Hi, my name is Rick Bloodworth. This is the Common Sense Christian channel, and today I wanted to talk about our struggles, and how maybe we don't need to despise them as much as we do. When you think about struggling, I don't know anybody that likes the struggle, but when you think about it, there's a lot of things in life that are intentionally designed to have a struggle with them. So that we'll get better at something. Think of the weightlifter who continually adds weights to what he's lifting. And each time he adds a little bit more weight, it hurts for him to lift that. There's a pain associated with that. There's a an exertion of the muscles that's very uncomfortable. Same thing for a, for a runner, whether they're a sprinter or a long distance runner. If they do not get to the point in their training where they're getting uncomfortable in their running, where they're not struggling to breathe, where they're not struggling to exert all the effort that they need to exert in order to do well, well, they'll never Accomplish the things that they're capable of accomplishing and so I want to talk about that very thing today in James chapter 1 in verse 2 it says consider it pure joy My brothers when you face trials of many kinds. Well, I don't know about you, but that's The thought of going through some kind of a trial or a struggle does not make me think first and foremost of joy, much less pure joy. But look at why he says that. Of course, James is the brother of Christ. He's inspired by God to write these things. So we know that they're truths. So let's dig into this truth a little bit. He says, because you know, the testing of your faith develops perseverance, and perseverance must finish its work so that you may be, be mature and complete and not lacking anything. Well, this idea of going through things that we have to persevere at, like the weightlifter adding more and more weight, like the runner pushing themself a little bit more each time. These struggles are the things that actually make them better. when they overcome. And it's the same thing with some of the trials in life. Now there's certainly some needless trials and we're not talking about that. We're not, we're not talking about getting drunk and then having the trial of a hangover or anything else that's associated with that. We're certainly not talking about any trials that come as a result of sinful activity where we've brought it on ourselves. in a needless fashion. Rather, we're just talking about the everyday things in life that we have to go through to make us better servants of God and more useful in that service. Well, I guess everybody just about has heard this example, but I think it's one of the most useful examples when we talk about the struggle that's needed in life. And it involves a little boy and his mama and their They're out and, and the little boy finds a caterpillar and he asks his mom if he can keep that caterpillar and the mom says, yes, you can, but you're going to have to take care of it. And so what they do is they get a big old gallon jar, and then they punch some holes in the lid, and they put that caterpillar in the jar. And then they get some leaves, the type that caterpillars like to eat, and every once in a while they'll put a few drops of water on those leaves so the caterpillar can can get a drink. And there's a stick or two in there that's allows the caterpillar to, to climb up every once in a while. And so the little boy is kind of enamored with this new pet and he checks on it every day. But then one day something really strange happens. He comes and he checks on his caterpillar and the caterpillar is gone. But, but there's, there's this little pouch. It almost looks like it's, it's a spider webby or something made out of cloth almost that's hanging from one of the little limbs that's in that gallon jar. And so he runs to his mom and, and tells her that the caterpillar is gone, and she comes in and looks, and she sees that cocoon that's in there, and she smiles, and she explains to her son what's happening. She tells him that God has designed the caterpillar in such a way that at a certain point in his life, he, he builds a cocoon, and, and inside that cocoon, he starts to transform into something beautiful. Cool. Well, now the little boy is really excited and he wants to open it up right then and see that butterfly and his mom says, no, you have to wait because if you don't wait, he's not going to turn, he's not going to develop right. And so the little boy with, with the patience of a little boy comes back every day and sometimes several times a day to see if that butterfly is there yet. And one day he comes there and he notices that that cocoon is starting to wiggle. And he, he's very excited because he has the idea that now this caterpillar has turned into a butterfly and it's trying to get out of its cocoon. So the little boy, being a little boy, decides he'll help it. And very carefully he starts to peel off the outer part of that cocoon. But when he gets there, he's surprised to see what's happened. He it's, it still looks a little bit like a caterpillar, but it started to grow wings, but the wings are not developed. And so what he has is something that is very much not a caterpillar, but it's not a butterfly either. As a matter of fact, it's kind of ugly and it doesn't fly. It just kind of crawls around and wobbles around. And so the little boy. it for a while and then after a little bit comes back and well, his, his little caterpillar butterfly is dead. And so in tears, he runs to his mama and he tells her what's happened and, and she comes in and, and she looks at it and sure enough, it's dead. And she says, now that's all right. But she said, caterpillars need that struggle. in order to become butterflies. And by taking it out of the cocoon before the caterpillar was ready, you took away the struggle. And so his wings didn't get strong enough and they didn't develop fully. It wasn't quite ready to come out of that cocoon yet. And it was because of this weakened stage and this, this stage where he wasn't quite ready that, that it caused him to die. And she said, don't worry though, we'll get another caterpillar and this time we'll really take care of it and we'll let it develop on its own and we'll let it come out of its cocoon on its own. Well, think about that. Think about this situation. We all know that there is a temptation in our lives to lessen the struggles of people. And when we're trying to, to, to ease a burden, something that they can't rightfully be expected to handle on their own, that's a good thing. It's good to help bear one another's burden. But we're also told that each one needs to carry their own load. And the idea behind that is there is a, a reasonable amount that each one of us needs to take care of for ourselves. And anything beyond that, then we can seek help and we'll need help at. And, and anything beyond that for other people, we need to be kind of on the lookout so we can help them when they get to that point. But if we help them in something that they can help themselves, they don't, they don't develop quite right. Think about what we've done with, with sports in recent years, especially among our, our kids. And, and what we have done is, is we, in an attempt to, to try and build up their self esteem, sometimes we, we take out the struggle. And, and we don't encourage them to work so hard towards excellence, and because of that, since they haven't worked so hard towards excellence, they don't become excellent. It's the same thing with, with a student whose parent is always helping them with the homework and sometimes even doing the homework for them. The child soon learns that they can, they can be placed on a type of a welfare, whether it's academic welfare or athletic welfare. or, or any other kind where they can kind of get by without a lot of hard work just by letting somebody else do it for them. And so in recent years we have started to modify the way that we grade people. Very rarely do you see anybody that does not pass a course even when they deserve very much to fail. Very, very often in athletics we'll see everybody get a participation trophy. It doesn't matter how hard they worked or how little they worked, they still get the same trophy. And our kids from that learn a couple of things. One, there are some things in life that just aren't fair. If somebody's not doing any work and yet they're getting the same result as you are. And what that has a tendency to do is it tends to weaken society as a whole. It tends to dumb down society. as a whole until finally, we've got a population that's weak, that cannot handle any type of adversity. You just look at, at all the things from that, that people are taking drugs for, for their depression and their mental illnesses and, and all these things that they can't cope with. And we've been diagnosing people with heretofore unknown diseases, but now we know about them because it certainly couldn't be that we didn't know. We're doing something wrong as parents or that our children are doing something wrong with their lack of effort. And so we diagnose them with a problem and we give them excuses. And while it's very true that there are some people who very certainly have learning disabilities and physical disabilities that we can, that we can pinpoint and we know they're going to need help because of, we start searching for excuses for others. who really don't have these mental or physical disabilities, but we treat them as if they're disabled and eventually they become disabled. What's happened? We've taken away the struggle. We've helped them get out of the cocoon too soon. They haven't been able to develop their own wings and as a result of that, they're never able to spread their own wings and fly. And we cheat. our children out of their birthright, because we are so concerned that they might not make it without our help in every little thing. I want to be very clear, there are some things that we need to offer help in. There are very real disabilities in life that people need a hand up, but we have gotten so much in our society to where we're giving people handouts that don't need it, and we're keeping them from developing. We are stealing their struggle. And why do we do that? I think it's in part because we read verses like this in James, where it says, Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, and we don't consider it joy. We don't consider this a way to get better for the master's service. We consider it cruel, as a matter of fact, by God that he would allow us to go through difficulties. We get mad at him and we rail against him and we might even leave his service because we believe he's let us down when he hadn't let us down at all. He's told us how we're going to grow stronger. And we know this in every area of life. We know that if we're going to get stronger physically, we're going to have to lift a little bit more weights and that lifting is going to be a little bit uncomfortable. If we're going to get faster, we're going to have to push ourself to the point where it's uncomfortable and we're tired. And we might even hurt a little bit. And academically, we might sometimes have to stay up a little bit later so that we can grasp certain subjects. Instead of letting mommy or daddy do our homework for us. Because quite frankly, mommy and daddy are not going to follow us into the work field, into the workforce, and do our homework for us when we're through with the job. that afternoon. The struggle is important in every area of life, not unnecessary struggle, but necessary struggle is so critical and we need to have the wisdom to be able to see the difference between the necessary struggle and the unnecessary struggle so that we can let people work out their own trials that they're capable of working out. And then we give them a hand up when they're in a situation where they can't reasonably be expected to get out of that situation. It's a tricky thing, I suppose, to a certain degree, but let's face it. When we're training athletes, it's not that tricky. We know they've got to lift more weight in order to become stronger. They've got to run harder and longer in order to get better at that. They've got to work harder at their jobs in order to excel. They've got to work harder in school to excel. And as Christians, there are some things in life that are just for a lack of a better description are a test. They're a trial. And while God will not tempt us. And he certainly won't give us something that we cannot handle. He will allow us to go through the trials so that he can see. Are we going to be faithful to him? Do we desire to serve him in good times and in bad? Or when the going gets rough, well, we just stop and we quit or even worse. We surround ourselves with people that say, add a boy for doing the littlest bit, and they give us a participation trophy, trophy, and then everybody's going to heaven, even though they are not even doing the things that God has commanded them to do. including repenting of their sins because these participation trophies have slopped over into religion. And what do we have? We look at society and we see that in many areas it's watered down. We look at sports and we see that in many areas it's watered down. Academics walk watered down. And as serious as these things are, they're nothing compared to a watered down and weak religion. We do want to encourage one another and help each other along as is needed. But we also need to have the wisdom to allow other people to go through the struggles. And when we go through struggles ourselves, rightful, needful struggles, we need to consider it pure joy because we know that we're working for a crown, a crown of excellence. We know that we're not going to be saved by our hard work. We're still going to be saved by grace and the sacrifice of Christ, but we still have our part to do. Otherwise there wouldn't be a hell, would there? And we've even gotten to the point in our religious society where even though Jesus talked about hell very freely, many religious leaders are now denying that it even exists. They're part of the problem. They want to give out participation trophies. They want to take away the struggle. They want to promise people something for nothing. They want to change the requirements of God. When it's only God who can do that. Consider it pure joy when you go through many trials, the trials help you to become better. So don't grumble and complain like I do so often, but just do your best, your prayerful best to figure out what you need to do and to get through the struggle victoriously. And then to encourage others to do the same. That's the lesson for today. Do not despise the struggle. There is joy in the struggle. I appreciate your listening today. I hope you'll come back when we talk again next time, but until then, I pray that God will richly bless you as you seek to serve him to the very best of your ability.