Count It All Joy
Tom Shrader examines James 1:2-4, explaining that believers should consider trials as joy because God uses them to test and mature faith. He emphasizes that trials include both negative circumstances and unexpected prosperity, as both can reveal our dependence on God. The key is knowing that God uses all trials to produce endurance and spiritual maturity.
“What you know trumps what you feel, because when the trials come, you will feel one thing, and he says, if you don't know that this is for your own good and God's glory, if you don't know that, you're never gonna be able to count it all joy.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: James (2011)
Recorded: 2011
Duration: 49 min
Themes: joy, trials, suffering, endurance, faith, maturity, testing, perseverance, facing hardship, struggling with difficulties, new believer, going through trials, feeling overwhelmed, seeking purpose in pain, young adult, mentor
Scripture: James 1:1-4, Matthew 1:25, Psalm 17:3, Psalm 26:2, Psalm 139, Lamentations 3:40, 2 Corinthians 13:5
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual maturity, faith testing, divine sovereignty, trials and tribulation, christian growth, perfection, completeness
Full Transcript
You can open your Bibles to the book of James. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and we'll bring you one. You can go to the New Testament, page 177. Today we're looking at the book of James, verses one, two, three, and four.
This is the first time, and it's more of a discipline for me, that all three campuses will be studying the same material. We won't necessarily present it the same way because we'll have different presenters, but we'll be studying the same material. The study guide will give you the teaching schedule in terms of what we'll cover for each of the weeks. We're committed to that now, and I think that's probably overall a really good thing.
Today in Arcadia, today in Tempe, and today here, all of the campuses will be studying the same section. Our desire is that all the campuses, at least for now, every week be studying the same section. This is anecdotal, but I just had two different stories this week of people—one who was from Praxis, one from East Valley—working in the same office. It didn't really connect as brothers and sisters until it was Redemption Church. They were just talking about how already this week, within the office, it's made a difference. There's been more conversations. They're talking about starting a Bible study. Those are what we want.
The Vision for Unity
One of the big desires is that when we hit Monday morning, we've got five or six thousand people on message, on mission. You'll be able to say, "We have these people up in Scottsdale or mid-Phoenix, and we've just never really known where to tell them to go to church. Well, go on the Redemption website, and you'll find the Arcadia campus." This is the very tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg of what we hope God will do in the midst of that.
James, chapter one, and we're looking at verses one through four. Let me read them to you: "James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes who are dispersed abroad, greetings. Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."
Let me just read you the J.B. Phillips paraphrase of verses two, three, and four. This will help enrich our examination of this. Phillips paraphrases the verses this way: "When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives, my brothers, don't resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends. Realize that they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance. But let the process go on until all that endurance is fully developed, and you will have become men of mature character with a right sort of independence."
Understanding Verse Four
This morning in first hour, I don't know if I ever got really to verse four, so let me make some comments on it because to me it's part of it, but we'll pick it up more next week. I like the Phillips paraphrase. Let this process, this process of trials going on and on, let this process go on until that endurance is fully developed, and you'll become people of mature character with the right sort of independence.
What I think he's saying there is you'll be mature in your Christian character. In that context, what will happen is it's not that you will be detached from the world, but you will have the world and the things of the world in their right perspective. That includes all the things we typically think of in the course of that discussion, plus trials and temptations and difficulties. If I don't get there this week, we'll certainly pull it into what we look at next week. I think next week we'll look at verses five through twelve.
The Author: James
It begins with the author identifying himself. His name is James. I'm not going to go deep into this just timing-wise. There's three or four options. Most scholars agree that this is James, the half-brother of Jesus. When you say half-brother of Jesus, that really raises lots of red flags for people, so I'll come back to it in a second.
This is, we believe, chronologically, the first book written in the New Testament. I don't know about you, but when I became a Christian and I picked up the Bible, especially the New Testament, when I started to read it, I assumed it was written in chronological order. Matthew, then Mark, then Luke—I just assumed that because it makes sense with Revelation at the end. Well, that's not true. The first book we think, if we were to date the books of the New Testament, the first book written somewhere between 44 and 49 AD is the book of James, the one we have before us.
The Nature of This Book
Let me just read you a couple of comments from different authors. One makes this observation: "Few books of the New Testament are better known or more often quoted than James. It's probably one of the two or three most popular books of the New Testament." That doesn't necessarily mean, by the way, that it's a popular book or one we're drawn to with some level of affinity.
Martin Luther hated the book of James—and that may be too strong of language, but by the end of his life, he seemed to embrace it more, but he rejected it often. He didn't focus there. I think it's kind of a product of his times. He was beating his brains in with the book of Romans at the time.
Speaking about this whole process, James' voice writes this: "James talks about wealth, how to use it, gossip, hypocrisy, how we choose our friends, and other such very practical things. We find ourselves saying, I don't like that. Give me a good lecture on theology. Teach me about grace or justification. Better yet, let's discuss eschatology. Those subjects are interesting."
But when you talk about who my friends should be, what I should do with my mouth, what I should do with my disposable income, you're meddling where you shouldn't. And that's what James does. It's a very practical book. When we get to chapter three, it's the longest contiguous passage we have in all of Scripture dealing with the tongue. He talks a lot about interpersonal relationships. He talks about true religion. He talks a lot about works, and by that, not salvation by works, but what we should be working our way through.
I think Boyce's comment is absolutely dead on, especially if you're in a good church. Now, I'm going to tip my hand in the discussion. I believe that Redemption is a good church, and part of what makes a church, for me, a good church, at its core, is do you teach Bible? I'm not saying I'm necessarily a good Bible teacher. I'm on record. I think I'm a solid five or maybe, some days I get up to a six. I really believe that. I'm a solid five or six. But even a solid five or six who's trying is going to attract a certain group of people, not just that person, but that church. So you get a reputation for that, and you earnestly desire that.
The Danger of Deep Study Without Action
You want to dig deep. I'm all down with deep, but we need to be very careful. Larry Fitzgerald goes deep. When we say going deep, I want to make sure it's not an excuse to study more and do nothing. Because we can study and study and study, and we should. Just so you know, it may not be obvious, I do. I read a lot, I study a lot, I spend time, various levels of time, on my own in the Word, just for my own soul. Studying is just a constant part of what I have to do. On a normal week, I teach seven times. I teach two different lessons at least. I taught yesterday morning, so I need to study, I'm for that.
But it can easily be, and it's very tempting, by the way, to study for the sake of study and never get to do, and even the do becomes systematic rather than organic. So I spend a lot of time thinking about all of it rather than doing it. And obviously, James goes right after that in chapter one, verse 22, when he says, "Prove yourselves to be doers of the Word, not merely hearers of the Word." So that's the charge, because there's a pushback going, I don't know, we're going to talk about a lot of these tough issues. I don't know if I want that.
The Problem James Addresses
Again, another author writes this: the problem James introduces is the problem we face when things don't go the way we'd like them to go or the way we've planned. It's a problem when we find ourselves saying, why did this go wrong for me? Why did God let this happen? And here's the question, why did God let it happen to me? Well James just head-on battles this.
Now look at this, James identifies himself, but not as a brother of Christ, though we're pretty convinced that's the James that wrote this. If you're from a Catholic background, I am Catholic, grade school, high school, college, so you come to faith, and if you know much about what the Catholic Church teaches, they teach the perpetual virginity of Mary. The perpetual virginity of Mary. And we think from Scripture, and I'm not going to give you a long discourse on this, but we think pretty clearly that Scripture speaks in Matthew chapter 1 verse 25, Joseph kept her a virgin until she gave birth. We are introduced in Matthew, in Luke's Gospel, to Jesus' brothers and sisters. So this is one of those brothers, James.
Who James Was
Let me say a couple other things about James. He was one of the pillars of the early church. He was known, his nickname, and it sounds derogatory, but it was actually a compliment, as old camel knees, because his knees were distorted from spending hours in prayer. So I say all that to drive home that I'm going to identify a characteristic of James that doesn't necessarily evidence itself at a casual reading, but boy, when you look at it, it makes total sense.
James, and now he identifies himself, is a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. So he says, I'm James, I'm a bondservant. A bondservant is one who was a slave, who was utterly, completely dependent upon and loyal to his master.
What James Doesn't Say
So there's a lot about James we learn in what he doesn't say. He doesn't say, James, you might not know me, but I'll bet you know my brother. You might not know me, but I'll bet you know mom. I don't know if you heard, but I'm one of the pillars of the church. Oh, I'm sure you noticed my knees. They're from praying. He doesn't do any of that. He identifies himself as James, and not just James the free man, I'm James the slave. I'm enslaved too, utterly dependent upon. I've given up my personal freedom for serving my master.
And that's really the description of all of us, right? We're all slaves. The question is, who are we going to enslave ourselves to? Nobody can serve two masters. You can't serve God, and the things of God, and the world, and the things of the world. So James tells us, we learn a lot about James just in that little phrase. James a bondservant. Who's he a bondservant of?
But I think even that sentence is evidence of the deity of Christ. Many of you have siblings. Can you imagine yourself saying, "Here you go, I'm Tom, slave to my brother Dan"? I think we learn a lot about the deity of Christ right there. I don't need to get to that to prove His deity, but to me there's an inference there, at least interesting.
To the twelve tribes—that's frequently a New Testament term that would be used to describe the nation of Israel—and the twelve tribes are dispersed abroad. That would be any place outside of Palestine. So his audience primarily is Jewish believers who were scattered. Scattered probably for two reasons. I'll give you one. I think the second one's the bigger one.
One is just obedience to what they heard. Jesus says, "I want you to go and make disciples." So in obedience to that, they were going and making disciples. I think it's most likely the latter, but they were under intense persecution. Once they came to Christ, there would be intense persecution. There would be persecution at the marketplace, because they couldn't transact business the way they used to—the Jews wouldn't do business with them anymore. There would be relational family persecutions, because they wouldn't have relationships with them anymore.
Writing to Refugees in Need
So he's writing to people who are refugees, who were scattered. Again, the idea of refugees. They're needy. Think Haiti. They need food and shelter. They're poor, and even wealth that they have is not something that's accessible. It's not liquid. They can't go to an ATM.
These are people who—and probably more difficult in that day and age, culturally—to travel and intermix and fit in than it would be now. You can move from here to Washington. We had a nurse last night. Susan's in the hospital, and I mentioned that because you're always asking, and always figure out what to do. We were there for New Year's Eve, and we were there for three or four days, and came home, and then she went back in. So she'll probably be out today or tomorrow.
Please, the only thing we need, and I mean this from you, is prayer. She's not looking for visitors, and I'm not looking for food. I mean, this is important. Every time she gets sick, I gain weight. Because you bring—think about it. She's sick. She doesn't eat. You bring food, and it's always good. No one needs it but me. So really, honestly, I give you that information, partly because it really relates to the discussion today, and so you can be praying about it.
So we're there, and I had a nurse last night, and Susan Miller and I were talking about something. She said, "I think that girl's from New Jersey." I said, "I don't know." Anyway, she's from Chicago. But you just go. She's from Chicago. You come here, take the board. You're in great shape. You don't just move from Palestine to Egypt in that day and age and just fit in. Probably not even now. But even then, you see that? This is a very hard road for them.
The Greeting and Main Message
So it makes total sense. He says, "Greetings." That's the end of the first verse. Greetings. That's like saying, "How you doing? What's new?" Just a common greeting.
Now he gets into the meat of this. "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance." That first word, that idea of consider, is to think about, to deliberate. It's not casual. It's an imperative. "I want you to consider this. Think about it." You're going to have to consider and think about it, because I'm going to ask you to do something that's not natural, that's counterintuitive. So think about this: "Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials."
Let me take out that little parenthetical insert. He says, "my brethren." He does it 15 or 16 times in this little five-chapter book. He uses the phrase "my brethren," "my beloved brethren"—I think he used that phrase three or four times. He's talking to people with whom he feels a personal kinship, a closeness, a love, an affection.
The Counterintuitive Command
So he's writing to these people, dispersed abroad, likely under duress, under strain, and he's giving them some information that on the surface makes no sense. Your natural instinct is not to be joyful when trials come. So we want to focus. We have about 25 minutes. We want to really grind this. I think this is applicable to all of us for some very obvious reasons.
Look at the second part of verse 2. For a second I'm going to let you—I'll read it, and you just draw some really practical application and observations out of it. "Consider it all joy, my brethren"—so we're done with that. He wants you to be joyful. Here's when you're to be joyful: "when you encounter various trials."
Now from just reading that phrase, we quickly learn some stuff. He's talking about trials. He modifies that with the word "various." Here's where the language is helpful. Because "various" to us might mean more than one. But if he's saying more than one, he would have said "many." "Various," in the Greek, the idea here is multi-colored. Various meaning different shapes and sizes. Different timing. And also understanding the trials have a personal kind of application. So what might be a trial for you might not necessarily be one for me. What could be a huge trial for me—a mountain, Mount Everest—might be a speed bump to you.
The Inevitability of Trials
But perhaps for our discussion anyway, the most important word to grab is that first one: "when." So again, let's see what he doesn't write. He doesn't say, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, if you encounter trials." He says, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter multi-colored trials."
So the "when" brings the inevitability to it. What he's saying is all of life has with it this concept of trials, and you aren't exempt from them. If you think you're a Christian, therefore exempt from trials, that's not true.
Or if you think as a Christian, you may have them or may not, that's not true. And this is not just a New Testament concept. Psalm 17 verse three: "Thou hast tried my heart, thou hast tested me." Even the psalmist himself asks God to do this. "Examine me," Psalm 26 says. "Oh Lord, try me, test my mind, test my heart." Psalm 139: "Search me, oh Lord, know my heart." And then there's a call to us in Lamentations 3:40: "Let us examine and probe our ways."
Even testing our faith, that's what Paul says. 2 Corinthians chapter 13 verse five: "Test yourself to see if you're in the faith, examine yourselves." So there's this testing, it's inevitable. Here it comes, whether you like it or not. You're going to encounter, literally fall into, these trials. By the way, usually the context here is unexpected. So you can expect the trial, you just know it's coming. You're just not sure what it's going to be or when it's going to get here. So count it joy when you fall into these multicolored, many shapes, many sizes trials.
Expanding Our Understanding of Trials
Now let me camp on that a second. Virtually every author that I read, and almost everybody I know who teaches this, talks about trials in what we would perceive to be a negative context. So this is just an example, I won't give you his name, just one author writes this: "Whether the trial begins as a financial problem or a physical illness or a disappointment, criticism, fear, or persecution, it's our attitude about it and response to it that reflects our spiritual condition." Put a T by that, that's true. But look what he called trials: begins with financial problems or physical problems or disappointments or criticisms or fear or persecution.
All of those are trials, but when I say trial, your tendency is to think something negative. So if I say you're going to be tried tomorrow, you would think here comes a financial problem, one of the kids is going to get sick. You know what I'm saying there? Here's what I want to add to that bouquet of multicolored trials: things we perceive to be good. See here's what I believe, and by the way, I believe many people failed it, is that for a long time, from let's say roughly 2000 to 2007 or eight, many of you experienced the trial of prosperity.
It's just as big a trial when the scan comes back negative as when it comes back and says you have a spot. It's just as big a trial when the deal closes as when the deal blows. Well, let me camp on that. It's just as big a trial when you get the check as when you don't. In fact, here's my observation, and I will appeal to the author Thomas Carlyle when he says for every hundred people who can pass the test of adversity, there's one who can pass the test of prosperity.
The Challenge of Prosperity vs. Adversity
When you get the check and the deal makes, you don't find yourself on your knees thinking you need a savior and a God. You may acknowledge Him. You may even say, "God, thank you that the deal made," but there's not a deep passion for Him in that, rarely. But there's a deep passion among the most dispassionate person when the deal blows. You go to the doctor, and the doctor said everything's fine. You might have a praise Jesus moment, but it passes quickly.
But if you go to the doctor, and that doctor said it's not fine and it is serious, and here's what's going to happen. You're going to have, by and large, a deep, ongoing, personal, intimate discourse with Him. See that? That's what I say about these trials. Boy, don't you do yourself the disservice of thinking it's only bad things. It's things that we might call good that God uses in our life. And you know what? All it does is prove what we know, and that is we don't naturally find ourselves dependent upon Him.
Remember that original J.B. Phillips? That J.B. Phillips paraphrase when he talks about maturity? "Let the process go on until that endurance is fully developed, and you will find you've become people of mature character with the right sort of independence." So even in our child-rearing concept. When Susan and I decided we had to raise kids, we need techniques, and we need help. But our overarching strategy with our girls was to make them independent of us, but dependent upon God.
So what trials help us do is achieve a level of maturity when there is more and more an independence. In other words, my attitude, my motivation, my day-to-day mindset isn't driven by whether the deal makes or blows, but it's driven by my intimacy with Him. Now all of that is counterintuitive, and all of it is not natural. It's not natural to say it's joyful in the midst of pain.
The Key Word: Knowing
That's why He gives us what to me, and again, it's me, the key word in this whole verse two and three, and even four. The key word is the first word of verse three: knowing. If I don't know this, that the testing of my faith produces endurance, if I don't know that, I'm never going to find the joy in it, because all I'm going to see is the test. So consider it all joy, my brother, when you encounter various trials, because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance. So there's something I need to know.
Here's the bumper sticker, here's the phrase: What you know trumps what you feel, because when the trials come, you will feel one thing. And He says, if you don't know that this is for your own good and God's glory, if you don't know that, you're never going to be able to count it all joy.
Now I get it, by the way. I get it. In the trial comes. That doesn't mean instantaneously. Sometimes it takes a day or a week or a month. Sometimes it takes time to process. The phrase I use is to get your breath. But when you get settled down, you understand God's being used in this.
I was having dinner last night with Haley. So we were at the hospital, and we were just passing. I was going to leave, and she was going to stay for a while. And I was having dinner with Haley. So we were downstairs in the cafeteria, and we were talking, and I was listening to her, and she was talking about some stuff she's got to do this week, and some things she's got going on.
She said, "Gosh, this is just really weird because there's just stuff, and I wanted to do this and have this happen and move this around. This doesn't seem like the right timing. This doesn't seem like a good thing. This just really, in a lot of ways, is just not the best for me." And then she said, "But here's what I know. It's so comforting to know that this is exactly God's timing on this."
That's where you want to get. By the way, that's why maturity is not related to age. She's 29, and there are many of you who are 59. Some of you look 109, and yet still don't get this. Now, does she live in that world 24-7? No, but that's the product of good theology applied in a person's heart. That's the Spirit of God applying the Word of God to her heart.
The Purpose of Testing
Count it all joy when you encounter various trials. The testing of your faith produces endurance. The word that's translated "trials" and the word that's translated "testing" are two different words that basically have the same idea. It's to prove something. The testing is to assess. It's the idea of proving, taking something to see if it's the real thing.
A test comes into our life, and what God's doing—here you go—in come the events in our life. When we get to verse 13 and following, we'll see the tempting. Satan may use an event to tempt us. God's going to use it to test us. It's really, in essence, the idea that's translated there: count it all joy when you encounter various trials. That word "trials" is essentially a neutral statement. It's not positive or negative. Here are these events, and they're designed to show you, the church, your friends, the world, who you really are, what you're really made of.
You've all had that experience. Something will come into your life, be a little bitty thing, and you just blow it. All of a sudden, this little bitty thing becomes a big thing, and the spiritual giant you thought you were, you were really a spiritual midget. Sometimes, something will come into your life, and you'll be at the end of it and go, "I had no idea that I could have handled that," but you did. That's God revealing to you.
God Uses Trials for Good
In the whole process of trials and suffering, do they have a purpose? Sure they do, and God uses them in a variety of ways. You can take it and apply that in your own life. Take an incident from your life, and watch how God used something that, on the surface, we would say is negative, and He's used it in a very positive way.
I know many, many people who've been through horrific things, who at the end would say, "I never want to go through it again. I never would have chosen to go through this, but I wouldn't trade the experience for the world, because I learned something in the middle." That's what He's talking about here.
The Authenticity Test
So, it's the idea of testing. I have a friend who works for Ping Golf, and one of the things he spends a lot of time doing is fighting patents internationally and others, because you can make a product that's a knockoff. Some are easy to spot. If you get a driver, a Ping driver, and it's spelled P-H-I-N-G, probably not the real thing. But some of these, you have to hit them a time or two. Some of them, the difference is so subtle. It's not a cosmetic difference, it's a structural difference. It's a material difference.
One of my all-time favorite shows—and by that I mean, I don't watch it every week, but when it's on, if I don't have a lot going on, I'll always check it out—is Antiques Roadshow. I love Antiques Roadshow, because essentially what Antiques Roadshow is about is really trying to validate or confirm not just the value of an article, though that's what the people are all about, though they won't admit it, but about the authenticity of an article.
The highest valued thing I ever saw on Antiques Roadshow one day—it's a typical Saturday, and I had a call, and I was channel surfing, because I hit the replay button. I said, "Suze, you gotta see this." A guy came in with a rug, a rug blanket, and he was actually using it as a throw blanket on their couch. It was a blanket about the size of this rug, and a quarter of it was navy, a quarter of it on the other side was navy, 50% in the middle was white. He put this up, and I'm not kidding you, I'm looking at this thing going, "Wow, this is going to be great, because this thing can't be worth $1.19. I've seen a hundred of these at Walmart."
So he's all done, and he said, "The value of this, I would estimate at auction, about $500,000," and it was a Navajo rug made by somebody. Well, those aren't my favorite moments.
When Authenticity Disappoints
My favorite moments are when the guy comes in with a document, and it's all wrapped up, and he'll bring it in carefully, and he'll set it down. The appraiser will go, "Where did you get this?" "Well, from my grandfather's father's aunt's sister." "What is it?" "Well, it's a document, and it's signed A. Lincoln."
He said, "Well, what can you tell me about it?" And he said, "Well, I really can't tell you much more than that. My grandparents lived in Springfield, Illinois." "Okay. Well," he said, "clearly it's a document, and I can tell you from spending a little time here it's a document that I would date somewhere around 1857, 1858, and it's from Springfield, Illinois, and I don't know if you noticed it or not, but it's signed by A. Lincoln."
"Yes, I did." "What do you think it's worth?" "Oh, I have no idea. I'm just really searching for insurance purposes." And he said, "Well, I can tell you, it's interesting, because we did our research. This A. Lincoln is actually Albert Lincoln, who ran a drugstore in Springfield, Illinois. And this was some papers and a letter that he signed."
"Oh, oh, that's okay, because it really didn't matter. The value is that it came from my grandparents."
That's my favorite—I love them. I mean, those are my favorite moments. Well, we are establishing authenticity, and the authenticity is revealed, along with value and all that goes with it. That's all He's saying to us right here. The testing of your faith will allow us to discover if what you have is the real thing.
Now, let me give you a wrap. I'm going to tell you in a second how to respond to this, but I want you to get the inevitability of it. R.C. Sproul writes, "To remove God from human suffering is to quit the pilgrimage of faith. God majors in suffering. He displays Himself in holy involvement in all suffering." Rather than be removed from our suffering, it's those circumstances that allow us to see God work.
I'm paraphrasing Martin Luther, but he basically said, you can't begin to understand hope until you understand hopelessness.
How to Respond to Suffering
Let me give you five, six, seven, eight things in terms of suffering—when they come, how to respond. Number one is what we've already talked about, and that is don't be surprised by suffering. I'm stunned at how many times I've said it and how many people say yes, and then in reality, when hard things come, we really are surprised. Because in our minds, I'm going, I'm a child of the king. Why would He do this to me?
Well, He's going to allow suffering in your life. He may want you to suffer. I don't get very upset about too many things, but the health and wealth prosperity gospel really bothers me. Because to think that the Bible teaches that God only wants you healthy and wealthy is foolish. It's to deny what the scripture says. It's to deny the example of the apostle Paul, who's tortured all his life by what he identifies as a thorn in the flesh and frequently finds himself in terrible financial conditions in the bowels of a prison, but saying that's all right, because it's for the good of the gospel.
So don't be surprised by this, and I will tell you what you won't hear tomorrow night on Christian television. God may want you sick and poor.
Commit Yourself to the Lord
There's a second thing. When suffering comes, commit yourself to the Lord. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and don't lean on your own understanding. Always acknowledge Him, and He'll help you understand some of this.
It takes that moment, not just that initial moment, but that ongoing moment, because you wear down. And again, I've been with her for six years. Susan has, and it's really becoming more in the last four or five months than I've seen it prior. She is so sick of being sick, so tired of being tired.
So that little book—I've mentioned it to you. We've been Christians 30 years, and in 30 years, she's bought and people have given us dozens and dozens of daily devotionals, classics, and I know they're good. I'm not—there's not a criticism of it. But somewhere along the way, and now I don't remember how she got it, she ended up with a little book, a little daily devotional called Jesus Calling. I know there's some in the bookstore, because I bought about my 400th copy to give away.
She loves this book and I couldn't understand because I've never seen her like this. Her Bible's out every day—it has not been out. She said to me last night because I downloaded it onto my iPad and when I was there last night I said I can read today's to you, you can read it if you want. She said, oh I'm so far behind in that. But that just shows you how sick she is. Every day her Bible's out, her notebook's out, this book's out, and I thought why this book?
Well when you get in it, it's about the presence of God. Well it absolutely fits right where she is. Sometimes it doesn't feel like He's there but you have to commit yourself to Him and know that He will never disappoint you or forsake you.
You Don't Need to Understand Everything
Here's the third thing—you don't need to understand all this. Because I'll get this from people, most often from women who have husbands that don't believe. I get it. And they want them to know the faith. And they'll say you know my husband, the problem is he's so smart. He's just very smart and very analytical. And I find myself wanting to go, shazam, shazam. I'm so stupid. But it's like he's so smart.
Okay, I got it. The problem with being smart sometimes is you're smart—again it's you're smart—it gets in the way of your being dependent upon God. Not always. By the way, nor is the Christian faith counter-intellectual. Smartest man that America ever produced, Jonathan Edwards, would have obviously adhered to all the things we talk about, or certainly most of them.
Let me twist that a little bit. Don't be so arrogant to think that God owes you an answer or an explanation to everything He's doing and every question you have.
You're Not the Only One
Here's the fourth thing. Realize you aren't the only person who goes through this. My tendency—I'm talking about me now—my tendency is to look at something and say, boy I know people, but they've never really had it as deep as I have.
I honestly, and I might have to rethink the statement, but if I could invent a product, here's what I'd love to invent. I'd love to invent something that hooked up to my finger, then I could hook it up to your finger, somebody's finger, so I could understand what you're going through. Like the other day when Susan says she's hurting. I hurt so much. I'd give anything to be able to hook my finger to her finger so I could understand the pain.
So when somebody says to you, I have a headache or I have a migraine, well your only point of reference is your headache. So you get a headache and you take some Excedrin and it goes away or you power through it. When somebody says to me, I feel sick, well I can only go to this. And our tendency is to think whatever it is we're in, we're the only ones that's in it and it's never been this bad. That's not true.
Pray
Number five, pray. When I pray, you know this, I acknowledge that God, number one, can do something about this and that He cares about it. He controls things. And so often it aligns my will with His, not His with mine.
In the midst of this trial, number six, thank God for it. Because you know that He's doing it for your good and His glory. The testing of our faith produces endurance. Our desire is to have endurance, that patience, that long-suffering. And remember that paraphrase from Phillips? It's to go through that process so we come out with patience, so we go through it again. It's a process. We go through it again and again and again.
The Picture of Spiritual Aerobics
It's the picture of physical aerobics. For me, I'm a stress eater. I don't know that I'm under a lot of stress right now. I'm just tired. I've got a lot going on, and again, this is not—Susan at this point would go, could you make this about somebody other than you? My point is, I'm just trying to let you know that I'm like you.
We've got figuring out Redemption Church, figuring out Susan, figuring out life. When I get stressed, I tend to be a stress eater. In the last three or four weeks, for a variety of reasons, beginning a month ago, I haven't hardly been to the gym. So here you go, a stress eater who doesn't go to the gym—that's not a good combination to be in.
He's saying, listen, I want you to thank God in the midst of all of these things and find the joy in it. Now here's what I know. When I go to the gym and I work out, even if I'm tired, when I come out, I feel better. I get more energy. That's the phenomena of physical aerobics.
What He's saying is, there's a phenomena of spiritual aerobics—get the connection—and it's trials. Though it doesn't make sense, the more you go through, the stronger you get, because you see God's faithfulness each time. As the trial comes, you begin to see Him work in it. So what He says, and the reason to be thankful for it is, count it all joy when you encounter various trials, because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance, verse 4, and it will mature you. When you say, I want endurance and maturity, He's saying, okay, trials are what do that.
Don't Be a Martyr
Number seven, don't be a martyr. Don't suffer needlessly. Don't go marching out here saying, boy, I'm supposed to suffer. How can I suffer today? Trust me, be patient, it will find you. I don't need to pursue this.
Don't suffer needlessly. Let me give you something I wrote, and then something that Larry wrote. This summarizes what I'm saying. I wrote this: God has structured and organized our lives to include suffering and difficulties. Our mission is not to stop the suffering prematurely, because that's our flinch. First thing, how do I get rid of that? Not to stop the suffering prematurely, but to first find Him in the midst of our hurt and our pain.
Also, we need to avoid being consumed in the adversity, and obsessed with discovering relief, and resisting the ever-present temptation to be absorbed in self-pity. So now the suffering comes: oh, what about me, what about me, what about me? So it's not to stop it prematurely. It's not to become absorbed in what about me, but to discover what God's doing to me, in me, and through me. He structured our lives to include that.
A Better Perspective on Suffering
Larry Wright has said it this way, and this is about 500 times better than anything I could say. He said, "I'd rather suffer obediently than prosper disobediently, because I know my obedient suffering is as temporary as my disobedient prospering." See, he's painting the picture. I'd rather suffer obediently—so he's comparing here obedient suffering with disobedient prospering. I'd rather suffer obediently than prosper disobediently. Why? Because I know my obedient suffering is as temporary—there's the key word—as my disobedient prospering.
This happened this morning, this is great. This is like one of those great moments for me. There's a guy coming in, right out here, at about 8:15. He's got a kid that he's got wrapped in his jacket, he's got a kid here, he's got a bag, looks like grapes of wrath, coming on campus. So I said to him, because I'm not trying to be rude, but I need to get in here, I said, hey man, you look like you're really busy, look like there's a lot going on, got a lot of stuff. Here's what he said to me: "It can only last a lifetime." I like that, don't know where he heard it, but I like that a lot.
If you're in the conference center, Neil's gonna be there in just a second to adjourn you here in the chapel. Neil's gonna lead us now in communion, then the band close our time with worship. Let's pray together.
Father, thank You for this amazing truth. So practical, we could put it to work in our lives today. We will encounter these trials, we count them as joy, we can respond supernaturally because Your Spirit works in our life. God, will You do that work, we ask it in Christ's name, amen.