Consider It Joy

Pause:

Before you start reading this devotional, take a moment to stop what you’re doing, slow down and focus on Jesus.Pray and ask him to open your eyes to see as you read the scriptures, and to open your ears to hear as you wait on the leading of the Spirit.

Read:

James 1v2-4 (CSB):“Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, 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 nothing.” 

James 1v2-4 (MSG): “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”

Going Deeper:

I have come back to this passage again and again over the last few weeks. And feel that even if someone else has written a devo on this passage before (I can’t believe I haven’t yet!) that it bears repeating.

Firstly, this passage calls us to act unnaturally.

I say this because it feels unnatural to consider trials as a gift, and to receive them with “great joy.” It almost seems sadistic!

Most of us naturally choose comfort when we can avoid difficulty. Or, we choose to count the cost to do something difficult in the short term, but only because we know what is on the otherside. Some sort of reward or carrot that we want enough to endure the difficulty on this side of the trial!

Secondly, I am not an endurance type.

At school, I much preferred the 100m sprint to the longer distance runs in athletics, because a short burst of pain felt a lot more doable than a long stretch of struggle.

In Durban, we have the Comrades Marathon once a year, which is a 90km endurance race run by thousands of people, or all ages and body shapes. The most heart-felt part of the race is watching people help one another (sometimes even carrying one another by the shoulders in two’s or three’s) as they stagger along over the last few km’s to make it to the finish line to say they did it.

I have never once wanted to run the Comrades Marathon, but I have watched in awe many years as people complete this incredible athletic endurance feat.

Thirdly, we find out here that mature, complete discipleship is on the other end of Trials and Endurance.

To know Jesus, become like Him, grow up in our faith, and do what God has called us to do. To be spiritually mature and complete. I think that is something we all desire most?

But sadly, we see here that these three things come together as one package.

And for those of us who prefer comfort, and don’t like endurance or perseverance, we see that we are going to need to change and accept that the journey of a disciple includes enduring through trials, if we want to make it to the finish line.

What gives me great peace looking back at what I have endured recently, and looking ahead into what I’ll probably have to endure over the next few months, is that God gives me grace for the journey.

God will give me grace for the trials that I face, and He will give me grace to endure each of them. And, He will be with me every step of the way.

Which means that what I need to do is change my perspective.

I need to see the trials that lie before me, and the endurance required to get through them, as a gift not a curse. And change my perspective to receive them with joy. Not because they are good in themselves. But because I know what God is able to bring about in my life through them, and that that is a good and desirable thing, that I want desperately.

And I’m sure for both myself and for you, that as we look back over this period of our lives in the weeks and months to come, that we will see God’s hand, and be grateful for how He has brought us through and what He has done in us.

Pray:Respond to God in prayer by speaking to Him about what stood out to you from this passage this morning.

Listen:What is the Holy Spirit saying to you this morning?

Apply:What are you going to do in response to what God is saying to you from the text and by the Spirit?