James 1: The Joy of Perseverance When Trials Push You Forward

Introduction

Is your faith alive? Is it healthy? You've probably come across a faith that doesn't look too well: austere, a little dim, not very appealing. That's a real thing: our faith can be in poor health. That's exactly what James addresses in his letter, and that's why Church at Home is opening this fall a new series called "A Living Faith," to work through the whole book of James over the coming months in home groups.

The preacher starts with a simple question: how do you handle frustration? He tells the story of his summer vacation with his four boys, that little souvenir shop full of hook-hung trinkets, where the big challenge was to get out without breaking anything, and especially without buying anything. Managing kids' frustration is hard. But we adults have frustrations to manage too. The great challenge of life is holding steady when you're swimming against the current, when you know what you should or shouldn't do and it's really hard. We call that resilience: persevering in a direction that isn't obvious.

Maybe you need to persevere in your studies, your work or your job search, in practicing forgiveness within your family or friendships, in caring for your neighbor or the planet. And there are also inner battles where perseverance is needed. James 1:1-18 shows us how God can help us become people who persevere.

Message Outline

1. Trials, a Reason for Joy? (James 1:1-4)

• James is writing first to Christians, and more specifically to Christians of Jewish background, hence the phrase "to the twelve tribes scattered abroad." If you're not a Christian, this passage isn't speaking directly to you, even though what follows will still speak to you.
• At first glance the text seems contradictory: "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various trials." James is essentially saying: rejoice over suffering. It sounds a bit crazy.
• The Greek word used means both trial and temptation. It refers to outward struggles (James will later mention poverty, contempt, persecution, sickness) and inward struggles (wrong desires, coveting, slander, lack of love).
• James isn't saying the trial itself is joyful. He's saying we need to make a mental effort to view it as something that will produce joy in us: to look at our trials through God's eyes.
• He explains why in verse 3: the testing of your faith produces endurance, and endurance must finish its work so that we may be "perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." Perseverance is an essential part of Christian maturity: we need to build up our "perseverance muscle."
• We often say that being a good Christian means being bold, taking crazy steps of faith, praying for the sick. James says maturity is mostly about perseverance. Where do we give up too easily? Where do we blow up in anger, get swept away by our emotions? Are we resistant to temptation?

2. Training Like an Athlete (James 1:3-4, 12)

• The preacher talks about training for a marathon, starting from way behind, and how he still remembers his middle-school cross-country race as "the worst thing of his life." The first runs are pure suffering: your feet feel heavy, you're sweating, your face is red, your body is begging you to stop. But by persevering, you get used to that relationship with suffering, you build your cardio, you build muscle.
• The Christian life is a bit like that. We're not called to make our choices simply by avoiding difficulty. Sometimes we need to accept it and say: I'm going to train my perseverance here. Like an athlete who takes on difficulty in order to build strength.
• That doesn't mean we should go looking for trials at all costs. But God tells us not to be surprised that trials show up in the Christian life, and to see them as a chance to train our "perseverance muscle."
• The Christian life isn't a javelin throw, it's more like a very long rugby match, like the one the night before: you wonder how the players are still standing at the end, but they're trained, they're strong, and they hold on.
• God wants us to be persevering and faithful, so that one day, standing before him, he can say: "Well done, good and faithful servant... enter into the joy of your master" (Matthew 25:21).
• If you have faith in Jesus: is your faithfulness to God solid? Is your love for God solid? Is your relationship to trials limited to just the hardship, or do you ask, "God, what do you want to do with me in this trial?" Mature faith is a faith that perseveres. That's not easy to hear when you're going through trials that make no sense and pierce your heart, but the rest of the passage comes to encourage us.

3. Asking for Wisdom Without a Divided Heart (James 1:5-8)

• "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach." That's very encouraging: persevering and following Jesus is hard, but God wants to help us, to give us his wisdom, his counsel.
• The preacher points back to the testimony shared earlier in the gathering, of Deborah, who took the time in her difficulties to bring her questions to God and ask for his guidance.
• James invites us to ask without doubting. Here's a picture: your stomach really hurts, you see a doctor who diagnoses a serious illness, but gives you a remedy to follow. You go home with the prescription, and you tell yourself: I'll still check WebMD, try a few herbal remedies, cook up my own solution. You don't really trust the doctor.
• James says: if you ask God for help, trust him completely. Surrender to his diagnosis, his method, his remedy. He shines a light on the "divided heart," the person "unstable in all his ways."
• The preacher shares his own story: raised in a Christian family, it took him a long time to actually follow Jesus, and for a long while he had a divided heart. That's what keeps us from fully living out what God wants to do in us: we listen a little to the Great Physician's advice, then we throw everything he prescribed in the trash, and nothing happens. It wasn't until he was 18 that he thought: what if I actually tried? What if I truly sought God and his counsel, with my whole heart?
• Mature faith seeks God's wisdom and follows it completely. Do we eagerly seek out God's counsel?
• An illustration a friend once gave him: when you go through a trial, it's like something is pushing you from behind. If you trust God, if you look to the Lord and lean on him, the suffering draws you closer to God and he comes to support you. But if you leave God out of the equation and try to handle it alone, the trial pushes you away from God. It's never God who moves away from us: it's us who choose to move away, sometimes nursing anger at him. And yet God keeps his hand extended.

4. Where Is Your Security? (James 1:9-12)

• "Let the brother in humble circumstances glory in his high position, and the rich, in that he is made humble, for he will pass away like the flower of the grass." James reminds us that we will all return to dust. We feel like the world belongs to us, when in fact so much of it is fleeting.
• We think happiness will come with this new iPhone, this new house. But when you follow Jesus, you learn to detach from that: our security isn't in material things, it's in God.
• For someone who is poor, it may be easier in a way: they don't have riches that make them think they're secure. The rich person, when they become a Christian, has to let go of their wealth, in the sense that they can no longer find their security in it, and that's sometimes harder.
• "Blessed is the man who endures temptation." This is the second time the text mentions joy: there's a real joy in persevering. Some of our desires can pull us away from God, but there's a real joy in holding steady.
• The preacher quotes actor Jim Carrey, who once said everyone should get rich and famous and get everything they ever dreamed of, just to see that it isn't the answer. That's striking, coming from someone who's achieved it all.
• Am I resisting the temptation to place my security in money, in my skills, in my marriage? Have I understood that happiness isn't found there, but in a relationship of faithfulness with God? When we understand that, we have more strength to persevere.
• Following Jesus, loving God with all your heart, loving your neighbor as yourself, that's hard. But there's a real blessing: "he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love him." The true gift is eternal life. Life doesn't end: it continues with God, and that eternal perspective changes everything. And this relationship already begins now: we can already rejoice that God is with us.

5. Running Knowing There's a Finish Line (James 1:12)

• The preacher remembers running part of the SaintéLyon, a night race in December, starting at midnight, in the cold and the rain. If you isolate that moment, there's no sense in going out to run at half past midnight in the rain. What kept the runners going was knowing there was a finish line, and something incredible waiting at the end: celebrating a great victory.
• That's what Jesus says and what James reminds us: hold on, because at some point the suffering will stop, we'll get to celebrate that victory with Jesus, the race will be over. But for now, let's keep going, let's persevere. If you're a Christian, you're in the race, and it isn't easy.
• The preacher has watched friends discover faith in Jesus and then walk away from it. Keeping the faith isn't a given.
• Paul, at the end of his life, didn't say: I planted churches, I prayed for people, I did amazing things. He said: "I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith" (2 Timothy 4:7). One of the great challenges for a Christian is keeping the faith.

6. It's God Who Carries You (James 1:13-18)

• James applies a bit of pressure: persevere, whatever you do don't stop. But he closes in verse 16 with a beautiful passage: "Don't be deceived, my beloved brothers and sisters. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, nor turning shadow. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures."
• God knows we're going to stumble. God knows it will be hard to persevere in faith. But the good news is that it's God who saves. The word of truth is the gospel: Jesus comes to save us from our sins and makes us a new creation. By believing in Jesus and his forgiveness, we live a new life, and God comes to help us in that life through the Holy Spirit.
• To persevere and stay faithful to God, let's lean on forgiveness, on what Jesus has done, and on the Holy Spirit whom Jesus wants to equip us with for the race. We're a bit like disabled runners in this race: we need help to hold on.
• The preacher thinks of the story of Rick, in the United States. Parents welcome a disabled child, paralyzed, and the doctors give them little hope, even doubting whether his brain functions at all. The parents decide anyway to teach him what's taught in school, and they persevere until they discover the boy understands everything perfectly well, even though his body doesn't respond. One day, the father runs a race pushing his son in a wheelchair. The son, who communicates through a computer, tells him: "When you run with me, it feels like I'm not disabled."
• So this father, who is no runner at all and is 35 years old, says: son, we're going to do races. They go on to run race after race, all the way up to triathlons and Ironmans, some of the toughest competitions there are; the preacher mentions more than two hundred triathlons run together. This father pushing the wheelchair is a beautiful picture of what God wants to do in our lives.
• We're incapable of persevering in every area on our own, but our Father in heaven is able to save us, to help us, to push us, to train us for the race. The question is: do you want God's help to persevere? Are you willing to let God carry you? For that, you have to surrender to God.
• This father loves his son completely and gives everything to invest in his life. Whether you're a believer or not, the preacher invites you to draw close to the Lord and to rely on him.

Key Takeaways

• James isn't saying trials are joyful: he's inviting us to look at them through God's eyes, because the testing of our faith produces perseverance, and perseverance leads to maturity.
• Mature faith isn't first and foremost the faith that pulls off great feats, it's the faith that perseveres. We build our perseverance the way a runner learns to handle the pain of those first hard runs.
• God gives his wisdom freely and without reproach, but he expects us to trust him completely. The divided heart, which listens to God and then cooks up its own solution, receives nothing.
• The trial pushes you from behind: toward God if you lean on him, away from God if you try to handle it alone. It's never God who moves away, and his hand stays extended.
• Security isn't found in money, skills, or marriage, but in God. The crown of life, eternal life, gives a perspective that changes everything, and that relationship begins right now.
• We're incapable of persevering on our own, but it's God who saves: through Jesus's forgiveness and through the Holy Spirit, our Father carries us through the race, like that father pushing his son's wheelchair.

Personal Application

1. In what area do you think you need to be more persevering?
2. When you struggle to persevere, have you ever experienced God's forgiveness, counsel, or strength? Explain.
3. If you're a Christian, are there trials or temptations you're facing right now that could be a chance to build your perseverance?
4. When you face a difficulty, do you ask, "God, what do you want to do with me in this trial?" or do you only see the difficulty?
5. Where do you tend to place your security: money, your skills, your marriage? What changes when you place it in God instead?

Verses Cited

• James 1:1-18 (main text)
• James 1:2-4: the trial produces perseverance
• James 1:5-8: asking for wisdom without doubting
• James 1:9-12: the poor, the rich, and the crown of life
• James 1:13-18: every perfect gift comes from above
• Matthew 25:21: "Well done, good and faithful servant"
• 2 Timothy 4:7: "I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith"

Frequently Asked Questions

Is James really asking us to rejoice over suffering?

No. James isn't saying trials are joyful in themselves. He's asking for a mental effort: to consider the trial as something God can use to produce perseverance, and so to look at it through God's eyes.

What does the word "trial" mean in James 1?

The Greek word James uses means both trial and temptation. It covers outward struggles (poverty, contempt, persecution, sickness) and inward struggles (wrong desires, coveting, slander, lack of love).

What is a divided heart according to James 1:6-8?

It's someone who asks God for wisdom but doubts and ends up following their own ideas, like a patient who gets a prescription and then goes looking for their own remedy elsewhere. James calls us to fully trust God: his diagnosis and his remedy.