Imagine this: You just left the doctor’s office, and you received devastating news about your health. Or you just received an e-mail at work announcing that the company you have worked for the past twenty years will close in three months. How about this one: your husband for the past ten years just confessed to an extramarital affair and says he wants a divorce.
These are the kinds of trials that seem to come from out of nowhere. In the epistle of James, the King James Version uses the term “fall into divers temptations” (James 1:2).
All of us will encounter trying times in life at one time or another. The question is, how do you navigate those times? How you go about addressing the challenge determines how successful you will be.
Wouldn’t it be great if God shielded us from every tribulation? But He does not always shield us from the trials of life. Instead, He allows difficult times in our life for different and positive reasons.
Being a pastor, I have seen how a trying experience can negatively impact a person’s relationship with God. Some people become bitter with God when trials come in their life because they blame Him.
One challenge associated with enduring a test is that it may be something you have never been through before. That means you don’t have a bank of experience you we can draw from to effectively address the problem.
Nevertheless, when trials come in your life, it is the will of God for you to come out of them better than you were before. Based upon chapter 1 of the epistle of James, here are three important things to bear in mind when trials come in your life:
1. “The Testing of Your Faith Produces Endurance” (James 1:3, NASB)
To realize endurance, we must be stretched beyond our comfort zone. No runner, for instance, can properly prepare for a marathon by simply doing his usual three-mile run. To build endurance, he must go beyond that comfortable place.
Similarly, our faith is tested when adversity takes us beyond what’s normal or comfortable for us. This testing of our faith helps us to grow in spiritual endurance and tenacity. We will realize little or no growth in those areas if we just keep doing the norm.
2. Enduring a Test Will Make You More Complete
James writes, “Let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing” (verse 4). A key word in this verse is “let” or “allow.” We should allow ourselves to be exercised by the rigor of the test.
You may ask, what do I mean by let or allow. Of course, we can’t ignore or disallow a test that God allows. But we can choose to not allow a test to have its perfecting work in our life. We can instead choose to wimp out of the process.
The objective, however, is for us to realize perfection or completeness. Do you get what the Word of God is saying here? When trials come in your life, God wants yoi to endure them so you can come out of them better and not bitter.
3. God Will Give You Ample Wisdom for Your Trial
The question is, how do we go through a test and come out of it more complete? Based on the nature of what we are dealing with, we may not know how to do that.
So, James writes, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him” (verse 5). In prayer, we ask God for lots of things. But how often do we pray for wisdom when we are being tested and don’t know what to do? God promises to grant wisdom generously—if we ask Him.
Trials have a way of rocking our world. We don’t have to go looking for them; they will find us, no matter how careful we try to be. But God wants to use the trials in your life to make you better and not bitter. If you ask Him in faith, He will give you the wisdom you need to make that happen.
[“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials” (James 1:2)]
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