James 1: Wholehearted with God, Even Under Pressure

Introduction

"Physically, I can't do the splits. Spiritually, I'm very good at it." That is how Andrew Ollerton opens a new series on the letter of James at KingsGate Community Church in Peterborough, United Kingdom. He admits he can sing "I give you everything, Lord" on Sunday, then do something completely different on Monday. Worship God with your tongue, then criticize someone with the same tongue.

This stance, he says, ruins the Christian life and our witness for Jesus. God gave us two feet, but they are made to go in the same direction. The whole letter of James is a call to live "wholeheartedly": to place your entire life in God's hands and move in one direction with him.

This message draws on James 1:1-12 and shows that this is true even under pressure. Hard times are even an opportunity to become more whole with God. The preacher unfolds three points: pressure, which we all face; perspective, which we all need; and perseverance, for which there is grace. If an area of your life feels heavy right now, he invites you to dig into this text.

Message outline

1. James, from skeptical brother to servant of Jesus

The author of the letter is thought to be James, the brother or half-brother of Jesus. Mary conceived Jesus without union with Joseph, and the couple then had other children, including James. So he grew up under the same roof as Jesus: school, games, toys to fight over.
Yet he does not introduce himself as "the brother of Jesus," but as "a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" (James 1:1). He understood that Jesus was not only his brother in the flesh, but the eternal Son of God.
This is all the more striking because his own family doubted Jesus. One day, his relatives wanted to take him home, thinking he had lost his mind (Mark 3:21). But seeing his older brother crucified, then risen, James was convinced.
He became a leader of the Church in Jerusalem. According to church tradition, around the year 62, he was thrown from the top of the temple and then stoned to death for his faith in Jesus.
For Andrew Ollerton, this is a strong argument for the resurrection. If he wanted to convince the world that he is the Son of God, the hardest person to persuade would be his own sister: she knows he was sent home from a Christian camp for bad behavior, she was in the car when he got caught speeding, and she knows that, as a child, he killed the only goldfish she had. Only the resurrection explains a conviction for which James accepted to die.

2. Pressure: we all face it

"A diamond is a piece of coal that did well under pressure." Scientifically, the preacher admits, it is a little more complicated. But the image captures what James teaches: the pressures of life are not the problem; they are what God uses to make us into beautiful and solid characters.
James writes "to the twelve tribes which are in the Dispersion." He is not speaking only of the Jewish people, but of the Church, Jews and non-Jews, which he compares to the exiles of biblical history, driven from their land and subject to powers like Babylon or Rome.
"If you feel perfectly at home in the world as a Christian, you are probably doing the splits." We live in a culture, under powers and with values that are foreign to us. James's first readers were poor, oppressed, without rights.
The preacher stresses that James presents trials as a certainty: you will experience pressure. And he speaks of "various" trials, a very broad expression. Some come because you are a Christian, others simply from life: financial, relational, professional and health pressures.
Following Jesus was never a promise of an easy life. The promise is that God turns coal into diamond under pressure.

3. Don't build your theology on your circumstances

Don't tell yourself that, if your life is hard right now, God no longer loves you. That is bad theology. The most loved person in all of history died the most brutal death, on a cross, in Jerusalem.
"You cannot work out what God feels about you from what happens to you." Your theology must rest on Scripture and on the Gospel. Otherwise, you add insult to injury: not only are you going through a trial, but you also believe that God no longer loves you.
In verses 9 to 11, James overturns accepted ideas about wealth and poverty. Many think that success is the sign of God's blessing and poverty the sign of his rejection. James tells the brother of humble circumstances to glory in his high position, and the rich to glory in his humiliation, because he will pass away like the flower of the grass.
"You cannot know what God thinks of you from your bank balance." If your business is growing, don't conclude that God loves you more. If nothing is working, don't conclude that he has forgotten you. Read your theology in the Bible, not in your circumstances.
What matters most in God's eyes is not having a diamond on your finger, but a diamond-like character. That is what he is perfecting in you.

4. Perspective: we all need it

The goal of life is not to avoid pressure: you will never manage it, and if you are a Christian, it may even increase. The goal is to be transformed through it. For that, you need a perspective that assumes God has a purpose in what you are going through.
The preacher uses the image of the gym: in the moment, exercise makes you weaker. After an intense workout, you struggle to put on your clothes or to open the door on the way out. But if you keep showing up and facing the resistance, what weakens you in the moment makes you stronger over time.
"Pressure takes our faith to the gym." Trials make you feel weak, vulnerable, fragile. But if you welcome them with faith, they make you more resilient, more solid and more glorious in God's eyes.
Andrew Ollerton invites everyone to think of the hardest thing they are facing right now, then to read: "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations" (James 1:2). It is an enormous change of outlook.
James does not ask you to love what is hard. Nor does he say that God causes this thing to make you suffer. "It is not so much what God causes as what God uses."
Why? "Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing" (James 1:3-4). Where the World English Bible says "endurance," the preacher reads "perseverance."

5. The refiner bending over the crucible

The word translated "testing" can also evoke refining. The preacher cites Malachi 3:3: the Lord "will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver."
He describes God seated over a crucible where the molten silver is purified by the heat, carefully adjusting the fire to accomplish his purpose: shaping your character into his image and likeness.
It is said that the refiner knew his work was finished when, leaning over the metal, he saw his reflection in the purified silver. God created us in his image (Genesis 1:27). Sin and corruption have damaged that image, but God removes the dross until it is reflected in us again.
Pressure can refine your relationship with God: "Often, it is only when we know he is all we have that we realize he is all we need."
It can refine your priorities: a loss or a grief makes you see that you were living for trivial things. It can refine your relationships: you realize you were hurting those close to you by chasing worthless illusions. It can refine your compassion: you finally understand what others are going through and become less cold and less critical.
To see the trial differently is to refuse to believe it is without purpose (there is a design) and to refuse to believe it is without end (there is a hope beyond).

6. Pressure is not enough: ask for wisdom

Pressure does not produce this fruit automatically. You need pressure plus the right perspective. "The same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay." The same circumstances can lead one person to turn to God and another to turn away from him.
The preacher has seen many people, sometimes through no fault of their own, react to stress in the wrong ways and add problems to the problem: they start drinking to cope with difficulties at work and become dependent; they spend money to make up for a relationship going badly and end up in debt; they throw themselves into another relationship after their marriage fails and cause havoc.
Hence verse 5: "But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him." Pray: "God, help me, when I am under pressure, not to make hasty, foolish decisions that make things worse."
"Without reproach": God does not stand over you with his arms crossed, saying "you got yourself into this mess, sort it out yourself." Even if it is a mess you are responsible for, he has open arms and asks you: "How can I help you?"
He does not abandon people because they made mistakes. He helps those who got it wrong to put things right. This is the same God who gave his Son over to death on the cross for our sins and raised him.

7. Perseverance: there is grace for it

What the gym produces is endurance, strength, resistance. That is what God wants to build in you: the ability to hold on to the end.
The exiles will one day return home. At the end of this life of struggles and trials, we will enter the new creation, where these things will be no more. God can give you the grace to hold on until then. You do not have to buckle under pressure.
"Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord promised to those who love him" (James 1:12). One day, you will rejoice that you did not give in or compromise when life was hard.
We are like the flowers of the field: here today, gone tomorrow. The preacher tells how this summer, at the Big Church Festival, as he was climbing a hill with others, a large sign fell on people just ahead of them, and one of them died. They were about two seconds from finding themselves underneath. A solemn reminder: tomorrow is not guaranteed to anyone.
So settle things today. Live in purity and holiness. If you have not forgiven someone, forgive them today. If there is something you should have done, do it today. Make that call. Hug someone you love instead of keeping them at a distance.

8. You can lose, but you don't give up

When he was younger, Andrew Ollerton played rugby at school. His father sometimes came to watch him and shouted a lot from the touchline. One day, near the end of a match, his team was too far behind and the players had stopped playing.
His father shouted his surname, then: "It's okay to lose, but you don't give up." He never forgot it.
Even as a Christian, you will know losses, setbacks and disappointments. It's okay to lose. But don't give up. Don't let the trial keep you from playing wholeheartedly for the Lord.
Beyond this life, he has a crown of life to place on your head. And in this life, all things work together for good for those who love God (Romans 8:28).
At the end of the message, the preacher invites those going through a trial to hold out their hands, like a crucible, placing before God what hurts, and to pray: "Lord, give me your view of my trial. Help me not to waste the pressure I am under, but to let it refine my character." Then he calls those who are living halfway, one foot in church and the other in their own life, to put both feet down and follow Jesus wholeheartedly.

Key takeaways

God gave us two feet to go in the same direction: stop the spiritual splits and live wholeheartedly for Jesus.
Trials will come. They say nothing about God's love for you: read your theology in the Bible, not in your circumstances.
It is not so much what God causes as what God uses. Like a refiner, he uses the heat to reflect his image in you.
Pressure does not transform automatically: it takes the right perspective and the wisdom that God gives liberally and without reproach.
Perseverance leads to the crown of life. It's okay to lose, but don't give up.

Personal application

In which area of your life are you doing the splits: your tongue, your work, your money, your relationships?
What is the hardest trial you are facing right now? What might God want to refine in you through it?
Have you drawn a conclusion from your circumstances about God's love that the Bible contradicts?
Under pressure, what do you turn to in order to hold on? Take a moment today to ask God for his wisdom.
Is there someone to forgive, a call to make or a gesture of affection to offer today, without waiting for tomorrow?

Verses cited

Frequently asked questions

What does "count it all joy when you fall into various temptations" (James 1:2) mean?

Andrew Ollerton makes clear that James does not ask you to love what is hard, nor does he say that God causes your trial to make you suffer. The question is not so much what God causes as what God uses. You can see the trial differently because God uses it to produce perseverance in you and to make you perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

If my life is hard, does God no longer love me?

No. For the preacher, it is bad theology to judge God's love by your circumstances. The most loved person in all of history, Jesus, died on a Roman cross. Your theology must rest on Scripture and on the Gospel, not on what happens to you, nor on the state of your bank account.

Why does James talk about asking for wisdom in the middle of trials?

Because pressure does not transform automatically. The same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay: the same circumstances bring one person closer to God and push another away. You need pressure plus the right perspective. God promises to give wisdom to all, liberally and without reproach (James 1:5), even when you are in a mess you are responsible for.