SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: If you would like to join as I read James 1, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, greetings.
SPEAKER_00: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
SPEAKER_00: And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
SPEAKER_00: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
SPEAKER_00: But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
SPEAKER_00: For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
SPEAKER_00: Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away.
SPEAKER_00: For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flowers fail, fall, and its beauty perishes.
SPEAKER_00: So also will the rich man fade away in the midst uh in the midst of his pursuits.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test of he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.
SPEAKER_00: Let no one say, when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God.
SPEAKER_00: For God cannot be tempted with evil.
SPEAKER_00: And he himself tempts no one.
SPEAKER_00: But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires.
SPEAKER_00: Then desire when is what is then desire when it has conceived gives truth, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.
SPEAKER_00: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
SPEAKER_00: Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be kind of first roots of his creatures.
SPEAKER_00: Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.
SPEAKER_00: But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
SPEAKER_00: For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.
SPEAKER_00: For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he is he was like.
SPEAKER_00: But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being not hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.
SPEAKER_00: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father is this.
SPEAKER_00: To visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
SPEAKER_00: This ends the reading of God's word.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Bonnie.
SPEAKER_01: Public reading of God's word is something that we need to focus regularly on.
SPEAKER_01: Private reading?
SPEAKER_01: Public reading?
SPEAKER_01: The words of God for us.
SPEAKER_01: We are we have just begun.
SPEAKER_01: And are we, let's see, are we working here?
SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't know how Paul and the apostles did it without technology.
SPEAKER_01: How did the world get transformed without PowerPoint, Twitter, and everything else?
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: We will be apostolic this morning.
SPEAKER_01: We began last week a series of expository messages with the book of James.
SPEAKER_01: James! Wow, am I thankful to God to be able to stand here with you and myself stand under the teaching, sit under the teaching of God's Word in the book of James.
SPEAKER_01: James is one of these wild, radical, crazy books that messes with your mind.
SPEAKER_01: And that's God's intention.
SPEAKER_01: James is hard-hitting.
SPEAKER_01: He is almost offensively practical.
SPEAKER_01: He is off-putting in what he says, verse after verse, paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter, in unmistakable, unavoidable demand that we make sure that our faith works.
SPEAKER_01: Faith that works.
SPEAKER_01: That's the theme that I've taken from the book of James for this whole series.
SPEAKER_01: Faith that works.
SPEAKER_01: We began the process of looking at James 1 through 4 last week.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to continue it.
SPEAKER_01: Throughout the history of the church, this book has been a troubling book.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you and I find what James says to be troubling.
SPEAKER_01: God intends to trouble us when we need it.
SPEAKER_01: But this book has had a sordid history, actually, in the church, because there's been significant doubt as to whether this book should even be included in the canon of the New Testament or not.
SPEAKER_01: And I won't trace the whole story, but I think I mentioned last week that none other than Martin Luther, a phenomenally gifted man used of God, he stated at one point that the book of James is a book full of straw, and it doesn't even help us understand anything about the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Well, he was wrong in that, but he was misunderstanding.
SPEAKER_01: He thought that James contradicted Paul.
SPEAKER_01: And that actually is not the case.
SPEAKER_01: We'll see that when we get into it a little bit later.
SPEAKER_01: So Luther was troubled by the book of James.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you, but I've been troubled by the book of James.
SPEAKER_01: I think I probably said last week that in my early years as a believer, with all of the wisdom and maturity of two or three months after coming to know Christ, I started having problems with the book of James, not because it contradicted Paul, but because it didn't agree with me.
SPEAKER_01: How's that for a mature response?
SPEAKER_01: The book of James will challenge us, it will trouble us, and that is its intent.
SPEAKER_01: Not to question whether or not this is from God, but to take these words which come to us from the lips of God and to receive them and welcome them.
SPEAKER_01: Why would we want anything other than what God has to say to us?
SPEAKER_01: And yet in our foolishness and our immaturity, like me in those days and like me, perhaps even still foolish and still areas for growth, just like you, if we're not careful, we we hold these thoughts at a distance.
SPEAKER_01: What James says to us is that if our Christianity doesn't work in our daily life, then it does not work.
SPEAKER_01: If it doesn't work in our neighborhood as we're dealing with the people around us, if it doesn't work in the office or at school, if it doesn't work when our life is falling apart, if it doesn't work when we get a ticket undeservedly, if it doesn't work when we watch television and want to scream and yell and throw things at the television.
SPEAKER_01: If it doesn't work when we're not getting along with one another, James is saying, if your faith only works here on Sunday, and maybe even barely that, then our faith isn't real.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't work.
SPEAKER_01: The reality of our faith is demonstrated not on Sunday morning here, but throughout our life there.
SPEAKER_01: And in order to get through to us, James says some very radical kinds of things that we must hungrily welcome and cherish.
SPEAKER_01: He shifts our paradigm.
SPEAKER_01: He changes our ways of seeing God and seeing the world if we will only let him.
SPEAKER_01: He messes with our minds.
SPEAKER_01: Your mind needs to be messed with.
SPEAKER_01: It really does.
SPEAKER_01: Until we begin to see God as he is revealed in Scripture, and welcome him as he is, and joyfully, hungrily listen and say, Oh Lord, change my thinking, change my way of seeing things, change my view of you so that it accords with reality, with truth.
SPEAKER_01: And I welcome from your hands, God, whatever you choose to bring into my life to enable me to be more the person you want me to be.
SPEAKER_01: And that is actually the message with which he begins in James chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to what he says.
SPEAKER_01: Just listen.
SPEAKER_01: This is so hard.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's not hard to say it, it's not hard to sit there, but it's hard to internalize it and live it.
SPEAKER_01: Look at, just think about what he's saying.
SPEAKER_01: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody suggested that when we get to heaven we'll uh we'll we'll recognize one another because we'll all have a big red spot on our forehead, because we'll we'll wake up and we go, I get it.
SPEAKER_01: Count it all joy?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, come on, what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_01: That is what James says under the inspiration of God.
SPEAKER_01: That is precisely what he means.
SPEAKER_01: God says what he wants to say, means what he says, and it's always and only right and good.
SPEAKER_01: We're the ones that are not right and don't get it right and are not good.
SPEAKER_01: So let's just allow this to penetrate into our thinking.
SPEAKER_01: Count it all joy, brothers and sisters, when you meet various trials of various kinds.
SPEAKER_01: For you know, do we know?
SPEAKER_01: I hope we'll know by the end of our time together, you will know, you know that the testing of your faith produces something godly and good and absolutely vital for us.
SPEAKER_01: Steadfastness.
SPEAKER_01: And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete and lacking in nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Why would we want anything else?
SPEAKER_01: Oh Lord, help us open our hearts, open our minds, open our paradigms, open our sense of who you are, O God.
SPEAKER_01: The book of James reminds me a little bit of the wisdom literature in the Old Testament, the book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, a section of the scriptures that contains short nuggets of thought that you can't just swallow and go on.
SPEAKER_01: You have to meditate on.
SPEAKER_01: You can't outline the book of Proverbs.
SPEAKER_01: There is no outline to the book of Proverbs.
SPEAKER_01: I like outlines.
SPEAKER_01: I don't like unanswered questions.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like things to all fit nicely together.
SPEAKER_01: And God says, Walt, would you please grow up and just listen to what I have to say?
SPEAKER_01: And take the time to imbibe and relish what I have to say to you.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot quickly go through the book of Proverbs.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot quickly, I cannot quickly go through the book of James.
SPEAKER_01: It's like a fine meal.
SPEAKER_01: I don't mean running out to culverse and gulping it down and leaving.
SPEAKER_01: There maybe is a place for that.
SPEAKER_01: We spent uh 30 years of our lives in Europe, and when you went out for a meal in Europe, it was a whole evening.
SPEAKER_01: Sally wasn't there trying to clear the table before we were done.
SPEAKER_01: You had that table for the whole evening.
SPEAKER_01: And when you went out with friends, the goal was not to have a little bit of talk and then everybody's quiet because you're eating your food and then you get up and leave.
SPEAKER_01: No, the whole purpose of meal was fellowship and connecting person to person.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot savor a fine meal by gulping it down.
SPEAKER_01: We lived in Belgium.
SPEAKER_01: Beautiful, dark, cream-filled Belgian chocolates.
SPEAKER_01: You're not supposed to pop those like pieces of candy.
SPEAKER_01: You let it melt, you savor it.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way the book of Proverbs and that's the way the book of James is meant to be enjoyed.
SPEAKER_01: But some of what he has to say to us, we're going to struggle with.
SPEAKER_01: Interestingly enough, the book of James reminds me a lot of the writings of his elder half-brother.
SPEAKER_01: We saw last week that the writer here was the younger half-brother of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Same mother, different father.
SPEAKER_01: And the way Jesus taught tended to be kind of short, pithy comments that rocked his readers, and then clear, rather intriguing and unexpected illustrations.
SPEAKER_01: So he would talk about the speck in the other person's eye and this huge four by four beam sticking out of your own eye.
SPEAKER_01: And he'd say, get out of the boat and walk on water.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the way James James talks.
SPEAKER_01: Unexpected, startling, counterintuitive.
SPEAKER_01: And so he says, Welcome, welcome, rejoice when you go through trials.
SPEAKER_01: Because you know God is doing something.
SPEAKER_01: And what God is doing in us through trials is precious and valuable.
SPEAKER_01: It produces steadfastness.
SPEAKER_01: And let steadfastness, verse 4, have its full effect so that you can be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
SPEAKER_01: He means this.
SPEAKER_01: God means this.
SPEAKER_01: So so so how do we relate to it?
SPEAKER_01: Well, a couple of thoughts.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_01: We'll come back to Count It Joy.
SPEAKER_01: But Count It Joy when you meet trials of various kinds.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of interesting that he doesn't specify.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we saw last week a little bit about the situation of the readers, those who had received this book in the first century.
SPEAKER_01: They were, they found themselves in a culture that was hostile to them and their beliefs, found themselves in a place where they were disadvantaged, found themselves in a situation where there was cultural and social opposition to them.
SPEAKER_01: You'd almost think it was talking about the church in our day.
SPEAKER_01: My friends, the church is no longer a major factor in our society that is more or less undergirded by the values of society.
SPEAKER_01: Quite the contrary.
SPEAKER_01: Now, in our little world here, certainly within the confines of these walls, perhaps, but the world has fundamentally changed.
SPEAKER_01: And I tried to urge you last week to not fight against that, don't bemoan that, don't just grieve the loss.
SPEAKER_01: We are in times that are not quite yet what they were for these believers here.
SPEAKER_01: The trials they were going through were far more severe than the trials we are going through or are likely in our culture, in our society, in our day to experience.
SPEAKER_01: The likelihood of you having to kneel in an orange jumpsuit behind someone who has a sword to slice your throat, the chances of that are pretty minimal.
SPEAKER_01: That obviously is happening, and it could happen here.
SPEAKER_01: That's not where we are.
SPEAKER_01: But our society does not value the things we hold most dear.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've noticed that.
SPEAKER_01: The world has changed, the tectonic plates have shifted, and they're not likely to shift back.
SPEAKER_01: The Church of Jesus Christ in the days of the apostles was spiritually vital, and yet it was opposed by society and politics and culture on every side, and it thrived.
SPEAKER_01: I truly believe, and my prayer, is that the best days for the Church of Jesus Christ in America are yet to come.
SPEAKER_01: When we know there's a price to pay, to name the name of Christ, we know that there will be disadvantages if we are consistent in our walk of faith.
SPEAKER_01: We know that we will offer sac, we will have sacrifices that we will have to give.
SPEAKER_01: And if we're wise and godly, and if God's Holy Spirit works in us, we will joyously welcome those opportunities to experience trials and difficulties in a way that honors God and in a way that produces within us something that we don't have a whole lot of in our American evangelical church in this day, and that's what he's talking about with steadfastness.
SPEAKER_01: We will get to that in a moment.
SPEAKER_01: But it's just interesting to me that he just kind of leaves the nature of the trials for us to fill in.
SPEAKER_01: So, trials of various kinds.
SPEAKER_01: And really, the different kinds of things that are being faced by those of us in this room are as different as the people facing them.
SPEAKER_01: The problems you are facing in your life, the ones that really stretch you, they are probably quite different from the person in front of you or behind you.
SPEAKER_01: And those people may know nothing, may have not the faintest idea of what's going on in your heart that just causes you anguish and maybe it keeps you up at night, maybe it makes you despondent, maybe it makes you want to just give up.
SPEAKER_01: You put on a happy face and we come together.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody knows the troubles you've seen.
SPEAKER_01: I love that old Negro spiritual.
SPEAKER_01: I won't sing it, but nobody knows the troubles you've seen.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody knows but Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jane and I have been married for 46 years.
SPEAKER_01: She knows me better than anyone else, and she stayed married to me.
SPEAKER_01: It's an amazing testimony of grace.
SPEAKER_01: But there's things about my heart that that that even after 46 years, she senses she has a little bit of the contours of, but she doesn't understand and I don't understand her.
SPEAKER_01: I'm worse at understanding her than she is at understanding me.
SPEAKER_01: But no one, no one, even those we are closest to, really can plummet the depths of what's going on.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I hope and I trust that we work real hard to have people around us with whom we can share at a profound level.
SPEAKER_01: The Christian life was not meant to be a solo flight.
SPEAKER_01: So I trust that you're involved in some kind of a small group, two or three or five or ten other people where you can have a measure, a greater measure of honesty where it's appropriate and suitable.
SPEAKER_01: But you still can't undress in front of everyone, and you don't need to.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus knows what's going on in your life.
SPEAKER_01: But boy, do we need to have a group of people around us who will know us and love us anyway.
SPEAKER_01: But we can't expect too much from that.
SPEAKER_01: The real key is not do we have people around us who can understand.
SPEAKER_01: The real people is do we understand?
SPEAKER_01: Not the depths of our heart, but do we understand who God really is, the way God really works, and do we welcome that and cherish that our understanding of God at a profound level is what makes our faith really work.
SPEAKER_01: This matter of rejoicing in trials is a pretty significant one, and uh we need to be very careful we understand um what he's really saying here.
SPEAKER_01: He's not saying, don't worry, be happy.
SPEAKER_01: What a silly little ditty that is.
SPEAKER_01: Be happy, be happy, be happy.
SPEAKER_01: Everything's wonderful all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Ha ha ho ho hee.
SPEAKER_01: To the funny farm, where life is wonderful all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, that was a little ditty I learned in the 50s or something like that.
SPEAKER_01: This is a command.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot be commanded to feel something.
SPEAKER_01: This is not a matter of feelings.
SPEAKER_01: Happiness, and the word happiness and joy, because that's what it says, it doesn't say be happy, it says rejoice.
SPEAKER_01: These words are very rich and sometimes they overlap significantly, but there are there is still a difference.
SPEAKER_01: Happiness happens.
SPEAKER_01: It's related to the happenings in our life, good circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: And who doesn't want good circumstances in our life?
SPEAKER_01: And we ought to be happy when there are good situations, and there are many good things about life.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not what it's talking about.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just paste on a smile and feel good because you're being oppressed, or because you're going through a disastrous marriage, or because your kids have rebelled from the faith, or because you're whatever it is, because the doctor said you've got cancer, or you're just growing old and dying.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, every one of us will die.
SPEAKER_01: There's no surprises about that.
SPEAKER_01: The death rate is 100%.
SPEAKER_01: The question is, do we die well?
SPEAKER_01: Do we understand at the end of our life even more about the richness and the reality of Christ?
SPEAKER_01: So that when we're losing everything and losing control of everything, we still have and we have in a way that's never been more strong, a clear sense of who God is and his trustworthiness and his goodness and his involvement in our lives when we're sitting in a nursing home and we can't do anything except be cared for.
SPEAKER_01: That is dying well.
SPEAKER_01: I want to die well.
SPEAKER_01: I want to die spiritually stronger than at any other point in my life.
SPEAKER_01: I will probably be physically weaker than at any other point.
SPEAKER_01: A person who knows God truly and deeply and understands who He is approaches difficulties quite differently.
SPEAKER_01: Joy does not depend upon circumstances, it depends on a knowledge that God is doing something good.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what it says.
SPEAKER_01: For, verse 2, count it all joy when you meet various trials.
SPEAKER_01: For, there's a connection there.
SPEAKER_01: For you know something.
SPEAKER_01: Joy is, among other things, the result of knowing something.
SPEAKER_01: And at its core, this is saying, knowing that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
SPEAKER_01: Now let that have its full effect.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot more to joy than this, but the point being is that joy comes from a profound and deep and practical realization of who our God is.
SPEAKER_01: Why do you think I say every time I get a chance, today is the 15th of November 2015, and God is still on the throne.
SPEAKER_01: He was last week, he will be today, and he will be in the week ahead.
SPEAKER_01: That's a reminder to me, and I'm forcing it upon you now week after week.
SPEAKER_01: A reminder of who God is.
SPEAKER_01: God is in control, God reigns.
SPEAKER_01: The devil is not in the details of the anguish of our lives.
SPEAKER_01: He may be there, but God is there as well.
SPEAKER_01: And the one who is in us is far greater than the one who is in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And though the enemy may mean it for evil, God means it for good and uses it for good.
SPEAKER_01: And I put my trust in the goodness and the character and the sovereignty and the sufficiency and the grace and the kindness and the patience of God.
SPEAKER_01: And with that, with that, my friends, you can go through what feels like hell.
SPEAKER_01: Thirteen years ago, on a Sunday morning, I was getting ready to preach at a church in Germany, my head exploded, had a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
SPEAKER_01: Took me to the hospital, they were flying me to a neurosurgical clinic in Germany, and they closed the doors of the helicopter with Jane on the other side.
SPEAKER_01: We said goodbye to each other because I knew how serious this was.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember laying there in that helicopter thinking, I know my birth date, I know my death date, and by all rights, I should have died that day.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what was going through my mind?
SPEAKER_01: First of all, some powerful music that just spoke to my soul.
SPEAKER_01: How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his infinite, excellent word.
SPEAKER_01: What more can he say to you, Walt, than he has said to you, Walt, who has to Jesus for refuge has fled.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we sang that at the end last week.
SPEAKER_01: But also going through my heart and my soul were phrases like, good you are, and good you do.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 119, 68.
SPEAKER_01: Good you are and good you do.
SPEAKER_01: Or Psalm 62, one thing I know, two things I have heard or have spoken, that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are good.
SPEAKER_01: What else do you want but a good, powerful, omnipotent God who is strong and does exactly what he wills, and what he wills is always and only good, a good and powerful God.
SPEAKER_01: That's all I need to know is I face death.
SPEAKER_01: Is that easy?
SPEAKER_01: Of course not.
SPEAKER_01: Did I want to live?
SPEAKER_01: Of course I did.
SPEAKER_01: Why he kept me around?
SPEAKER_01: Whole different story.
SPEAKER_01: But what I'm saying is when we go through difficulties and trials, whether it be the relatively minor ones of our lives, although I think I said last week, I'm not sure it was first service or second service, the definition of major surgery is any surgery on my body.
SPEAKER_01: So the trials I'm going through are the most difficult ones for me at that particular moment.
SPEAKER_01: So don't try to compare.
SPEAKER_01: But what helps me is to grab a hold of the character of God, his involvement in my life in times of troubles.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Paul did.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't like it.
SPEAKER_01: See, this doesn't say be happy about the trials.
SPEAKER_01: You know, anybody in their right mind is going to hope that we can avoid them.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to go out looking for difficulties.
SPEAKER_01: I know some young, enthusiastic people.
SPEAKER_01: I worked with a group that almost made an idol out of martyrdom.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to go looking for trials.
SPEAKER_01: God loves you enough to give them to you.
SPEAKER_01: I really mean that.
SPEAKER_01: God loves us enough to know that there are things that we will only be able to develop in spiritually through trials and difficulties.
SPEAKER_01: And he loves us enough to allow us to hurt.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, who for the joy set before him, not the happiness, it was more than happiness, endured the cross despising the shame.
SPEAKER_01: I hate the sin and the brokenness of this world, of your lives, and most of all of my life.
SPEAKER_01: I hate that.
SPEAKER_01: But I love what God is doing.
SPEAKER_01: I received a while back an email from a friend.
SPEAKER_01: This was a young uh girl, fourth or fifth grade, in the first church that we served in.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, had no idea that she would grow up to be a wonderful woman of God, married a phenomenal missionary.
SPEAKER_01: We've known them and loved them for years, and they have gone through incredible trials.
SPEAKER_01: Here's something that Beth wrote me just a few days ago.
SPEAKER_01: This was in an email.
SPEAKER_01: On my knees in a puddle of water.
SPEAKER_01: Not any water, that is the puddle of my tears.
SPEAKER_01: Lest I sound melodramatic, I found myself in a puddle of tears this morning, crying over pain.
SPEAKER_01: Not just my own current pain, but thinking through the pain through all the years that this body has endured and asking God, what's it all been about, Lord?
SPEAKER_01: And her life, she has had physical problem after physical problem after physical problem.
SPEAKER_01: And the pain that Scott, her husband, endures with his chronic fatigue, the pain my sister suffers from nearly constantly with migraines, and my sister-in-law, and we know all of these people, their names, they're precious people to us.
SPEAKER_01: Just underwent surgery last week, finding out she had a malignant ovarian tumor and is now awaiting word to see if there is cancer in any lymph nodes.
SPEAKER_01: Please pray for her and for her healing.
SPEAKER_01: Her name is Esther.
SPEAKER_01: I could go on and on, of course.
SPEAKER_01: We could all make lists of those close to us that we could cry a puddle of tears for and ask the question, Lord, is what is this all about?
SPEAKER_01: But then, in the middle of my tears, I remember that he does not give me more than I can take, not in a superficial spiritual way, but remembering along with it that his love is greater than any pain I endure.
SPEAKER_01: His love for me is so intense, so extensive, so real, so present that I know whatever I must walk through in this life, hey, it's just this life on earth.
SPEAKER_01: Get a grip on it, folks.
SPEAKER_01: This is but for a moment.
SPEAKER_01: This is not what our life is all about.
SPEAKER_01: This walk in this life on earth is going to be painful one way or another, and the questions I have pale with the answer in comparison to knowing that he is with me, inviting me to gaze upon his precious face and experience a sweet love for me in spite of what life has thrown against me.
SPEAKER_01: And there is the answer to the question I asked kneeling in my puddle this morning.
SPEAKER_01: It's been about learning that the most important things are not the what's and the whys of the life, but the whos and the hows.
SPEAKER_01: He invites me in all of life to enter into a loving relationship that isn't about figuring out how to fix my pain.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what we do.
SPEAKER_01: We run around trying to fix ourselves and fix other people.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what the Christian life is all about.
SPEAKER_01: But to trust him in my pain, I've also learned to think in terms of how can I walk well through this pain.
SPEAKER_01: It's not going away.
SPEAKER_01: How I learn to walk well in the pain rather than assuming I need to fix it.
SPEAKER_01: I hate pain.
SPEAKER_01: I love.
SPEAKER_01: I love God that has used it to show me his great love and that I am intimately dependent, utterly dependent upon him.
SPEAKER_01: This matter of rejoicing in trials is not a superficial super spiritual thing.
SPEAKER_01: It's the reality of how do you deal with the issues in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Paul dealt with his thorn in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: And he asked that it be removed, totally appropriate.
SPEAKER_01: He asked three times.
SPEAKER_01: Someone else we know asked three times that the cup could pass from him.
SPEAKER_01: And then he said, Not will my will, but your will be done.
SPEAKER_01: He trusted God in the middle of the hurt.
SPEAKER_01: That is God's calling for us.
SPEAKER_01: That enables us to rejoice in trials, knowing that good you are, God, and good you do, that you reign, you rule, you do exactly as you please.
SPEAKER_01: So what he wants to produce in us is here steadfastness.
SPEAKER_01: The NIV translates it perseverance, the NASB translates it as endurance, the KJV translates it as patience, the ESV translates it as steadfastness, and the WBV, that's the Walt Barrett version, translates it as spiritual resilience.
SPEAKER_01: And at its core, there's two aspects to it.
SPEAKER_01: One, the Greek word pictures bearing under a heavy load, just bearing the weight of a heavy load, and bearing it for a long time.
SPEAKER_01: This is not a momentary thing.
SPEAKER_01: This is bearing something for a long time that is very heavy upon us.
SPEAKER_01: And yet there's an aspect that is not just passively bearing, but is active and positive and even victorious.
SPEAKER_01: Not simply suffering, but overcoming the suffering is kind of the idea of spiritual resilience.
SPEAKER_01: Reminds me of the apostles who, when thrown in prison, they sang hymns of praise to God.
SPEAKER_01: That's not just super spiritual.
SPEAKER_01: That's kind of like lying there and allowing the words of truth to come over your soul and giving voice to it.
SPEAKER_01: And when they were released, they counted it a joy.
SPEAKER_01: They rejoiced for the privilege of suffering for Jesus' sake.
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of stuff he's talking about.
SPEAKER_01: We're not fully there yet, but it is a reality.
SPEAKER_01: Just as we close, a couple of simple illustrations of this from everyday life.
SPEAKER_01: Butterflies.
SPEAKER_01: Little caterpillars that have they wind this protective cocoon around them, a chrysalis, I think is the technical term.
SPEAKER_01: And if you find a chrysalis with a little struggling caterpillar in there, and you help him by, or her, or it, I don't know the gender of caterpillars, by releasing it from that chrysalis, that butterfly will never thrive because it's through having to push through and get out of there that the butterfly develops the capacity to fly and to soar.
SPEAKER_01: You're not helping him by trying to relieve the pressure there.
SPEAKER_01: He's got to push through that.
SPEAKER_01: There's a parallel there for us.
SPEAKER_01: Another example, diamonds.
SPEAKER_01: Diamonds are lumps of coal that have been subjected to great pressure for long periods of time.
SPEAKER_01: It takes both.
SPEAKER_01: Great pressure and long periods of time.
SPEAKER_01: A short amount of pressure does not create a diamond.
SPEAKER_01: A light amount of pressure for a long time doesn't create a diamond.
SPEAKER_01: Heavy pressure, long time, produces a diamond.
SPEAKER_01: What do you want in your life?
SPEAKER_01: You want to just be a lump of coal?
SPEAKER_01: That's what we are.
SPEAKER_01: That's where we start out.
SPEAKER_01: And God loves us enough to put us under pressure for a long period of time.
SPEAKER_01: Or, a final one, pearls.
SPEAKER_01: Life on this earth would be not worth much if every source of irritation was removed from us.
SPEAKER_01: Yet most of us rebel against the things that irritate us and count as heavy loss that which we ought to count as gain.
SPEAKER_01: We are told that the oyster is wiser than we.
SPEAKER_01: That when an irritating object, like a bit of sand, gets under its mantle, the mantle of his shell, he simply covers it and makes a pearl.
SPEAKER_01: The irritation that is causing is stopped by encrusting it with the pearly formation.
SPEAKER_01: A true pearl is simply a victory over irritation.
SPEAKER_01: Every irritation that gets into our lives today is an opportunity to culture a pearl.
SPEAKER_01: That's not just a cute little thing that a preacher says on Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of thing that James is talking about.
SPEAKER_01: There is no spiritual maturity without perseverance and steadfastness and spiritual resilience.
SPEAKER_01: It does not exist.
SPEAKER_01: Our church today, in our culture, is rich and spiritually non-vital.
SPEAKER_01: We have all kinds of resources, but we have rarely had the opportunity for our faith to be tested the way it really needs to.
SPEAKER_01: And we think we're well off.
SPEAKER_01: Go someplace, minister for a while with people that are really going through it.
SPEAKER_01: And you probably would go there with the hope that you could encourage them.
SPEAKER_01: I guarantee you, you will come back encouraged by the richness and the reality of their faith as they are cast totally upon Christ and they know they can't handle this, and God breaks through, and he gets all of the glory, and they have joy.
SPEAKER_01: We ought to long for whatever it takes, whatever it takes for us to be the people of God that God wants us to be.
SPEAKER_01: You ought to long personally, I ought to long for whatever trial God gives me to see Him in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't start out that way.
SPEAKER_01: I have to focus myself.
SPEAKER_01: I have to think God is here, God is with me, God is good, God takes evil and uses it for good.
SPEAKER_01: God can give me things that I don't have myself.
SPEAKER_01: And you begin to get focused again on who God is.
SPEAKER_01: And that begins to bring joy and rejoicing and praise as we focus on God.
SPEAKER_01: And that produces things in our life that are of inestimable value.
SPEAKER_01: Cannot, cannot quantify how valuable it is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength when everything around you is falling apart and life hurts and life stinks and life is not what we wanted.
SPEAKER_01: Oh well.
SPEAKER_01: God has other things that he's doing.
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, this is just for a while.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I've mentioned a friend of mine.
SPEAKER_01: I'll close with this.
SPEAKER_01: I really will close with this.
SPEAKER_01: Proof positive.
SPEAKER_01: A friend of mine who had a tagline.
SPEAKER_01: He introduced himself as my name is Dieter.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a temporary resident of Planet Dirt.
SPEAKER_01: Now, that usually provoked a discussion, and that was his intent.
SPEAKER_01: I had the privilege of walking with Dieter through the last years of his life, and I buried my dear friend Dieter.
SPEAKER_01: And at the end of his life, he was he was he was the kind of guy I want to be.
SPEAKER_01: This is not our home.
SPEAKER_01: This is not what it's about.
SPEAKER_01: We're only here for a little while, and you don't like your circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: Oh well, God knows what he's doing.
SPEAKER_01: God is good.
SPEAKER_01: Good you are, oh God, and good you do.
SPEAKER_01: And with that rock bottom way of approaching life, the pearls begin to form, the diamonds begin to form, and Jesus is glorified, and we see him for the treasure that he is.
SPEAKER_01: My friends, don't reject the process that a good and loving and sovereign and kind and patient and glorious God is seeking to do in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Don't stiff arm it.
SPEAKER_01: Allow God to have his way.
SPEAKER_01: See him for who he is.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be happy in tribulation, but rejoice because of who God is.
SPEAKER_01: And God's word is true.
SPEAKER_01: It produces in us something of great value.
SPEAKER_01: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that the reality of these truths would penetrate into our thinking.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that by your grace and through your Holy Spirit and through a word that is living and active and powerful, that you would keep messing with us until we begin to get it.
SPEAKER_01: Oh God, mess away.
SPEAKER_01: Transform us.
SPEAKER_01: May you be glorified in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And may we take every single thing that comes to us from the hand, from your hand, and receive it with grace and with joy.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that for myself, I pray that for my friends here, heavyweight.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.