The Testing of Our Faith
Posted by Isaac Butterworth | Filed under Sermons
James writes, ‘Whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy.’ On the surface, this sounds simplistic and unrealistic. How can we be expected to be joyful about the pain we’re going through? But James is not being impractical here. Not in the least. He wants us to understand that how we experience our suffering depends on the way we perceive it, how we process it in our minds.”
James 1:2-18 (NRSV)
2 My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; 4 and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.
5 If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. 6 But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; 7,8 for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.
9 Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, 10 and the rich in being brought low, because the rich will disappear like a flower in the field. 11 For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the field; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. It is the same way with the rich; in the midst of a busy life, they will wither away.
12 Blessed is anyone who endures temptation. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. 13 No one, when tempted, should say, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. 14 But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; 15 then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved.
17 Ever generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
TRIALS ARE INEVITABLE. There is no one, I suppose, who goes through life unscathed by one form of adversity or another. We’re all alike in this regard. But we’re not all alike in how we experience our troubles – how we understand them and how we let them shape us as people. For some of us, the outcome will be one of bitterness and resentment. We may come to hate life and, perhaps, other people and even God because of our afflictions. That will be the case for some of us. But others among us will be tempered by our difficulties, and the outcome will be a sweeter faith, a stronger character, and a deeper intimacy with God. And, whichever it is – whether we become bitter or better – it will be because of the way we think about our problems.
This is actually what James says in verse 2, where he writes, “Whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy.” On the surface, this sounds simplistic and unrealistic. How can we be expected to be joyful about the pain we’re going through? But James is not being impractical here. Not in the least. He wants us to understand that how we experience our suffering depends on the way we perceive it, how we process it in our minds. The word “consider” in verse 2 has to do with how we think, how we make judgments about the facts before us, and I guess what I want to emphasize is that it has nothing to do with how we feel. I can’t imagine that anybody in the midst of trying circumstances would feel good about what they’re going through. But if we have the right mind about our troubles – whatever they may be – if we think about them in a certain way, we may not only survive the ordeal but grow from it as well.
Look at the first word in verse 3. It is the word “because.” Here James gives us the reason we may “consider” our trials “nothing but joy.” It is “because” – and here I am quoting James – “it is because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete.”
You see! There it is: There is the reason you may “consider it nothing but joy” “whenever you face trials of any kind.” It is because God has a purpose in your difficulties. He wants to use them to grow you up and to grow you strong. He wants you to become “mature and complete,” “to grow up in every way into…Christ” (Eph. 4:15). He wants to bring you into maturity. He wants to “bring…to completion” the “good work” he has begun in you (Phil. 1:6). He wants to make you like Jesus.
Of course, the process will test your faith. There is no other way. Isn’t that what James says in verse 3, that “the testing of your faith [is what] produces endurance”? You will be tempted to lose your faith. You will find it difficult at times to trust God. You may grow sour at the things you have to endure. And so, in verse 12, James brings up this matter of temptation. He begins by pronouncing a blessing on “anyone who endures temptation” – especially the temptation to believe that God no longer has our best interests in mind. The one who endures, James says – the one who refuses to believe such a lie – “has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.”
That’s a wonderful prospect, isn’t it? To think that our trials might actually lead to triumph, that we may, after all, overcome the temptation to let our difficulties dwarf our souls and wither our spirits. The question, though, is: How can we see that happen for us? How can that take place in our lives?
The difference, as we said before, is how we think about our afflictions. And we can think about them either wisely or unwisely. We can think about them with wisdom or without it. We need to remember – we need to keep in mind – that God has a greater purpose than what we can readily see. And that takes wisdom. And if we can’t look at our trials with that in mind, if we lack the wisdom to see things that way, James tells us to “ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given [to us]” (v. 5). And one part of wisdom is to know and believe that there is a loving hand that holds the chisel of our adversities, and though it strike us, it seems, mercilessly, and carve away at us, it will craft us more and more into God’s masterpiece. That’s one part of wisdom.
Another part of wisdom is to know that we will be tempted to forget this. When we’re in the furnace, scorched by the flames, our hopes melting in a puddle at our feet, it may be difficult to keep in mind that God has a loving purpose for us, even in the pain. James specifically mentions three temptations that may undermine our faith.
The first is doubt. James says, “The one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind” (v. 6). In other words, when troubles beset us, we may twist off into panic and lose all sense of direction and, in our tossing about, we may lose all hope and confidence in God. If that happens, then our trials do not turn into triumph. They turn into defeat. We must keep this in mind. We must remember that it’s important how we think about these things.
A second temptation is our tendency to think we can buy our way out of trouble. Whether we have the means or not, we think that’s the solution. James says, “Let the believer who is lowly [that is, the one who is poor] boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low” (vv. 9ff.). But that’s not what we usually do, is it? Whether we think of ourselves as poor or rich – it doesn’t matter which – we tend to regard money as the answer to our problems. If we’re poor, we may resent our condition and covet the ease that others seem to have, and if we’re rich, we may rely on ourselves rather than God. Neither path is the way to maturity. There’s a prayer in the book of Proverbs. Perhaps you know it. It is a good antidote to this kind of thinking. It says, “Give me neither poverty nor riches, or I shall be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or I shall be poor, and steal, and profane the name of my God” (Prov. 30:8ff.).
The third temptation James mentions – and another one we will want to keep in mind, lest it overtake us – is to blame God. And here’s the thing: We may blame him not only for the trials we face but also for the temptations they bring. It is the height of presumption for the sinners to say that it is God who is responsible for their sin. Verse 13 says, “No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one.” In fact, James tells us that temptation actually originates with us – in our own hearts, the seat of our desires. “One is tempted,” he says, “by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death” (vv. 14f.).
David Platt, a pastor in Alabama, lays out the process in four stages. First, he says, there is deception, and the fact that there is should remind us that “the heart of sin is unbelief – [that is,] not believing God.” The second stage is desire. Platt says that “sin starts with disordered thought, which leads to disordered desire, and we begin to want that which will destroy us.” Then, when we act on what we want, when we act on our disordered desire, we arrive at the third stage, which is disobedience. Disobedience, of course, assumes the form of some attitude we carry or some action we take and, in doing so, actually commit sin. And sin, of course, leads to Platt’s fourth stage: death – which is always the result of disobedience.
So, here we are. We cannot escape the trials of living. They are inevitable. And they often bring about the temptation to distrust God, to desire something other than his purpose for us. What can be done? We cannot avoid being tested and tempted. But can we avoid sin? Can we remain faithful? Can we grow into maturity through our adversity?
By God’s grace, and, by his grace alone, we can turn trials into triumph. He gives us everything we need to grow from our sorrows, to advance through our adversity. As James says, we can “let endurance have its full effect, so that [we] may be mature and complete.” And it is God who gives us what we need to think this way. In verse 17, James says, “Every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” In other words, God doesn’t alter his purpose for us. And he provides all we need to grow into maturity in Christ.
The first thing we need, if we’re to grow, is life, life in Christ. What we need is a new heart with new desires. And that is exactly what God gives to those who are his own. Verse 18 says, “In fulfillment of his…purpose” – see! he has a definite purpose – “in fulfillment of his…purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth.” The “word of truth” is the message of the gospel, and it is a message of new birth – what Jesus calls “being born from above” (Jn. 3:3) and what the apostle Paul calls “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). This is a necessary gift of grace, because, in giving us new life, as we said, God gives us a new heart, a new heart filled with new desires, desires to be faithful even when the way is steep and narrow and the elements are against us. So, with this in mind, we trust God in our trials, and we turn to him in our temptations.
“Consider it nothing but joy,” James says, “whenever you face trials of any kind.” And we can do that – we can “consider it nothing but joy” – if we bring a renewed mind – a faithful way of thinking – to the way we look at our troubles. If we see God in them, sculpting in us his gracious design for our lives, and if we trust him even though we may be tempted not to, we will see: He will give us “beauty instead of ashes, the oil of rejoicing instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of despair” (Isa. 61:3, HCSB, KJV). He will turn our trials into triumph. And knowing that brings a joy that nothing can take away.
Photo Credit: Landscape by BarnyZ
November 22, 2015 at 12:43 am
My grandson, Henry, falls down prostrate on the floor when things aren’t going his way. Oh, to have the body language of a one year old. Thank you for your timely lesson. I am claiming Isaiah 61:3 during these troubled times- times that are forcing me prostrate before my God – where I belong.