“When Trials Come” – FBC Morning Light (11/1/2023)

Well, a good Wednesday morning to you, and welcome to the month of November. Here we are in the last couple of months of 2023.

It's incredible, isn't it? This year has flown by, and this is just an old guy speaking, right?

The older we get, the faster the months go by. You know, one of those kind of things. Well, it sure seems that way to me.

Well, anyway, today in our Bible reading, we're in Ezekiel chapter seven and eight and James chapter one, and I want to focus on this really challenging exhortation in James one verse two.

My brethren, he says, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.

I don't know about you, but when trials come, the idea of joy is not the first thing that enters my mind.

The emotion of joy is not the first thing that I feel.

I don't know that James is calling us to feel a certain way.

I think he's calling us to think a certain way. He does tell us to count it all joy, to count it, to consider it to be something that is productive and valuable, something that is going to be effective in my life for certain purposes.

Therefore, to consider this with a measure of confidence,

I think this is what the idea is. Again, I don't think he's calling for an emotion. I don't think it's going to require a significant physical challenge that we're supposed to be jumping up and down and giddy.

I don't believe that's what he's calling for. I think when we get called into the boss's office and he says, sorry, we're going to have to let you go, so clean out your desk and we'll give you a couple of months severance pay, but nice knowing you.

I don't think that James is calling upon us to walk out of that office and leap and be happy and giddy and say, hallelujah.

Now, maybe depending on the job, you might be very excited about that, but that's not normal.

That's not normal. Very quickly, you're going to start wondering, okay, well, now what do I do? How do

I put food on the table? That kind of thing. I don't think when we are experiencing the ongoing marginalization in increasing pressure from society, from the culture to leave behind our

Christian morality, I don't think we're called upon there to be really happy about that, to be giddy about that.

No, James is not calling for an emotional response. He's calling for a thoughtful response, a response that looks at the trial and sees this, because he goes on to say, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.

This trial has a purpose. God designs trials purposefully.

God brings things into my life that are hard to deal with, that are painful, that are just emotionally challenging, but he does so purposefully.

He's trying my faith so that it might produce patience or endurance, so that through this trial

I might learn how to put my confidence in my

God and his providence, his purposes, his sovereignty, his love, his loyalty, his goodness.

I need to learn to trust him with those things, that he is all of those things and more.

Think about it like this. If my life was completely free from trials,

I never experienced any hardship. The first job I applied for,

I got it. I got paid very well, more than I deserve, and after six months

I got a raise. After a year I got a promotion and another raise. I got plenty of money coming in.

I'm perfectly healthy. I've got a nice home. I've got a nice car. Everything works well.

If something goes wrong on a vehicle, I have all the money I need to take care of it. I just don't have any problems, any worries in the world.

I've got a wonderful wife and children that are like the

Mary Poppins, practically perfect people. I just never have any trials.

Isn't it easy when everything's going well to be confident that God is good, that God is loyal, he's faithful to his covenant, he's faithful to his people, that he's just and he's true, and all the rest of that?

Isn't it easy to believe that? How easy is it to believe it when you're going through something really tough, hard, and difficult?

This is why James tells us to count it all joy, to consider it a joyful thing, because this trial is proving the validity of my faith, the reality of my faith.

Therefore, I can look at this trial in a completely different way. As I think things through,

I can look at this trial in such a way that I say, I may not enjoy it, but I can be confident that my

God is using it purposefully. That is a joyful inclusion.

May it be ours. Our Father and our God, may we recognize the reality that trials are going to come.

Isn't anybody on this planet that hasn't lived through a bunch of them? We who know you as our

Savior and claim you as our God need to look at these trials in a different way.

They need to grow our faith and prove the validity of our faith.

May they do so. We pray this in Jesus' name, and for his sake, amen. Listen, you have a good rest of your