WHEN OVERWHELMED, TRUST GOD

WHEN OVERWHELMED, TRUST GOD James 1:1-4 September 12, 2010 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction This morning we begin a new series of teachings drawn from the New Testament book of James. We will be months in this book with the Sunday messages—and there will be regular interruptions to the series—but I can promise you it will not be boring. This is a lively epistle and as practical and helpful for everyday life as any other you’ll find in the Bible. a. The book of James The opening words of the book read: James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations: Greetings. The five chapters of this short epistle are actually a letter composed by the Jerusalem Church leader, James, and sent to Christians who had been scattered from Jerusalem because of the persecution that broke out there beginning with the stoning of Stephen. He borrows a term from Judaism to describe them: the dispersion. These believers needed direction and spiritual counsel in matters of sin, relationships, obedience, speech and behavior, pride, submission to God, patience, suffering, prayer and conflict issues. So, this letter is a very practical guide for Christian living, not only for those in the 1st century dispersion, but also in our 21st century Christian lives. Get ready to have your socks blown off as we begin a series of messages in this book, because James does not pull any punches. He comes straight at the issues and you won’t have any trouble understanding him! Let’s pause and thank God for sovereignly keeping this letter around so that it could be later bound together with the rest of the canon of the New Testament scriptures, and preserved for us today. Let’s also thank Him in advance for all we are going to learn and the challenges that will come our way in this study. b. James Who? The letter is named after its author, James. It is commonly agreed that the “James” who wrote this letter is the brother (half-brother) of Jesus, the son of Mary. He did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah until after the resurrection. 1 Cor. 15 deliberately mentioned that Jesus appeared alive to James and all of the apostles. He rose to become the recognized leader of the church in Jerusalem. Interestingly, he only identifies himself in the opening words of this letter as a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. Consider (verse 2) Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds . . . Life is going to bring problems to each of us. Inevitably some of those problems will feel like grievous trials. James says they will be trials of many different kinds. Like a physician who has heard you out about some ailment, completed his examination and offered his diagnosis, James now turns to write a prescription. His advice is startlingly simple: Just treat your problems with a dose of joy! You might have made up your mind already that you’re not going to pay any quack who tells you that to medicate your pain, you just act joyously. Actually James is not so much like a physician—he hasn’t looked at your specific problems—but he’s more like a nutritionist. He tells you you’re going to need some help getting through the problems you will face, so he gives this advance counsel: when you face this problem, treat it this way – Consider it pure joy. The word we translate as “consider” is an accounting term. Some of our translations render this command, Count it all joy. I like the old fashioned word reckon: Reckon the trials as opportunities for joy. I know you’re in a hurry to understand just how that can happen—so am I—and I promise we’ll understand it better soon. For now, let’s begin by understanding James’s command (the verb is an imperative). He is giving us wisdom from the Holy Spirit of God here as he tells us, You are going to have to start thinking of your trials in a new and different way—think of them as a divine opportunity to rejoice. There are three steps involve in this reckoning process. First, you must expect problems to come. No one is more devastated by what appears to be a problem than the one who is surprised by it. You cannot allow yourself to be blindsided by trouble. You must expect it to come. James didn’t say, If trials come; he said, When they come. This is at least a corrective word for those who when they gave their lives to Christ in faith thought all their troubles were over. You don’t get exempted from trials just because you are a Christian. (In fact, you will have more, tougher problems precisely because you are a believer!) Jesus said, In this world you will have tribulation (John 16:33) and Paul promised that tribulations and trials are a necessary part of coming into the kingdom (Acts 14:22). First, expect trials, because they are coming and forewarned is forearmed. Secondly, when they come you must learn to contextualize them. That is, see them clearly into the context of your life in Christ. What is God’s purpose in allowing these trials? Here’s how you do that: remember that your primary purpose in life now that you are a follower of Christ is to be conformed to the image of Christ. That is, you are to use everything in your life and experience to help you become more like Christ every day. And, of course, you have all the divine help you need in that process as the Spirit of God lives in you. It will probably come as no surprise to you that the things in life that are uncomfortable to you actually help you grow more than the comfortable things.   Trials are uncomfortable. James says that for you to handle trials well, in terms of your spiritual maturity, you to have to start seeing them, not as setbacks, but as springboards to growth. You will be a happier, more mature Christian when your first thought when facing a trial is not, Oh, no, not that! but I wonder what God will do with this situation! Once step #2 starts happening like that in your life when you face trials, you will find yourself able to start rejoicing in the Lord in the midst of the trials, even rejoicing that you are facing them. How can that happen? When you fully understand that God has your best interests at heart, and you know very well that, no matter how hard it gets, He is going to grow you more into the character of Christ through it. That is the point at which you are trusting God deeply with your life. That is the point of verse 2—considering it pure joy whenever the inescapable trials come. They serve to test your faith, to prove your trust in God. The more we trust Him in the struggles of life, the more we are supernaturally enabled to rejoice even during our trials. Verse 3 answers the natural and compelling question: how can this be? Know (verse 3) Because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. That word “because” is critical to understanding an important connection. Only when you and I firmly understand how strongly God feels about our goal to become like Christ, how important it is for Him (and for us), and the extent to which He will go to get us there—only then will we fully comprehend the key place of trials in our lives. Here is the key to trusting God in the middle of your trials, and ultimately getting to the place where we can consider the process pure joy: knowing the processes of God in your life. This verse reveals that “perseverance” is a vital quality God wants to develop in us in the process of our maturity. In fact, verse 4 makes it clear that we will never reach maturity without the character quality of perseverance. Thus, God is at work in each of our lives developing perseverance in us—the ability to bear up under whatever comes to us. The word here in Greek is HUPOMONE. Literally, it means “to remain steadfast”. And it carries with it both the idea of persistent stick-to-it-iveness and the idea of patience. It is a picture of someone facing severe trial, but hanging on to his faith and trust in God, and being patient, despite how long it is taking for the trial to be resolved. The scary but unavoidable truth is that without the suffering of trials, our faith will not develop perseverance. Christian, stop trying to avoid the pain of trials and trying to wish it all away. Learn to trust God’s process and you will ultimately be able to consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. Psychologist Jonathon Haidt had a hypothetical exercise: Imagine that you have a child, and for five minutes you're given a script of what will be that child's life. You get an eraser. You can edit it. You can take out whatever you want. You read that your child will have a learning disability in grade school. Reading, which comes easily for some kids, will be laborious for yours. In high school, your kid will make a great circle of friends; then one of them will die of cancer. After high school this child will actually get into the college they wanted to attend. While there, there will be a car crash, and your child will lose a leg and go through a difficult depression. A few years later, your child will get a great job—then lose that job in an economic downturn. Your child will get married, but then go through the grief of separation. You get this script for your child's life and have five minutes to edit it. What would you erase? Wouldn't you want to take out all the stuff that would cause them pain? Permit me a homely illustration. When I was a boy I was given a responsibility as the oldest boy in the family. It was to go to the store for groceries. We were poor, quite poor. We had no car, so I walked the five or six blocks to the TomBoy grocery. The other thing about being poor was that it seemed we never had but a small amount of money each day, and so there was no stocking up. Someone had to go to the store virtually every day. With eight children in the family, there was often a good amount of food to be carried home from the store, provided there was money. So almost every day I would go and get the requisite order of daily food, which included at least three half gallons of milk, a large box of cereal, some meat, usually butter, a couple loaves of bread and a couple of cans of vegetables. That was, with very careful packing, two large grocery bags full. They were heavy. If there was anything I disliked more than carrying that load, it was having to stop and rest. That involved putting the bags on the ground and then picking them up again, a particularly daunting job on rainy days, especially when you were trying not to squish the bread! So, in order to avoid the ordeal of stopping, stooping and relifting the bags, I began to challenge myself to carry the bags for longer and longer durations. My personal goal was to make it all the way home without a break. I can still remember the burning tendons and muscles as I forced myself to go just one more block, a few more steps. I would often want to scream aloud because of the grind I put myself through just to avoid a rest. One day—and I still remember it vividly—I made it all the way home. When I finally arrived at home, I gingerly set the bags on the table and waited for my arms to “uncurl” from their holding position. My fingers hurt from the grasping and clutching and it took several minutes for them to feel normal. As I walked up the stairs to the bedroom I said out loud, but only to myself, because no one else knew my private goal: Yes! I did it! I lay on the bed and I smiled as I thought about the five blocks of torture with no stoppage, and the sense of victory and accomplishment. I relived the pain, the strain of endurance. I understood HUPOMONE! But I also rejoiced in what happened in the process: I became much stronger (every boy’s dream on the way to becoming the next Charles Atlas).   From then on, with rare exception, my grocery-laden walks home were break free. And, at least in my own mind, I was convinced I had somehow reached something like MATURITY. I told you it was a homely illustration! When you are facing a trial or even a temptation that has gone on for a long time, and has drained you completely, and you are sure you will not survive it, James would have you remember that the testing you are facing right now is developing perseverance/HUPOMONE. And soon, as you struggle patiently, there will be the reward of maturity. You will be complete, not lacking anything. Where will you get the extra reserves of strength you will need to endure? From knowing that the process of the testing of your faith is cultivating perseverance in you and leading you to your goal of maturity and Christlikeness. Cooperate (verse 4) The third and final word I bring to your attention is the word cooperate. You won’t find that word explicitly in the text, but, better than any other word I can conjure, it summarizes the implicit message for us in verse four: Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Perseverance must finish its work. Though it is only by God’s power and His grace in our lives that we could ever persevere and mature; though it is only through His revelation and Spirit we could ever understand the process of perseverance; though it is only through the Lord that we can ever consider trials as pure joy; there is a role for us. We must cooperate with the plan and the process. How do we cooperate? Determine to persevere, trust God in the process, and learn to reckon every kind of trial we will ever face as pure joy. Conclusion Zoe Koplowitz, 59, ran the New York City Marathon on Monday, November 5, 2007. She didn't do very well. Paula Radcliffe, for example, was the first woman to cross the finish line after 2 hours and 23 minutes. Martin Lei led the men with his time of 2:09:04. Zoe's time: 28 hours, 45 minutes. Thirty years ago, Zoe was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. In 1988 she entered her first New York City Marathon and completed the route in just under 20 hours. That was her best finish. Since then, she's competed in the city's marathon 20 times and has also run in marathons in London and Boston. In this year's race Zoe wore back and knee braces and walked the entire route using crutches painted purple, accompanied by supporters. For her, crossing the finish line was "a total blessing," and following the race she said, "I'm just extremely grateful. I don't get any younger, [and] my MS doesn't get any better." One reporter noted that when the best athletes ran past her, "Zoe Koplowitz kept walking." Hard core runners went by; "she kept walking." When the last person in the race crossed the finish line, "she kept walking." What do we take away from the first four verses of James 1? That God has a process of growth going on in each of our lives; that it involves inevitable trouble and trials; that we are to keep on walking until the day He says, You’ve made it. Well done, good and faithful servant!     [ Back to Top]