Wholeness Through Trials

[podcast]http://www.revkwon.com/podcast/wholeness_through_trials.mp3[/podcast] We’re starting a brand new series this week. This series will extend through February, at which we will take a break in the month of March and then pick up again in April and finish in May. We’re going to do a study in the Book of James. The study of this book is critical for us this year. I’ve been pressing all of you this year and starting with last year that the fruits of being Christian is the transformation of our lives and the lives around us through faith in Jesus Christ. I’ve said this in a number of different ways hoping that each time I said it, it would strike you in a way that would empower you to take hold of your faith and spring into action with it. The book of James is located immediately after the book of Hebrews and is 5 chapters long and is directed toward an audience sort of like ours. Immigrants or children of immigrants living in societies that talk a good game and yet the transformative nature of God’s power seems to be dead. The author of this book is James, the brother of Jesus, who is currently a leader in the church in Jerusalem around 49AD. Let’s start reading, James 1. We’re going to hit the first 18 verses today and the title of today’s sermon is “Wholeness through Trials.” ¹ James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings. ² Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, ³ for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. ⁴ And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. ⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. ⁶ 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. ⁷ For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; ⁸ he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. ⁹ Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, ¹⁰ and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. ¹¹ For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. ¹² Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. ¹³ Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. ¹⁴ But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. ¹⁵ Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. ¹⁶ Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. ¹⁷ 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. ¹⁸ 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. (James 1:1-18) I’m going to split today’s sermon in to two distinct parts: the first part expounds on the joy of meeting trials; and the second part is a rationale behind the method of learning by which trials produce steadfastness. Before I get into these two parts let me set up the context by which James is writing. I told you earlier that the time period is about 49AD and that James is writing to immigrant Christian families. Well, around before this letter is written, Stephen, you all know him as the first martyr, well he was recently killed for his beliefs and word had begun to spread. Moreover, violence began to spread throughout the Roman empire against Christ followers. We know that the Apostle Paul, who wasn’t a believer yet, and was known as Saul, was one of the chief instigators of this violence. Now let’s get into verse 2. V2-3. James says, “when you meet trials of various kinds….” He doesn’t say “if”, he says, “when.” This means one thing: don’t go out of your way trying to avoid the trials, it’ll find you. Like, have you ever thought, man, why do the trials keep following me around? It’s a tightness of money, it’s a rocky relationship, it’s difficult economic period at your job. There are trials in your life that just come at you, and it’s not if they do, it is when they do because there is no avoiding it and we shouldn’t be trying to avoid it either because that’s simply not going to work. What James says to do instead of trying to avoid it, is to have a positive disposition when it comes. Don’t pretend to be happy, but see what this trial you are facing is shaping you in a positive way. James knows one thing for sure, that when we are “joyful” and I don’t mean happy, but having a positive outlook, as James is saying when he says “count it joy.” The reason we have joy is because when we have a positive outlook to difficult and trying situations it allows us to become steady. The Bible uses the word “steadfast.” How can we really know the depth of our character if we do not know what we look like when we are faced with various trials and our reactions to those pressures. You see it’s easy to be a Christian when nobody is bothering, when life is good, when there are no trials. We can be kind; we can be loving to everybody when life is free from pain within us. But what happens when we begin to struggle? Don’t we start complaining? Don’t we start whining? Don’t we start acting out when we’re being treated unfairly. It’s like night and day. When there are no trials we act like we believe in Jesus. When there are trials, and I’m including traffic and annoying people at work, we act like sailors ready to through Jesus off the boat. It is only when we live through trials and have become steady in our demeanor throughout our trials that we will be like Jesus. Just take a moment to look at Jesus’ trials. He died on a cross and yet he was still loving. He pleads with God, the Father, to forgive them for they know not what they do. This is the kind way to say, “Dad, these idiots, what are we going to do with them? Let’s forgive them for not being at all human. But we all know something about ourselves and how we act when under trials, don’t we, we all know that we lack the knowledge and ability to make the choice we know we need to make. Let’s go to verse 5.  ⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. (James 1:5) When we’re asking God for wisdom to endure the trials, like when I pray for all of you asking God for wisdom in your lives, I’m praying that God gives you divinely practical ability. I’m not talking about intelligence—that is, I’m not asking God to help you understand a book you’re reading about string theory. That stuff, unless you’re a rocket scientist or something is not pertinent to you. I’m asking God to give you something more than common sense, although sometimes some of us intellectual people need common sense. I’m saying God, “give us the ability to see what you’re doing in the middle of this craziness and help us navigate it because truth be told, I just want to hide under my blanket and pretend it never happened at all.” This is what I’m praying. I’m hoping you’re praying the same thing when you’re asking God for wisdom. But look at what James says in verses 6 and 7. ⁶ 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.  ⁷ For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; ⁸ he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (James 1:6-8) Here’s what we know. I know I’m trying to squeeze a lot in such a small space of time, but this is important. Some of us ask for wisdom, but we don’t believe we have it because we have no idea about how we should best handle the situation we’re facing. But I’m going to tell you something, you all know the best way to deal with a situation as I’m sure you’re all what would Jesus do. Well Jesus wouldn’t get flustered, in fact, he would be asking how he could maximize the opportunity to seek life change in the lives around him. That is always the best option. So you ask God for wisdom, which mostly is courage and faith to do believe it will work, and just go with it. Stop hesitating. I think we lose most of our battles in difficult trials because we hesitate. We stop for a moment and then we lose balance and fall on our faces. Then we blame God—no, it’s your fault you messed up. Be confident with the decision you made in faith and believe God is giving you the wisdom. It doesn’t matter that you are facing the situation you’re facing without the perceived resources for you to overcome it. That’s never how God operated anyways. You think God gave Abraham a map to go West from the East? No way, God said, “pack up, let’s go” and Abraham went. That’s how God operates. Verses 9 through 11 is reiterating that point exactly—the only thing that matters are your heart in the trial. Your reason for doing the things that you do in trial to be steadfast lies in what you believe and how much you believe it; all that other stuff is fluff. The trials give you an opportunity to put your faith in action. This is exactly why James writes this for people like us. We all grew up in church and had to wrestle with the intellectual Northeast where having a religion was being able to talk about it. We need to act on it and change the lives of people in our trials who are part of our trials and witnessing our trials because that’s exactly what God tells us to ask him for so that He can give it to us. Isn’t this why we’re filled with a positive outlook, a joy, when we face trials? Of course it is. Now for part two, we pick it up in verse 12. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. (James 1:12) Understand what James is saying here—when you put your faith to action and ask for wisdom in your trial, you are blessed because you’re acting as God would. As a result, you will receive the “crown of life.” You need the trials in your life to clean you out. It’s so that when we take ownership of the trials in our lives, we will not have evil thoughts and wrong actions bogging us down. I want you to know that life as a follower of Christ is not easy, that’s what James wants you to know. I’m never going to stand in front of you and promise an easy life. Rather, I’m going to tell you upfront that life is hard, it’s hard for everybody, whether or not they believe in Jesus. But I will tell you that when you believe Jesus dies for you because He loves you, when you believe He rose up from the dead for you, it makes those tough times worth it because we’re going to taste that when it’s all said and done. There is such a thing called losing to win. This is it—to remain steadfast under the trials for life. That will be your legacy. I think we all need to understand something here: James is telling us that we need to take a confident stand in faith. Some of us will undoubtedly not take a confident stand in faith. Some of us will attempt to blame God for our own failures in our trials when we cannot hold steady. But when it seems like the trials of life are going crazy and you find temptation to deviate from your boldness, from your confidence, it’s not because God is tempting you, rather it’s to embolden you in the face of temptation and sin that’s within you that is doing it’s very best not to die inside of you. Yet I want you to know that if it doesn’t die, your life will never be transformed, the people around you, their lives will never transform. It’s our unsteadiness that annoys us when people around us through us for a loop and we face trials. But when we are steady and the temptation to within us doesn’t win, then God’s strength and His hope will be stronger, purer. Here’s where I want to conclude in verse 18. ¹⁸ 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. (James 1:18) When we face trials, which we will undoubtedly face in our lives, and if you haven’t faced them yet, then you will, you will know and you should know that you are facing them because you “received him, believed in his name, [and] he gave [us] the right to become children of God, born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12-13) If God willed you to this point in your life. Think about how much He is willing you to transform your life and the lives around you through your faith combined by His actions blessing what you do. I believe that we will be made whole in a way that the brokenness of sin cannot take away. I believe the trials we faced, that we’re facing, and will face will make us bolder, stronger, wiser, and more faithful in Jesus’ name. Let’s pray.