In the Shadow of Trial

Good morning. Welcome to The Edge. My name is Brandi, and I am so glad that you’ve joined us today as we continue our study through the book of James in a series called The Intersection of Faith & Life. This book is all about how our faith is supposed to impact our actual life. That faith was never meant to be thought of as a stack of beliefs that remain up here, but rather beliefs that move us into action and change the way we live.

The book of James is actually a letter that was written by the younger half-brother of Jesus himself. And he wrote it to the 12 scattered tribes, the earliest Jewish Christians, as they had just been dispersed and were undergoing severe trials and persecutions while starting the early church.

The book of James has a very interesting writing style if you haven’t already caught on — James is very to-the-point; he’s very frank. But I love the fact that he’s very practical. He means what he says; It’s no-nonsense. At times, it’s a bit in-your-face, but I also find that it’s a very advice-giving and life-giving book as well. At times, it may feel a bit confrontational, and so don’t be surprised if, at some time during the series, you yourself feel a bit of a struggle as your own faith journey may get poked and prodded just a bit — but it’s so helpful to remember that it’s only because the outcome is going to be good.

James confronts any kind of Christian who claims to be a Jesus follower in word, but doesn’t really follow it in deed because he really wants us to chase after the purpose of this Christian life, which can only be experienced abundantly and fully when we’re living out this faith in real-time.

And that is where we’re going to experience the joy that’s promised to those who love the Lord. In fact, James starts off the letter by addressing how we can actually have joy even when we’re in trials. If you didn’t catch that message last week, Pastor Steve did a great job expounding on that opening section of James’ letter, and I encourage you to go back and listen to that because it is so encouraging, particularly if you’re going through a trial right now. It ended last week with James’ section, where he reminds us that God promises a crown of life for all those who love him — a beautiful image that we can grab onto to inspire us and motivate us in our faith journey during the hard times. But I don’t think it’s any accident that, right after that, James kind of takes a sharp turn, and that’s where we’re going to go today.

He presents to us a darker side of trials, a particular side of trials that I would call “The Shadow Side” — the side that can come whenever we are not walking in those trials in God’s ways. See, James knows that it’s when we’re undergoing trials that we can tend to question God, question what he says, question his character. And then we can be very vulnerable to temptation to sin. We know that trials happen in life, and nobody gets around that. Even Jesus told us, “In this life, you will have trials, but take heart because I have overcome this world” (John 16:33, paraphrased). And that’s great news for believers because that means that if Jesus has overcome, then if his Spirit is living in us, that we have all we need to overcome as well. But it is going to take us continually remembering that on this side of heaven, we are still engaging in a spiritual battle.

And so it’s important to remember when we do go through trials that God has an outcome that he desires for us. God’s intention in trials in our life is for our development, but Satan’s intention is for our downfall. God wants to produce in us a living and acting faith and more and more of his character, ultimately producing in us abundant life. But Satan — Satan wants to kill, still and destroy.

So listen to what James says in James 1:13–15 because it’s interesting who he actually points out as the strongest culprit in this whole sin downfall. He says:

13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, and nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is dragged away and enticed [or lured] by his own evil desires. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin full-grown gives birth to death (paraphrased).

Don’t be deceived. That’s a startling statement that James makes, and he kind of goes right for the juggler by letting us know like, “Hey, this sin thing, it really originates with our own evil desires.” In fact, he gives this picture with his specific wording about being “lured” or “enticed.” It is actually a picture of being lured away by like a bait and a hook. I grew up having to go fishing. I lived in the country and had to grow up going fishing with my family all the time. And while I didn’t personally enjoy it, I certainly took part in helping bait the hooks. And what I can tell you is, when you actually feel the bait and look at it, it looks plastic, it’s a different texture, it almost looks like a toy, and it doesn’t really look like the real thing, but, boy, once you put it on a hook and put it in moving water — and some of them have little tails that flap and they move around — from the distance, it can look awful similar to the actual bait that it is imitating.

And this is the picture that it says that sin does to us. Sin presents this picture that looks like it’s going to be satisfying or like it’s going to bring life. But instead, it can lure us to our own deaths; see, that’s what sin is. Sin is death because sin separates us from God. When James says don’t be deceived, that word “deceive” simply means “drawn away.” Don’t get drawn away from God in your trials. Sin, very frankly, is the craving or the desire for anything that God forbids. And he forbids things that are harmful to us, either emotionally, relationally, spiritually or physically. And so one of the reasons that James says, “Hey, not only is it your own evil desires that causes you to sin and be dragged away but do not pin that temptation to sin on God. Don’t even think about it. And the reason he says that, well, there’s a couple of reasons.

The first reason is because it would not be in God’s character to tempt us to sin when the essence of sin is the very things that he forbids. Also, God is our Father, and he’s a loving and he’s a good Father, and he wants his children close to him. So, to be deceived or to sin is to be separated from him or drawn away. So God, our Father, would never want to lure us away from his protective covering. He knows only when we stick by his side under his protective covering are we going to truly flourish as his children. So it would not be in his nature to lure us away from him.

Another reason that I think James very quickly says, “Don’t pin it on God. And don’t ever say that God is tempting you,” is because it’s kind of human nature to do that. And this is nothing new; this goes all the way back to that very first original sin story back in Genesis 3. If you remember that story of Adam and Eve and how they ate the apple and Satan tempted them, they ate it, and then God comes in and approaches them, and he confronts them about this. And, of course, how do they respond? Well, Eve ends up blaming the devil, like literally the very first person that said the devil made me do it, right? And then we have Adam, who says, “Well, she made me do it.” So that’s our very first, you know, peer pressure excuse. And then Adam takes another turn, and he kind of goes, “Well, the woman that you gave me, God, that’s who made me do it.” So you can kind of hear that implied, “This is really kind of like your fault, God. Right? ‘Cause, I mean, you’re the one that gave her to me.”

So what we see is we see an incredible ability that we have to blame-shift when we ourselves have sinned out of our own evil desires. And one of the reasons that it’s so harmful for us to blame-shift is because, when we don’t own our own sin, we are still held in captivity to the sin.

I sometimes wonder how much more victory we would have over living outside of sin if we could just simply own our stuff more quickly and just be done with it because when we confess it, God promises that he’s faithful to forgive it. In fact, we see a King David in Psalm 51 — it’s a great chapter in the Bible to read If you want to be motivated to truly be free of your sin by confession because King David had just been caught with some of the worst sins you can think of, including murder and adultery. And it wasn’t until when we see in Psalm 51 how he truly owns that sin and confesses it, boy, do we see a beautiful turnaround. I encourage you to read that entire chapter in one sitting, but he says in that chapter, Psalm 51:4–5, he says:

4 Against you, Lord, against you and you only have I sinned.

And then he says:

5 Surely I was sinful from birth (NIV, paraphrased).

Now that might sound weird, but what he’s really saying is, “I recognize that, deep down at my very core, I am destined to want to do things my own way.” In other words, he is accepting the fact that he was born with a sin nature and, friends, this is the essence of why the gospel is such good news for us because guess what? David is not the only person who has ever been deceived and lured away. Guess who else has: All of us.

Listen to what Isaiah 53:6 says:

We all like sheep have been led astray, each man turning to his own way (paraphrased).

Remember, to be deceived simply means to turn away from or be led astray from God. That is the worst part about sin, and it is the condition of absolutely all of us. There is no freedom from sin until we fully confess and fully own it. You’ll see that in relationships, too — just try being truly reconciled, truly redeemed in a relationship where you’ve hurt someone without fully owning it. Maybe on the outside there’s behaviors that you’re like, you know, you’ve made nice with each other so you’d get along, but you will never have the intimacy and the bond with someone that you have hurt if you have not fully owned and confess the hurt that you have caused. It’s no different in our relationship with God, but the good news is he is able and wants to forgive us with that confession.

I think it’s really important too to remember that we’ve all been led astray, and, listen, at the end of the day, whatever that bait is that led you astray or led me astray, maybe even just this morning or five minutes ago or ten years ago, when you were caught in that sin pit of a downfall, it doesn’t really matter. So there is no point in judging what someone else’s sin bait might be. In other words, we all have the desire to go our own way. And there is no point in judging someone else’s sin or acting like one’s is better or one’s is worse. The point is if we are not made right with God, we are astray, and we are hopeless and in need of a savior. Jeremiah 17:5 says:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart has turned away from God” (paraphrased).

Trials leave us questioning God’s character often because it’s then that oftentimes our faith is not sight. It really is faith. And we’re having to hold on more important then than ever to the character that we know of God. And I think that’s why James then immediately starts talking about God and relating him to the light.

Listen to what he says in James 1:17. He says God is the

Father of the heavenly lights,

also meaning the source of the heavenly lights. And he

does not change like shifting shadows (NIV, paraphrased).

He does not change. I think that James wanted to really nail it down that we have to embrace God’s character. And we can’t forget his character, because we are going to have to rehearse that when we’re going through trials or hard times where we don’t necessarily experience it in an obvious way. I think the reason that he reminded us about God being the source of light — he’s talking about the heavenly lights, the celestial lights, the sun, the moon, the stars — but when he says “Father of lights,” it actually means the source of those lights.

So not only is he the Father and creator of those heavenly lights, he is their source. So we know that the sun doesn’t lose its lightness — the essence of the sun is light. In fact, when we experience darkness here on this Earth, it’s not because the sun went dark, right? It’s because we know that the Earth is spinning on its axis, and we’ve turned away from the sun, casting darkness over the Earth. In that same way, we can draw this parallel spiritually, that when we turn away from God who is the light — he’s the light of the world who came down into darkness — when we turn away from him, we are living in darkness, and the path for our life is no longer made clear. It also says that his Word is “a light unto our feet and a lamp unto our path” (Psalm 119:105, paraphrased), which makes sense because these are God’s words for us.

So good luck having a clear path in your life if you are not connected to the Word. And by the way, knowing, embracing and speaking that Word is how Jesus got through his hardest temptation here on earth, in the desert when he was battling, you know, toe-to-toe with the devil. And by the way, the devil was using Scripture, but he was twisting it and taking it out of context.

So we’re going to have to be connected to the light — soaking in God’s light, in his love and in his Word — in order that we’re not stumbling around and getting lost in darkness. I like to think of us, spiritually, kind of like solar lights, you know. We bought some of those lights that you stake in and put next to your sidewalk because it can get pretty dark walking up to our front steps, and at nighttime, you could really easily trip on some of the sidewalks that are uneven in front of our house. But, you know, only whenever those solar lights are really absorbing that sun in the daytime do they burn bright and give off light in the darkness. And really, it’s in the dark that you actually need that light. And isn’t that true for us, too?

I just want to remind you of just the wonderful visual and the picture that Revelation paints for us that one day, when we are with him in all his glory in heaven, it says that there won’t even be a need anymore for the sun because the source of light is who gives off all the light. In fact, it says that it’s because the glory of God illuminates heaven, and God is taking us from glory to glory until the day that he calls us home. His glory is simply his essence.

So do you know what that means? That means that his intent for every single one of us is to be a light that actually burns brighter and brighter and brighter the longer that we walk this earth as a Christian. Isn’t that fascinating? Because that’s totally opposite than how most things are made, right? Most of the time, if you have a light that burns bright, eventually it fades and fades and fades until it’s done. But God’s glory in us is supposed to be burning brighter and brighter and brighter, which means my impact as a Christian should be greater today than it ever has been in all of my previous days. And the only work that I have to do to make that happen — the only thing I have to do — is remain in him, is to be in his light, like a solar light absorbing the sun in the day.

But if anyone else is going to benefit from my light, then I have to be willing to go into the dark places. It always fascinates me that one of Jesus’s final prayers was, “Father, I gave you glory, [meaning I burned your light bright] by completing the work that you gave me to do here on this earth.” You know what our work is? Our work is to shine; It’s to shine his light. I get fascinated when I think about the fact that most things burn and fade, and we know this, even Scripture says that outwardly our bodies, our looks, our strength, our capabilities, our minds, outwardly, we all know this: We’re fading. We’re fading here on this earth, but he says, “But inwardly, he’s renewing us day by day.” His intention for every single one of us is to only grow in brightness, is to shine brighter and brighter.

And I love this because I was thinking about it — I went right back to those first words that James penned, and he said, “James, a servant of God.” So fascinating that he didn’t identify himself as Jesus’ earthly brother, but he found it more of an honor and more of a purpose to consider himself a servant, a minister. I love that he said that he was addressing this to the 12 tribes scattered. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I was reading that that was actually James’ perspective, right? I mean, he’s the one that wrote it. So he’s saying “to the 12 tribes scattered,” and I just have this fun thought, if you will. And I was thinking, is that how God would phrase it? Would he say that they were scattered? Or might he say that they were the 12 tribes sprinkled? Perhaps he was sprinkling his lights to the dark edges of the earth.

And perhaps that’s what we are supposed to be doing too. Long before James ever put pen to paper, the Prophet and King David, the same one that confessed and owned his sin back in chapter 51, wrote this in Psalm 102:18:

Let this be written for a future generation, a people not yet created.

He’s talking about us, people who would actually indwell God’s Holy Spirit. He said:

Let this be written for a future generation, a people not yet created, that they may praise the Lord.

That word “praise” — hallel — literally means “to shine,” “to shine.”

Let this be written for a future generation, a people not yet created,

those people that would somehow, if he could fathom this, indwell God’s Holy Spirit that they would shine for the Lord. We were born to shine — that’s our purpose, that’s our purpose. Don’t hide your light, and don’t let it go out.

Do you feel like your light has been dimmed? Do you feel like your spark is going out? Maybe you’re down to nothing but a little flicker? May I suggest to you I understand that? And I’ve gone through times in my life, even fairly recently, where I just felt kind of dull in my Christian walk. Can I tell you what changed it for me? What has just lit me on literal fire? It was about a year ago when I just knew — I can’t really get into it right now — but I just knew, and I was completely convicted and nudged almost badgered by the Holy Spirit to get out there and be with people who are living very oppressed, very dark lives. I did not know how I was going to do it because, for the most part, I was surrounded by wonderful Christian people, which is great for me. But I don’t think that my light was going out all the places that it needed to.

And let me tell you, if you pray a prayer and ask God to open those doors, you can bet that he will. You guys, we have to be in his Word. We have to be in his love and in his light and remain connected to him, but never so that you can just burn up bright all by yourself, but so that you can be sprinkled into the earth and take your light into the dark places around you. Sprinkle the earth, church, shine your light in your neighborhoods, shine bright in your homes. Sprinkle your light into the workplace, into your neighborhoods, into your grocery stores, into the gas station, into the local coffee shop that you frequent. Take your light and shine, and keep shining until the day that we stand fully in his glorious light. And I just want to pray this final blessing over you, straight from Scripture, “The Lord bless you. The Lord keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you.”

Some questions that could be helpful for you to kind of mull over upon this hearing would be:

1. What is the biggest takeaway for you?

2. Can you identify a trial where maybe you were tempted to turn away from God, but instead, you came out on the other side, and God had developed in you a stronger faith and deeper character. If so, share that. Talk about that. Encourage other people with that story.

3. What practical spaces and places can you shine your light?

Church, it was a blessing to be with you this morning, and I look forward to hearing and sharing all the stories of the places that we got to go and shine his light.

Trials

Good morning everybody. Happy Sunday. Welcome to The Edge Church. My name is Steve Van Denend, and I’m one of the pastors here. Whoever you are, wherever you are from, we are so glad to have you joining with us today as we continue on in our new sermon series through the book of James that we’re calling James: The Intersection of Faith & Life. 

We’ve given the series this title because, really, the overarching theme of the book of James is this idea that real religion, real faith is not simply something that you believe in here or that you think in here, but it’s also something that is to be lived out here. In other words, a faith that is real and true is a faith that works and is evidenced by our life. It is a faith that is living and active and put on display and one that is meant to touch upon every area of our life. 

If you were with us last week, then Pastor Neil did a great job of setting up our series and giving us some important context as we go through this book. So if you missed that, I’d encourage you to go and give that a listen. But this morning, I want to just continue us on in our journey through James. And this morning, we’re going to look at a topic that is absolutely relevant to all of us and has certainly affected all of us over this past year. This morning, we are going to talk about trials. 

As we open God’s Word together, my hope and my prayer for you is that God would encourage you by his Word, that the Spirit of God would minister to your heart and your mind, that you would hear and receive all that God has to speak to you and that all of us would be transformed and changed by God’s Word. And as always, at the end of every message, I’ll leave you with some questions just for you to think about, to process, to journal, to talk about with the people in your home or gathered in your house church gathering. So let’s just pray and invite the Lord into our time. 

Father, we come before you this morning in the name of your son, Jesus. God, I ask, Lord, that you in your goodness, by your grace Lord, by your Spirit, Lord, that you would speak and minister to each and every heart, God. Thank you for this opportunity for us to hear your Word, God. Thank you for, Lord, just your great love for us, your care for us, God. Thank you that you gave us your Word, God, so that by it, we might know you and know, God, who you’ve made us to be. Lord, I pray that you would speak, that you minister, that you’d open up our ears to hear from you today, that you’d open our hearts to receive from you, God. Have your way in our time and in us. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. 

Well, if you have your Bible, open it up to the book of James 1, and we’re going to begin in verse two. And remember as we read this that this is James — James the half-brother of Jesus — who at this time is the first pastor of the first church in Jerusalem, and he is teaching and writing to the church that is under great persecution. They’re experiencing great suffering for following Jesus, and many are struggling to keep the faith in the face of trials. And so James here is kind of like an ER doctor. He’s not going to tell us everything about everything; he’s just really going to give us the essentials that we need. Like if you were dying on an emergency room table, the fact that you have an acne issue isn’t really a priority. Right? You get what is essential in order to preserve your life, and in a similar way, as we go through James, James is giving us what we need in order to preserve and faithfully walk out our life in Christ and not give up. And so here’s what he says to us, beginning in verse two, he says:

2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds (NIV).

Now, let’s just stop here for a minute because there is a whole lot for us in just this one verse. First, let me just say that one of the things that I love about the Bible is that it doesn’t sugarcoat life’s challenges and hardships. It doesn’t pretend like life is all sunshine and no storms. Notice that James doesn’t say here that if you happen to have a trial in your life, or if you happen to know one of the unfortunate few people who happen to have one — that’s not what it says because that’s not our reality, is it? It says when you face trials, not if you do, because the reality is that we all face trials. Most of us have already and, not to be a downer, but the reality is that there are still more trials coming for us. 

That’s also why it says here “trials” and not “trial,” right? Because a trial is not just this thing that happens one time in our life. It’s not this one time and then you survive that or get through that and then it’s all behind you, right? No, it’s mountaintops and valleys. Isn’t it? In the New King James Version, it says, “Consider it pure joy when you fall into trials.” I kind of like that a little bit better because that’s kind of how it happens, right? It’s like you’re going along, things are good, life is good, everything seems to be in place and then it’s like, bam! All of a sudden you just get hit, and you’re fallen, and you’re flat on your face, and you never even saw it coming. 

That’s part of what makes a problem a problem, isn’t it? The fact that we don’t get to plan for it and prepare for it. I mean, can we just all say 2020, right? We’re still walking through it, aren’t we? And for some of us, it’s been heavier and more difficult than maybe it has been for others, but no one has been immune. Everyone has been affected. Health has been affected, jobs, relationships, mental health, education — virtually every aspect of life — and maybe for some of you today, you just feel down. You feel worn out. You’re exhausted. You’re frustrated. You’re sad or lonely or depressed or anxious because trials are hard. Trials hurt. 

James here is just being really honest with us about the reality of this life. He is echoing the words of his brother, Jesus, who said to us in John 16:33:

In this world [in this life] you will have trouble (NIV). 

Not maybe; not probably, but you will. See, a lot of Christians wrestle with God and with faith because we wrongly believe and have been wrongly taught that the Christian life was meant to be easy and without hardship — that you just give your life to Jesus and start following him and all you do is win, win, win. Right? That you just succeed in everything, you have health and wealth and prosperity. This isn’t what Jesus told us. This isn’t what we see in the life of Jesus. Jesus didn’t live a life that was immune from hardship or suffering, and neither is ours. James says, “Listen, you’re going to face trials of many kinds.”

You say, “Well, what does that mean? Like, is he just talking about persecution here? Or is he talking about other things; difficult things like difficulties in a marriage or sickness or mental health issues or a rebellious kid or personal attacks or loss of a job or income or the death or loss of a loved one?” Yeah, all of it. Okay? That would fit in the category of “many kinds.” Right? I love the fact that James just gives this blanket statement so that there’s no wiggle room. Whatever the trial that you’re in is, it fits. 

James tells us that trials come in all shapes and sizes, that we all face them, but our trials might then be different. Some may be smaller and others bigger. Some may last for a day and others for years. Some might be tough while others might be tragic. Some can be difficult and others can be devastating. Whatever the trial may be, the command of God here to followers of Jesus in James 1:2 is not to simply endure the trials but to consider them pure joy. 

What an absolutely outrageous thing to say. Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds. How many of us respond to life’s trials with joy? It’s not our natural response, is it? What’s normal for us is to get upset or angry or anxious. What’s normal is for our emotions to just be all over the place, to be undone or overwhelmed or to even just try and pretend like nothing’s wrong and everything’s okay and we’re fine. But James tells us here as followers of Jesus that we are to respond to the trials we face different than the rest of the world. We are to have a supernatural response to trials. We are to respond with joy. 

Well, how do we do that? Right? How, what might we be able to look and to face trials with joy? Well, James tells us. He goes on and says:

2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,

Why?

3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance and 4 perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything (NIV, paraphrased). 

James says to us here, “Your ability to have joy in your trials is based upon your ability to see your trials through the right and proper lens. Because if you see your trial wrong, you’re going to respond to it wrong.” So how should we be looking at these trials? Well for one, we are meant to see trials as a pathway to maturity. James says to us that God is developing you through the trial. He’s maturing you, teaching you, informing you, making you stronger. He’s developing perseverance in your life so that you can endure and remain and not give up even when life is really hard and it hurts. That word “perseverance” here, it comes from two words — the word hoopa, which means “under,” and menno, which means “to stay or remain.” It is the picture of someone being under an incredibly heavy load or weight and just resolutely staying there. It is the opposite of collapsing or giving in and falling apart. 

Now, if I would have asked you when I started today, “How many of you would like to be strong and mature in the Lord?” My guess is that most of you would have raised your hand because none of us really want to be weak and immature, do we? But if I were to have asked you then, “Who wants some hardships and trials in your life this week, or this month, or this year?” how many of you would have raised your hand? See, if we’re honest, what most of us want is to become strong and mature without having to go through trials, don’t we? But according to God’s Word, we don’t get stronger; we don’t get maturity without trials. Trials are a pathway into godly maturity. So rather than trying to get ourselves out of a trial, we are to rejoice in it, to have joy in it, let God lead us in it knowing that the trials aren’t meant to break us but to make us more like Jesus, more mature and complete. 

And listen, God cares more about your character than he does about your comfort. God is after completing this; he is after this finished work in and through your life. It’s so easy for us to just get focused on the here and now rather than looking at what is being cultivated in us for the future, rather than looking at our life from the end. Think about it like this: Like, when you bake a cake, what you’re really interested in is what comes out of the oven at the end. Right? You don’t focus on tasting each individual ingredient to determine whether or not it belongs in the mix. If you did, all you would have left at the end is just a big old pile of sugar, but no cake. Instead, what you do is you take all these ingredients, no matter how bad that one might taste individually, and you mix them all together, and what comes out of the oven at the end is this completed and delicious cake. Right? It’s not missing anything. 

Similarly, God’s concern for your life is this end result — for you and I to become mature and complete, lacking nothing. In the mix, there’s going to be some ingredients that we don’t particularly like. There’s going to be some ingredients along the way that don’t necessarily feel good, but God says, “Trust me. Consider it joy because I am at work to make you strong and mature and complete in me,” and isn’t that what we really want. Trials are a pathway to maturity. Now, if I had to guess, most if not all of us have found ourselves standing in the middle of some of life’s trials unsure of what to do, unsure of what direction to go, unsure of how to move forward. Anybody? And so James directs us in verse five. He says listen:

5 If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously without finding fault, and it will be given to him (NIV, paraphrased).

James says, “Pray.” James says, “Go to God, look to him, ask of him.” Trials are not only meant to mature us, but they are meant to remind us of our desperate need for God. So often I think, if we’re honest, when everything is going great in our life, it can really be easy for us to get our eyes and our focus off of God, can’t it? Trials remind us though that we’re not God. Trials remind us that we need God. And so, in a way, trials are meant to reorient us and our heart to God. James tells us here to pray and to ask God for wisdom. Why wisdom? Well, because wisdom is the ability to possess knowledge and understanding and to apply it rightly. We want to get God’s perspective on what we’re going through. We need his wisdom to not waste the opportunity that he’s given us in our trial to grow. Otherwise, what we do is we spend all our time simply trying to get out of a trial when what we really need is to grab hold of all that God has for us in it, and so we need God, and we need his wisdom. “Ask God for it,” James says, “and he will give it to you.” But then James gives us this warning starting in verse six. And he says:

6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do (NIV).

Now, I don’t know about you, but that sounds really heavy. Right? But like, James was just like, “Listen, if you aren’t sure what to do, ask God and he’ll give you wisdom.” And now he’s like, “Listen, but don’t doubt, because if you do, you shouldn’t expect to get anything from God.” So, what is James getting at here? James is telling us that what God is after, what God wants is faith. God wants us trusting in him in spite of our circumstances and hardships. But there is this wrestle that happens in trials with faith and doubt, isn’t there? I love this story in Mark 9 about the father, the man who has a son who’s possessed by this demon and he brings him to Jesus. And in verse 22, the father says to Jesus:

if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.

I love it. Jesus is like:

23 “’If you can?’”

He says:

“Everything is possible for the one who believes.”

24 Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (NIV).

Is there anybody who can’t say amen to that statement? “I believe, but God help my unbelief. I believe that you’re God. I believe that you are good. I believe God that you can do this, but help me because part of me is struggling to believe it.” And the question is, is that enough faith? Right? Is it enough faith for the mercy and grace of God to work on our behalf? Well, let’s find out. Verse 25–27 says:

25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the impure spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”

26 The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out ... Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up (NIV, paraphrased).

Listen, let this story encourage your heart today and build up your faith because here’s the good news for all of us as we fight with doubt in the midst of our trials — and every one of us will at one point in time or another — the good news is that God steps into your mustard seed of faith and moves in response. God honors the wrestle. The double-minded person that he’s talking about is the one who isn’t wrestling at all. It’s the one who isn’t turning to God. It’s the one who isn’t asking of God — they’ve just given up. Our trials are meant to move us towards God, to ask him for wisdom in order to see rightly and to help us not doubt, but, by faith, to trust in God, in his goodness towards us, in his hand at work in and through our life and on our behalf. I believe God, help me overcome my unbelief. 

James then turns to address another wrestle that we have in the midst of trials. Look at verse nine. He says:

9 Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. 10 But the rich should take pride in their humiliation — since they will pass away like a wild flower. 11 For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business (NIV).

Now, what is this all about? See what James is saying is like, “Listen, if you get Christ and lose everything, then you still have everything. But if you have Christ or get everything and you lose Christ, you’ve lost everything,” right? He’s like, “Listen, it doesn’t matter how much or how little you have. What matters is do you have Christ?” Because Jesus plus nothing still equals everything.

And one of the other wrestles then that we find ourselves in in the midst of trials is this wrestle with comparison, where we get our eyes off of Jesus, and we just start looking at everybody else around us and what they have that we don’t. Right?

This is why social media is often so unhelpful and has been proven to lead us into depression. Right? Because as you’re going through your trial, after you just binge-watched like an entire season of something on Netflix, and you’re still in your pajamas, and you grab your phone, and you’re scrolling through Instagram, what is it that you find? Right? Like what you find is that everybody’s marriage is awesome, that everybody’s kids are so perfect and put together, that they’re always on vacations and having fun, that people are just counting their money, right? No struggles, no hardships. And here you are; you’re just going through it. You just ate a whole gallon of ice cream, right? You’re angry and depressed, and you end up just resentful. And you’re like, “Really Lord? Really? I’m the one who’s going through this? God, I’m the one suffering in this? Look at them. What about them?” And James is like, “No, no, no. Don’t believe that lie. Everyone endures trials; everyone goes through storms. This is not against you. This is ultimately for you.” And God’s like, “I am leading you into maturity. I am showing you your need of me,” and James uses this comparison of rich and poor because, in the end, he’s saying, “Look, it’s not about how much you have, or you don’t have. Your material resources cannot ultimately lead you through your trial. Only spiritual resources can.”

So James is like, “Listen, don’t look at them, and don’t look to what you have and don’t have. Look to God. Trust in him. He will lead you through. And in the end, James concludes with these words of encouragement then to us in verse 12. Listen to this. He says:

12 Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him (NIV).

James says to us, “Listen, Christian, whatever you’re going through, whatever trial you are facing, don’t give up. Don’t give in to doubt and comparison. Stay the course. Take heart, and have joy in it because God is with you. God is for you. He is at work. He’s maturing and completing you. He’s leading you to himself. So fix your eyes on him. Ask him for wisdom. Ask him for faith, and don’t get sidetracked by focusing on this momentary trial, but remember that there is a blessing and a reward — an eternal reward — for those who persevere. Consider it pure joy, brothers and sisters, whenever you face many trials. Right? Consider it pure joy. God’s in it. 

I want to just close and leave you with a few questions to consider, to think about, to kind of help you wrap your mind and your heart around all of this. They’re to talk about with the people in your group. So here’s a few questions.

1. As you think about this message, what’s your biggest takeaway? What is the thing that, as we’re talking about trials, just most resonates in your heart, and why? 

2. What is the trial that you’re going through right now, and how are you responding to it? What are some of the things that God is teaching to you? Or what is it that God is revealing to you about who he is and who you are? And maybe if that’s not you, and you’d say, “I don’t know what trial I’m going through.” Perhaps maybe you could talk about one of the last trials you have faced. Like, what was that like? And how did you respond to that? And what did God teach you and show you in that?

Here’s the third thing — not really a question, but more of an invitation — I want to just invite you to take a little bit of time to pray and invite the Lord into your trial, into your circumstance, into your situation. Ask him for his wisdom to see it rightly. Confess your doubts. Those places of doubt, those places where you’re just wrestling, and ask the Lord to increase your faith, and then thank God for the work that he is doing to mature and complete you. And if you’re with people and you’re like, “Well, I don’t really have something to go through.” Well, then pray with somebody who is. Be with people in that time. And so I just want to pray for us, and then I’ll give you a little bit of time to respond to those questions or just to hold off, and we’ll close with a final song. So let’s pray. 

God, thank you so much for today. Thank you for your Word. God, it’s hard to say thank you for trials, but God, I’m going to say thank you for trials. Thank you for, God, the things that you have allowed to come into our life or for us to experience or to walk through or go through, God, so that we might become mature and complete in you. God, I pray and ask for wisdom to see rightly. And God, I ask that you would help us with our doubts and increase our faith. God, help us to trust you. God, help us to see you in the midst of what we’re going through. God, help us not get caught up in comparison and looking at other people, but God, help our eyes and our focus to be on you. God, I pray that even in this time, Lord, as we share with one another, God, that you would minister to us, that you would, God, help us to be an encouragement — a support, a strength — to the people around us. God, I pray that your Word would just continue to minister in our heart and lead us into all that you have. I give you this time. Thanks for it. Jesus, in your name. Amen. 

God bless you guys. Go ahead and talk about those questions together or just hang on for a minute or so, and we will close with our final song.