that's sick, and people know you're sick, generally you all know that I'm sick, and so you ask, "How are you feeling?" The discipline on my part has to be, "Fine, thank you," and go on to the next thing.

But when you say, "How are you feeling?" or you hang around, you get old people together, and it starts with, "How do you feel?" "Just had the test. My PSA is four." "Four? Mine's seven." "Well, when I had mine, mine was 39." I had like the Trump card of everybody.

A guy said, "You know, I heard you had heart surgery." "Yeah, I did." "Transplant?" I said, "No, no, no." He said, "What did they do?" I said, "Well, it's open heart surgery." "Oh, did they replace? How many?" "Four." "Four? I had six. I wouldn't even go in for four. I wouldn't even mess around. I don't want to hassle with the co-pay for four."

Well, this becomes very self-absorbed. So when the project is going bad, when the marriage is going bad—and I'm not saying don't talk about it—but it just becomes this suck hole. You can't get out of it. And you become identified by the problem.

Wisdom to See Beyond Circumstances

I want wisdom. I got to somehow see. I got to get above and beyond the circumstances surrounding this issue.

I've always said that I have a really low pain tolerance. But here's what I've discovered. I actually have a pretty high pain tolerance if I can understand the reason for the pain. If I understand this is what we're doing.

The guys that I admire are the guys that are out running and training. And I'll say, "Are you training for something?" And they'll say, "No." How do you do that? How do you push yourself in that?

But in the midst of the trial, I need to see God's doing something. I need wisdom. I don't want to come with the clenched fist. I read this and somehow mistakenly think He's saying you can never ask why. He's not saying that when He talks about being double-minded. He's saying there's a difference.

There's a difference between saying, "Why are you doing this, God? If you really love me, why would you do that?" That's very different than saying, "God, I know you love me. And I know you care for me. But I don't understand why we're going through this. I don't understand, and this gets really big, why you would allow it or maybe even cause it."

So that ultimate picture of sacrifice and suffering and hardship is Job. Job, who's getting advice from everybody, finally gets advice, "curse God and die." And Job says, "No, I'm going to power through this." But Job has a little point. I talk about this often on Job's greatest hits list. He has a little point in there where he's had enough. And he said, "God, I want to ask you a question." And he's getting ready to drop the bomb on God. And God said, "Okay, Job, you remember that for a second because I want to ask you a question. Where were you when I hung the stars? Where do we keep the snow? How does the ocean know when to stop?" And He's got pages of these questions. And then He says, "All right, Job, what was it?" And Job goes, "You know what? I'm going to email you. Now's not a good time."

At the end of that book, and I'm pulling it out of here, I think it's chapter 42, verse 6, 7, 8, Job makes this statement. He's reviewing all this life of horrific trials. And he says, "Before I heard about you, now I've seen you." I can hear about God's love. It's like the email I wrote, that God has purpose. Even in a Parkinson's disease, I can hear about that. But until I'm in it, I haven't seen it. It's not about me having a testimony to encourage others. That's part of it. It's about me seeing the depth of God's love for me.

Seeing God's Love Through Trials

And ultimately, it becomes this. God loves me so much that He causes or allows these trials for my good, for His glory. So what's God's will? Well, He wants me to know Him. He wants me to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

We had this discussion the other day in a meeting about being filled with the Holy Spirit. What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? In Ephesians 5, Paul writes, "Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit." And I've always grabbed that as my imagery and go, what's it mean when I'm drunk with wine? Well, my behavior may be different. Some guys are fighters, some guys are lovers, some guys are dancers, some guys are reflective. I have a buddy who used to love to get drunk and go to the basement and he'd put on Johnny Cash at San Quentin and he'd just listen to that and sing. That was his deal.

Well, whatever the behavior is, to be drunk with wine, we even use this in the language, is to be under the influence of alcohol. To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be under the influence of the Holy Spirit so that I can count it joy, which is not natural, it's supernatural. It's not some extraordinarily big thing. To be filled with the Spirit is to begin to see the world as God sees it and act accordingly.

What God Desires for Us

God wants you to be sanctified. He wants you to be obedient. What He wants is wisdom. We're told in Proverbs 1 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear, not this trembling in terms of I'm afraid of punishment, but this reverential awe. Paul prays this in Ephesians 1:18: "I want the eyes of your understanding to be enlightened. I want you to know what is the hope of His calling. And you might know the riches of His glory." To know God. I can have wisdom. And I can pray for that.

And I don't think it's a one-time prayer. I've prayed the wisdom prayer and I'm gone. I'm praying every day. "God, I may not see this. God, get me above the circumstances."

God's Generous Response to Our Requests

He tells us something else about this request that we have. He says that if we ask, God will give it to us. He'll give it to us generously. And He'll give it to us without reproach. He'll give it to us generously, unconditionally. Without reproach. Reproach means to reprimand.

There was a great years and years ago now, an old Saturday Night Live skit where this guy drives up to an automated teller, a bank teller, and it's a machine. You don't see a person. And he puts this thing in. The guy said, "I see you're looking for $300. Thank you for banking with us." Out it comes. And then it comes up again. A little caption at the bottom says, "three days later." And the voice comes on and says, "I see you're looking for $300. My record shows I gave you $300 three days ago. What'd you do with that? Where'd that $300 go?"

When I come to God and say, "God, give me wisdom," He's not going to say, "Tom, you're overdrawn at the wisdom bank. I gave you wisdom three days ago." He wants to give me this wisdom over and over and over, like Job, over and over and over again.

Asking Without Doubting

But when I ask, look at verse 6, it's without doubting. The one who's doubting is blown all over. That man does not expect anything. He's double-minded. What is it that we're doubting there? Not the outcome, we're talking about God and who He is. We're talking about Him.

I put it on the bottom of your page, and that's kind of a little mantra. I'd scribble that in the front of the Bible or the back of the Bible or wherever you put your notes. That our hope rests in the character of God and the promises of God and the faithfulness of God and the sovereignty of God. I'm asking for wisdom in the midst of these trials because, God, I know Your character. That's why I want to study Him. I know who He is. And I know Your promises. And I know You're faithful. And I know You're in control.

The Challenge of Comforting the Unbeliever

I was at a funeral a week ago Monday. And the guy doing the funeral is a friend of mine. And he said, "I've never had this happen before. The gentleman who passed away was a believer. And all of his family were unbelievers. Every one of them. He was the only believer in the whole thing." And he said, "It's been very hard to meet with the family because the comfort that I would typically give them, they don't have a decoder for that. I'd say, oh, you know, Alan is with God. He'd believe that. He's in a better place. Here's what we know."

That promise of God. And so at the funeral, you heard these people. And I'm watching the family. And the family's just cringing because all these Christians are popping up, celebrating His life of service and celebrating the fact that He's in heaven. The gentleman's eldest son got up and made an interesting comment. He said, "You guys have been so comforting over the last two weeks."

This guy went into the doctor with some pain. The doctor ran a test and came back and said, "You got three days to two weeks to live." So He wasn't dragging around a long time. It was something like eight days. He said, "You guys have been so encouraging over the last two weeks. Most people don't know how to talk about death, but you people know how to be comforting." And I thought, what do you need to see? There's a reason that they can talk about it and comfort it, because there's hope in the middle of that.

God Is at Work in Our Trials

In the middle, and this is what I want, in the hope, in the middle of those trials, is that God's at work. He didn't abandon me. He didn't get distracted with what's going on in North Korea. He's not over there going, "My bandwidth is seven billion people and we're about to exceed that number and I'm not going to be able to take care of you anymore. Just sit here. I'm still God, but some stuff's going to fall through the cracks."

He doesn't say that. He's saying, "I got it all under control. I can pray for wisdom. I got it under control."

Learning From Our Trials

Now, I'll give you some practical stuff. In the midst of the trials, I want to learn the lesson. If God's putting me in a trial, I don't want to go through this trial again to learn the same lesson again. I want to share the burden. That's 2 Corinthians 1. You and I have trials, difficulties, and suffer so we can comfort people with the comfort that we've experienced.

It's that difference between sympathy and empathy. I have a lot of people that are sympathetic to stuff I go through, but I find the conversation with them kind of hollow. They feel sorry for me. They don't mean it, but it's almost condescending. They feel sorry for you, but when you get that person that goes, "I know what you're feeling," there's something powerful with that. God's given you this feeling, this experience, this trial for a reason.

Understanding the Nature of Suffering

But just a couple of things to remember: suffering is common to humanity. "Man is born to trouble and surely as sparks fly upward" (Job 5:7). Some suffering you bring on yourself. I don't think you can say, "God, why would you give me a trial with this lung cancer?" if you're smoking cigarettes for 25 years. If you're big and fat and eating Twinkies and French fries and all of this stuff, I don't think you go to God and say, "Why'd you bring this diabetes on?"

Now, you got a little quiet there. There's some of this stuff that we cause ourselves. I mean, some of this suffering and pain, you just see it around you.

God's Purpose in Our Suffering

But that suffering can have a reason. Suffering is intended by God for our good—to develop our character and make us like Jesus. I came across a study a guy did the other day: "Lessons from Gethsemane." And I don't think I've ever seen this before. It was really good. From Jesus' suffering, what I can learn.

And then in this whole suffering thing, it's to bring about God's glory. It's John 9, the blind man. "Why is the man blind? Not because He sinned, but He might become a display case for the work of God."

God Hasn't Abandoned You

When you encounter suffering, which you will inevitably, God hasn't abandoned you. He's actually doing extra work in your life at that point. And I know how that can sound. And if you're cynical and you're here, you're going, "That's a little mumbo jumbo." Well, I don't know about that part. All I know is it's true.

When you see God work most is in those times of pain and suffering and hurt where you think, "I can't go another step." And He said, "You know what? That's right. But Me in you, we can finish this whole journey." So we pick up right there next week.

Father, thank You for this. And just as we read in the Phillips paraphrase, we want to take these hardships of life and welcome them. Not resist them as intruders, but welcome them as friends because You're working in the midst of that. God, it's a bold prayer, but we say, have Your way in us. And part of that includes suffering and pain and hardship. Remind us that everyone around us has suffering and pain and You're at work in the midst of it. God, give us wisdom—the ability to see things as You see them. And then the courage to act accordingly. We pray that to You. In Jesus' name, Amen.