“2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
“Pain is the question mark turned like a fishhook in the human heart.” That line of genius was written by Peter De Vries, who grew up in the CRC. DeVries was a rather famous writer in his life time. The line, “Pain is the question mark turned like a fishhook in the human heart,” comes from his 1961 book, The Blood of the Lamb. That book was written after his ten-year-old daughter Emily died from leukemia. He knew by experience that, “Pain is the question mark turned like a fishhook in the human heart.”
This question turned like a fishhook is most often expressed as, ‘why?’ ‘Why did my little girl die?’ I don’t know the background of the fishhooks that are lodged in your heart. I don’t know the ‘why?’ questions that you ask. Trials bring fishhooks. Trials bring questions.
Last week we saw that trials bring all sorts of emotions. Trials bring tears. Trials lead to laments like Psalm 10, “Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide Yourself in times of trouble?”
There are many reasons to attend to that fishhook lodged in your heart. Pain is right to consider, it is unavoidable to consider, but it isn’t the only thing to consider. James urged us to consider the joy in trials.
This joy James writes about won’t remove the pain—it isn’t designed to do so. The joy James told those early Christians about was designed to help them in their pain. God offers it to help you in your pain.
We saw four reasons for joy in trials last week. Trials force you to remember that God is in charge and that knowledge grants a peace that passes understanding. Trials remind you of who you are and who God is and that grants a sense of proportion. God can use your trials to help others and that gives you a sense that the loss of your trials are not the final word. The deep valleys of your trials point you to the high mountaintops of heaven and that gives you hope for the future.
Today we give our full attention to the reason for joy in trials which James gave to these early Christians. This is a reason for you to consider as well. Your pain and questions will be present with you whether or not you consider this joy. The fishhook is already there. Consider how God wants you to move forward even as if that question mark remains lodged in your heart until glory.
Consider that God is using your trials to make you mature and complete. That is the claim of this sermon: Consider that God is using your trials to make you mature and complete.
That is not a total answer. That will not numb your heart and pull out the fishhook. It isn’t designed to. It is just one thing to focus on in your trials. Consider that God is using your trials to make you mature and complete.
We see this in three points. First: the testing of your faith. Second: developing perseverance. Third: mature and complete. The first point comes from verse 3. The second point bridges verses 3 and 4. The third point comes from verse 4.
First: the testing of your faith. James was speaking to these first century Christians about trials of many kinds. This church was in the midst of a trial. They were scattered from their homes by people they used to count as friends. They accepted Jesus and so they were rejected by the world. That was certainly a trial, but it wasn’t their only trial. They had financial troubles like we have financial troubles in our families. They had societal ills pressing in on them just like we do today. If they had bulletins at their Sunday worship services, those bulletins would be filled with health concerns just like ours are. They encountered, “trials of many kinds.”
Each of these trials tested their faith. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.”
James used the phrase, “the testing of your faith,” to describe trials. God is doing dozens of different things when He brings trials into your life, many of which you will never know. One of the things He is certainly doing in trials is testing your faith.
He isn’t testing your faith to see if it is genuine. These verses were not written to people who might be Christians. These were genuine believers. God was testing their faith to refine it. God tests your faith in trials to refine it.
The Greek word translated here as ‘testing’ was regularly used to speak of the refining process. God is heating your faith like gold to burn away impurities. Peter used the word this way when he told believers that, “[trials] have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Your faith has greater worth than gold. Your trust in God’s promises is more precious than you will ever know. It is a miracle that you can’t make happen. Your faith is even more precious to the Father than the most precious memory you have with your child is to you, and I’m sure those memories are precious. You see how much value the Father puts on faith when you look at the cross. “My faith is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Your faith is precious, and the Father uses trials to refine it into something even more precious.
God uses trials to refine this precious faith like gold in a crucible. He removes the impurities. We see that in the life of Jacob. Jacob had faith in the promise that he, not Esau, was the chosen son through whom the whole world would be blessed. That’s faith, but his was a very impure faith. Jacob cheated Esau to get what God promised. He lied to his father Esau to get what God would have happily given to him.
Trials refined Jacob’s faith. He had to run away to save his life. He was repeatedly cheated by his uncle. He literally wrestled with God. When he came back to the Promised Land, he was a changed man. He was a changed man because of trials. He prayed, “I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness You have shown Your servant… Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children. But You have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’” Jacob trusted the same promise, but his faith was refined.
God uses trials to refine your faith, to test your faith, in the words of verse 3. You believe that Christ is coming again but your sufferings refine that faith. It was a suffering Christian who heard Jesus say, “Yes, I am coming soon,” and responded saying, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” You believe that Jesus was rejected for your sake, but that faith is refined when you are rejected for his sake. It was a suffering Christian who told the Philippians, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” The faith of those men was refined by trials. Your faith is refined by trials.
That was the case for Jacob’s son Joseph. Joseph believed what God revealed in his dreams. He believed that he would rule over his brothers. That’s faith, but it was an impure faith. Joseph bragged about the promises. He was a boastful and prideful young man.
Trials refined Joseph’s faith. He became a slave. He was wrongfully accused. He was imprisoned. He was forgotten. When he met his brothers again, he was a changed man. His faith in the promises was refined by trials. He broke down and wept saying, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.” Joseph was living God’s promise. He was ruling over his brothers, but the boasting and pride was gone. It was burned away in the crucible of trials.
God uses trials to burn away the impurities of your faith. You believe in the resurrection, but your sufferings have refined that faith. Like Mary and Martha, you have wept with Jesus at the grave of a loved one. You believe that Jesus laid down his life only to take it up again. Your suffering has refined that faith. You too have lost your life and found it. You too have taken up your cross. You believe the words of Psalm 23, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” Your faith has been refined by walking through the valley of the shadow of death and finding that the Good Shepherd truly is with you.
Trials refine your faith, but that is by no means a complete answer to the question of, ‘why?’ God doesn’t put your faith on one side of a balance and the life of your child on the other side to decide whether it is worth taking your child for the sake of your faith. God doesn’t put your faith on one side of the balance and your spouse’s health on the other side to decide whether or not to give your spouse cancer.
God uses trials to refine your faith, but He doesn’t revolve His sovereign will around your faith. The health or sickness of your family can be used by God to refine your faith but that doesn’t mean that health or sickness in your family revolves around the state of your faith. Good or bad things don’t happen to people because of you. You need to hear that in your pain. You need to know that you are not the center around which everything rotates because pain tells you that you are.
As your trials refine your faith, you develop perseverance. That is our second point: developing perseverance.
The crucible of trials produces perseverance, “testing of your faith develops perseverance.” Perseverance is good, but in your pain, you need to know that perseverance is not the final product. By its very nature perseverance cannot be a final product. Perseverance always has a goal beyond itself. Marathon runners do not develop perseverance simply so they can run longer races; they develop perseverance so that they can cross the finish line of longer races. Surgeons do not develop perseverance simply so they perform lengthier and more intricate in-depth surgeries. They develop perseverance so that they can heal people with these surgeries. If James ended with verse 3, “the testing of your faith develops perseverance,” we would be in sorry shape.
Perseverance leads to something else. We will see that it leads to maturity. It leads to completion. It leads to Christ-likeness. That’s where trials will bring you, but you must pass through the valley of perseverance first.
Perseverance is the long step between the testing of your faith and the maturity of your faith. If you don’t develop perseverance when your faith is tested, you are not going to mature as a result of your trial. You might become embittered as a result of your trial. You might run from God as a result of your trial. I don’t know what will happen in your heart if you give up on God in trials, but James tells you what won’t happen: you won’t mature. You will still have your trial, but you won’t have any joy in it.
Doug Moo is right, “The benefits of testing come only to believers who respond to them in the right way: Christians must allow endurance to do its intended work.” That’s what James said in verses 3-4, “the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete.”
I don’t know if Peter DeVries ever developed perseverance in faith as a result of his sad trials. In that same book he wrote, “What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial - or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.”
Those might have been “words for the wind” as Job put it, words that he expressed and later recognized as emotion rather than truth. If not, if DeVries continued to believe God’s sovereignty brought horror rather than comfort, James would say that his faith was not refined.
Now Peter DeVries didn’t need to hear James 1:2-4 in his daughter’s hospital room. He didn’t need to hear James 1:2-4 at his daughter’s graveside. He needed friends to mourn with him, which I imagine they did. He needed people to weep with him, which I imagine they did. Job’s friends did very well for the first seven days. They simply sat with their friend. They got into trouble when they tried to explain why it all happened.
James couldn’t change the fact that they were suffering any more than you and I can change the fact of suffering. James urged those Christians to be refined by their trials. He urged them to develop perseverance.
You develop perseverance by surrendering your impurities in your trial. We sang about it before the sermon, “When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie, my grace, all-sufficient, shall be your supply. The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design your dross to consume, and your gold to refine.”
You surrender these impurities of faith because you have a long walk ahead of you. Pilgrims like us need perseverance. Doug Moo puts it this way, “Like a muscle that becomes strong when it faces resistance, so Christians learn to remain faithful to God over the long haul only when they face difficulty.”
Watch this muscle develop in Abraham. When we first met Abraham, he showed faith but no perseverance. He believed the promise about a son, but he withered when the test turned up. He surrendered to the pressure of living in a strange land by offering his wife to another man. He did it not once but twice. He went through trials as a result. He surrendered to the pressure of not having a child with his wife by having one with his servant-girl. He went through trials as a result. Through these trials, Abraham developed perseverance. He learned to keep trusting God when the heat was turned up. He learned that not trusting God led nowhere good. He learned that the flames would not hurt him, and that God’s only design was his dross to consume and his gold to refine. When God called Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, you see perseverance on display. Abraham had learned to trust God when the heat was turned up. He had learned to walk with God over the long haul. He was moving from unrefined faith to refined faith. He was moving from immaturity to maturity. He was moving from incompletion to completion.
Will you, like Abraham, keep believing the promises even in your pain? Will you cry out, “how long, O Lord,” but still keep calling him Lord? Will you say with Job, “though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him”? Will you remain convinced that, “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate [you] from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus [your] Lord”? Even as you say with the Psalmist, ‘God my rock, “why have You forgotten me,”’ will you remind yourself that, “by day the Lord directs His love, at [that] at night His song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life”? Even as your tears are your food day and night, will you tell your soul to put your hope in God? The refining of your faith develops that sort of perseverance.
You need to persevere. Look at verse 4, “Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete.”
Let perseverance finish its work. If you are in a trial right not, please don’t let go of God. Ask Him the hard questions like Job did. Tell Him how it doesn’t make sense like Habakkuk did. Go to Him with promises to claim like the Psalmists did. Bring Him your reasons for sorrow like Jeremiah did. Ask Him for a reminder of faithfulness like Moses did. But don’t abandon Him. Don’t stop persevering because, “perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete.”
If you give up on God because of your trials, you won’t develop perseverance and you will still have your trials. They won’t go away because you’ve given up on God. Don’t do that. Let perseverance finish its work.
When perseverance finishes its work, you will be mature and complete. That’s our final point: mature and complete.
You don’t develop perseverance simply to have perseverance. You develop perseverance for a goal. In other words, you don’t walk through the fire of trials simply to keep walking through the fire of trials. There is something at the end of the fire. There is pure gold at the end of the crucible. James told those suffering Christians so in verse 4, “Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
If you keep trusting God in your trial, you will mature. Think of the most mature Christian you know. There is a lot of pain underneath that maturity. There are a lot of fishhooks turned like questions marks in that heart. The most mature Christian you know is joyful not because life has always been easy, but because life has, at times, been very hard. The most mature Christian you know loves generously not because she has always been loved but because she, at times, been hated as Jesus was. The most mature Christian you know is peaceful not because he has avoided trials but because he has held on in trials.
Francis of Assisi described this mature heart well praying, “Oh Master, grant that I may never seek, so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood, as to understand, to be loved, as to love with all my soul.” That is the gold on the other side of the crucible.
That is a picture of your friend Jesus. Even though he was rich, for your sake he became very poor so that you might become rich. You might be thinking that it was easy for Jesus to love in the face of hate and to have peace in the midst of trials, after all he is the Son of God. If you think it was easy for Jesus, remember what Hebrews says, “Son though he was, [Jesus] learned obedience from what he suffered.”
Jesus was always perfect, but he matured through trials. His love matured through rejection. His peace deepened through anguish of soul. His hope intensified through grief. “Son though he was, [Jesus] learned obedience from what he suffered.”
He is the pattern of what you, the child of God, will become. He is the picture of maturity. He is the diagram of completion. When you watch Jesus in action in the gospels, you see the perfection of humanity.
That process will not be complete until you have persevered to the end. In many ways, pain will be twisted in your heart like a fishhook until you see God face to face. That is when He will wipe the tears from all faces. Thinking about the trials of this life, Marilynne Robinson was right to add, “It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.”
Your trials bring tears some of which will not be wiped away until you see God face to face. Until then, He reminds you that the pain of your trials will not have the final word. Joy will have the final word. He wants you to consider that joy even as you walk forward with pain. Amen.
This question that goes with the question mark is most often expressed as, ‘why?’ ‘Why did my little girl die?’ I don’t know the background of the fishhooks that are lodged in your heart. I don’t know the exact nature of the questions you ask in your pain. I don’t know the ‘why?’ questions that you ask. Trials bring fishhooks. Trials bring questions.
Last week we saw that trials bring all sorts of emotions. Trials bring tears. Trials lead to laments like Psalm 10, “Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide Yourself in times of trouble?” There are many reasons to attend to that fishhook lodged in your heart.
But that pain isn’t the only thing to consider. Pain is right to consider, it is unavoidable to consider, but it isn’t the only thing to consider. James urged us to consider the joy in trials.
This joy James writes about won’t remove the pain—it isn’t designed to do so; that would dishonor the loss. The joy James told those early Christians about was designed to help them in their pain. God offers it to help you in your pain.
We saw four reasons for joy in trials last week. Trials force you to remember that God is in charge and that knowledge grants a peace that passes understanding. Trials remind you of who you are and who God is and that grants a sense of proportion. God can use your trials to help others and that gives you a sense that your trials are not the final word. The deep valleys of your trials point you to the high mountaintops of heaven and that gives you hope for the future.
Today we give our full attention to the reason for joy in trials which James gave to these early Christians. This is a reason for you to consider as well. Your pain and questions will be present with you whether or not you consider this joy. The fishhook is already there. Consider how God wants you to move forward even as if it remains lodged in your heart until glory.
Consider that God is using your trials to make you mature and complete. That is the claim of this sermon: Consider that God is using your trials to make you mature and complete.
That is not a total answer. That will not numb your heart and pull out the fishhook. It isn’t designed to. It is just one thing to focus on in your trials. Consider that God is using your trials to make you mature and complete.
We see this in three points. First: the testing of your faith. Second: developing perseverance. Third: mature and complete. The first point comes from verse 3. The second point bridges verses 3 and 4. The third point comes from verse 4.
First: the testing of your faith. James was speaking to these first century Christians about trials of many kinds. They were in the midst of a trial. They were scattered from their homes by the people they used to count as friends. They accepted Jesus and so they were rejected by the world. That was certainly a trial, but it wasn’t their only trial. They had financial troubles like we have financial troubles in our families. They had societal ills pressing in on them just like we do today. If they had bulletins at their Sunday worship services, those bulletins would be filled with health concerns just like ours are. They encountered, “trials of many kinds.”
Each of these trials tested faith. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.”
James used the phrase, “the testing of your faith,” to describe trials. God is doing dozens of different things when He brings trials into your life, many of which you will never know. One of the things He is certainly doing is testing your faith.
He isn’t testing your faith to see if it is genuine. These verses were not written to people who might be Christians. These were genuine believers. God was testing their faith to refine it. God tests your faith to refine it.
The Greek word translated here as testing was regularly used to speak of the refining process. God is heating your faith like gold to burn away impurities. Peter used the word this way when he told believers like you and I that, “[trials] have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Your faith has greater worth than gold. Your trust in God’s promises is more precious than you will ever know. It is a miracle that you can’t make happen. Your faith is even more precious to the Father than the most precious memory you have with your child is to you, and I’m sure those memories are precious. You see how much value the Father puts on faith which you look at the cross. “My faith is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Your faith is precious, and the Father uses trials to refine it into something even more precious.
God uses trials to refine this faith like gold in a crucible. He removes the impurities. We see that in the life of Jacob. Jacob had faith in the promise that he, not Esau, was the chosen son through whom the whole world would be blessed. That’s faith, but his was a very impure faith. Jacob cheated Esau to get what God promised. He lied to his father Esau to get what God would have happily given him.
Trials refined Jacob’s faith. He had to run away to save his life. He was repeatedly cheated by his uncle. He literally wrestled with God. When he came back to the Promised Land, he was a changed man. He was a changed man because of trials. He prayed, “I am unworthy f all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant… Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children. But you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’” Jacob trusted the same promise, but his faith was refined.
God uses trials to refine your faith, to test your faith, in the words of verse 3. You believe that Christ is coming again but your sufferings refine that faith. It was a suffering Christian who heard Jesus say, “Yes, I am coming soon,” and responded saying, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” You believe that Jesus was rejected for your sake, but that faith is refined when you are rejected for his sake. It was a suffering Christian who told the Philippians, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” The faith of those men was refined by trials. Your faith is refined by trials.
That was the case for Jacob’s son Joseph. Joseph believed what God revealed in his dreams. He believed that he would rule over his brothers. That’s faith, but it was an impure faith. Joseph bragged about the promises. He was a boastful and prideful young man.
Trials refined Joseph’s faith. He became a slave. He was wrongfully accused. He was imprisoned. He was forgotten. When he met his brothers again, he was a changed man. His faith in the promises was refined by trials. He was refined by trials. He broke down and wept saying, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.” Joseph was living God’s promise. He was ruling over his brothers, but the boasting and pride was gone. It was burned away in the crucible of trials.
God uses trials to burn away the impurities of your faith. You believe in the resurrection, but your sufferings have refined that faith. Like Mary and Martha, you have wept with Jesus at the grave of a loved one. You believe that Jesus laid down his life only to take it up again. You believe that Good Friday leads to Easter. That faith is refined when you lose your own life to save it. That faith is refined when you take up your cross and follow him. You believe the words of Psalm 23, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” That faith is refined by walking through the valley of the shadow of death and finding that the Good Shepherd truly is with you.
Trials refine your faith, but that is by no means a complete answer to the question of, ‘why?’ God doesn’t put your faith on one side of a balance and the life of your child on the other side to decide whether it is worth taking your child for the sake of your faith. God doesn’t put your faith on one side of the balance and your spouse’s health on the other side to decide whether or not to give your spouse cancer. That’s not how it works at all.
God uses trials to refine your faith, but He doesn’t revolve His sovereign will around your faith. The health or sickness of your family can be used by God to refine your faith but that doesn’t mean that health or sickness in your family revolves around the state of your faith. Good or bad things don’t happen to people because of you. You need to hear that in your pain. You need to know that you are not the center around which everything rotates because pain tells you that you are.
As your trials refine your faith, you develop perseverance. That is our second point: developing perseverance.
The crucible of trials produces perseverance, “testing of your faith develops perseverance.” Perseverance is good, but in your pain, you need to know that perseverance is not the final product. By its very nature perseverance cannot be a final product. The whole point of trials cannot be to develop perseverance so you can through longer trials.
Perseverance always has a goal beyond itself. Marathon runners do not develop perseverance simply so they can run longer races; they develop perseverance so that they can cross the finish line of longer races. Surgeons do not develop perseverance simply so they perform lengthier and more intricate in-depth surgeries. They develop perseverance so that they can heal people with these surgeries. If James ended with verse 3, “the testing of your faith develops perseverance,” we would be in sorry shape.
Perseverance leads to something else. We will see that it leads to maturity. It leads to completion. It leads to Christ-likeness. That’s where trials will bring you, but you must pass through the valley of perseverance first.
Perseverance is the long step between the testing of your faith and the maturity of your faith. If you don’t develop perseverance when your faith is tested, you are not going to mature as a result of your trial. You might become embittered as a result of your trial. You might run from God as a result of your trial. I don’t know what will happen in your heart if you give up on God in trials, but James tells you what won’t happen: you won’t mature. You will still have your trial, but you won’t have any joy in it.
Doug Moo is right, “The benefits of testing come only to believers who respond to them in the right way: Christians must allow endurance to do its intended work.” That’s what James said in verses 3-4, “the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete.”
I don’t know if Peter DeVries ever developed perseverance in faith as a result of his sad trials. In that same book he wrote, “What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial - or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.”
Those might have been words for the wind as Job put it, words that he expressed and later recognized as emotion rather than truth. If not, if DeVries continued to believe God’s sovereignty brought horror rather than comfort, James would say that his faith was not refined.
Now Peter DeVries didn’t need to hear James 1:2-4 in his daughter’s hospital room. He didn’t need to hear James 1:2-4 at his daughter’s graveside. He needed friends to mourn with him, which I imagine they did. He needed people to weep with him, which I imagine they did. Job’s friends did very well for the first seven days. They simply sat with their friend. They got into trouble when they tried to explain why it all happened. There is no answer I could give Peter DeVries for why God took his daughter. I could only tell him one thing God could do as a result of it. He could refine his faith.
James didn’t want those early Christians to suffer trials without the benefit of refining. James couldn’t change the fact that they were suffering any more than you and I can change the fact of suffering. He could urge those Christians to be refined by them. He could urge them to develop perseverance.
You develop perseverance by surrendering your impurities in your trial. We sang about it before the sermon, “When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie, my grace, all-sufficient, shall be your supply. The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design your dross to consume, and your gold to refine.”
You surrender these impurities of faith because you have a long walk ahead of you. Pilgrims like us need perseverance. Doug Moo puts it this way, “Like a muscle that becomes strong when it faces resistance, so Christians learn to remain faithful to God over the long haul only when they face difficulty.”
Watch this muscle develop in Abraham. When we first meet Abraham, he has faith but no perseverance. He surrendered to the pressure of living in a strange land by offering his wife to another man. He did it not once but twice. He went through trials as a result. He surrendered to the pressure of not having a child with his wife by having one with his servant-girl. He went through trials as a result. Through these trials, Abraham developed perseverance. He learned to keep trusting God when the heat was turned up. He learned that not trusting God led nowhere good. He learned that the flames would not hurt him, and that God’s only design was his dross to consume and his gold to refine. When God called Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, you see perseverance on display. Abraham had learned to trust God when the heat was turned up. He had learned to walk with God over the long haul. He was moving from unrefined faith to refined faith. He was moving from immaturity to maturity. He was moving from incompletion to completion.
Will you, like Abraham, keep believing the promises even in your pain? Will you cry out, “how long, O Lord,” but still keep calling him Lord? Will you say with Job, “though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him”? Will you remain convinced that, “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate [you] from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus [your] Lord”? Even as you say with the Psalmist, ‘God my rock, “why have You forgotten me,”’ will you remind yourself that, “by day the Lord directs His love, at [that] at night His song is with you—a prayer to the God of your life”? Even as your tears are your food day and night, will you tell your soul to put your hope in God? The refining of your faith develops that sort of perseverance.
You need to persevere. Look at verse 4, “Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete.”
Let perseverance finish its work. If you are in a trial right not, please don’t let go of God. Ask Him the hard questions like Job did. Tell Him how it doesn’t make sense like Habakkuk did. Go to Him with promises to claim like the Psalmists did. Bring Him your reasons for sorrow like Jeremiah did. Ask Him for a reminder of faithfulness like Moses did. If you have ran from Him because of your trials, return to Him like Elijah did. But don’t abandon Him. Don’t stop persevering because, “perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete.”
If you give up on God because of your trials, you won’t develop perseverance and you will still have your trials. They won’t go away because you’ve given up on God. Don’t do that. Let perseverance finish its work.
When perseverance finishes its work, you will be mature and complete. That’s our final point: mature and complete.
You don’t develop perseverance simply to have perseverance. You develop perseverance for a goal. In other words, you don’t walk through the fire of trials simply to keep walking through the fire of trials. There is something and the end of the fire. There is pure gold at the end of the crucible. James told those suffering Christians so in verse 4, “Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
If you keep trusting God in your trial, you will mature. Think of the most mature Christian you know. There is a lot of pain underneath that maturity. There are a lot of fishhooks turned like questions marks in that heart. The most mature Christian you know is joyful not because life has always been easy, but because life has, at times, been very hard. The most mature Christian you know loves generously not because she has always been loved but because she, at times, been hated as Jesus was. The most mature Christian you know is peaceful not because he has avoided trials but because he has held on in trials.
Francis of Assisi described this mature heart well praying, “Oh Master, grant that I may never seek, so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood, as to understand, to be loved, as to love with all my soul.” That is the gold on the other side of the crucible.
That is a picture of your friend Jesus. Even though he was rich, for your sake he became very poor so that you might become rich. You might be thinking that it was easy for Jesus to love in the face of hate and to have peace in the midst of trials, after all he is the Son of God. If you think it was easy for Jesus, remember what Hebrews says, “Son though he was, [Jesus] learned obedience from what he suffered.”
Jesus was always perfect, but he matured through trials. His love matured through rejection. His peace deepened through anguish of soul. His hope intensified through grief. “Son though he was, [Jesus] learned obedience from what he suffered.”
He is the pattern of what you, the child of God, will become. He is the picture of maturity. He is the picture of completion. When you Jesus in action in the gospels, you see the perfection of humanity. You see that God is renovating you, even though your trials, “so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
That process will not be complete until you have persevered to the end. In many ways, pain will be twisted in your heart like a fishhook until you see God face to face. That is when He will wipe the tears from all faces. Thinking about the trials of this life, Marilynne Robinson was right to add, “It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.”
Your trials bring tears some of which will not be wiped away until you see God face to face. Until then, He reminds you that the pain of your trials will not have the final word. Joy will have the final word. He wants you to consider that joy even as you walk forward with pain. Amen.