Are You In A Trial? That’s Good!
James tells his brethren, fellow Christians, to count it all joy when we are in a trial…and for a good reason!
Podcast 34 Transcription
(This is a computer generated transcript of this podcast. This is NOT a typed transcript and it has not been edited. Expect grammatical and syntactical errors.)
Hello, and good day. I am B. R. Maul, and you are listening to Living God’s Way in an Ungodly World. And it’s so great to have you here with me today. I am continuing in the book of James. We just started last week, and we will continue on. in the book of James. So we are in chapter one and I’ll be starting in verse two and we will be going through verse eight for today.
But before we get started in the book of James, how are my brothers and sisters in faith doing? I hope you are doing well. I know things are pretty tough. I’m hearing it from a lot of people right now and for Christians Well, for some of us, it is getting a little harder, more difficult, just to have a fun time.
But the wonderful thing is, we still have joy, no matter what. No matter how bad things get, no matter what happens to us, we have joy. Joy, brothers and sisters, knowing that this is the worst that it gets for the children of God. Because in eternity… It’s going to be much better, totally different.
Unfortunately, for those who are not born again, who are not children of God, this is the best it gets. And perhaps that’s why evil is becoming more evil. Not even holding things back anymore. Just letting loose, doing what evil wants, when evil wants, and how evil wants it. Because they must know deep down inside that the clock is ticking.
The second coming of Christ can be at any moment. And then it’s all over. The party stops. I should be careful when I say the second coming of Christ, because really what I’m referring to is the rapture. But we are not discussing that today. The rapture will happen before the second coming. But I digress.
So let me move on. In the book of James, verse, or chapter 1, verses 2 through 8, he talks about profiting from trials in our lives. So, I bring up that times are tough and getting more difficult for Christians. And so, yes, as Christians, we are going through more trials. And for some, we’re going through trials that affect us in a deeper way.
Right down to the core of our being but we can take comfort in Knowing that even in our trials the Lord is sanctifying us. The Lord is working in us We may feel that the Lord has forgotten about us. We may feel tired out of place We may feel even discouraged But God is here with us and he never sleeps.
He never stops
Let me read from God’s Word first, and then I’ll break it down for you. We’ll go through it together, verse by verse. The book of James, chapter 1, verse 2 through 8. My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
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. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts Is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
He is a double minded man, unstable in all his ways. That ends the reading. If you will, pray with me. Heavenly Father, I pray for guidance as I. Teach and preach of your word. May these be the words from the Holy Spirit and not of B. R. Maul. Guide us, Lord. Grant us wisdom and understanding. And help all of us, your children, be more like Jesus Christ each and every day as we turn to your word, as we turn to you in prayer.
We thank you for your grace giving us what we don’t deserve and your beautiful mercy not giving us what we certainly do deserve. We come to you and pray to you through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. So James says, verse two, my brethren counted all joy when you fall into various trials. That sounds almost absurd.
When we fall into trials, why would we count it all joy? By the very definition of trial, there tends to be tension, perhaps unknown. Circumstances that make us very uncomfortable. But he means it. James means it when he says Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, we know that the Lord is sovereign God is in control and if God is in control, that means there is nothing that goes above and beyond him and we know that he also uses trials to Strengthen his children throughout all his word He has proven to us over and over again that we can be Confident of the good that God will make happen, that he will get us through it and through this trial, whatever trial that may be.
And all of us right now are either in a trial, just getting over a trial in our life, or soon to be in one. We’re always in one of those three situations as children of God, but he gets us through it. He uses the trials in our lives to strengthen us. Even when those trials are brought on from our own stupidity, from our own sins, from our own stubbornness, He will take those trials and make us stronger.
Because in a trial, we’ll always do one of two things. Everybody, we will either, a person will go closer to God, pull into God, looking to be protected by God, looking for answers from our God, looking to be comforted by Him, or a person is going to do just the opposite, push away. And that could be in the form of blaming God, not that He can’t take our anger, and not that it’s even a sin to be angry at God.
But to let anger just fester, now we’re crossing a line. So in times of trials, those are one of two things that will happen. And even as I speak now, I’m reminded that whatever we end up doing in a trial, we are almost preparing ourselves. Training ourselves for the next trial and the trial after that. So if you are one who runs to God in a trial, then there’s good odds you’re going to continue to run to him.
And if you’re one who runs away or puts your hand up telling him to stop or to get away from you, it’s a good chance you’ll do that again. But brothers and sisters, we can count it all joy when you fall into various trials. Verse 3. Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. Growing up, I always hated tests in school.
I know there’s always in the crowd that one person who actually does like tests. And that’s because he or she is good at taking tests. They thrive in tests. I wasn’t good at that. I wasn’t one of those. In fact, to this very day, if I’m being tested, I tend to get test anxiety. Even as something as simple as running, which I don’t do much of these days anymore, unless…
A large bear is chasing me. But, back in the day, if someone were testing me when running, it seemed to bring on anxiety, even for something as simple as that. But at the same time, if you think about it now, tests, tests are good things. So we may not enjoy taking tests and partaking in them. But when we’re done, we can sit back, look at the scores of those tests.
And really get a good look at our strengths and our weaknesses. And if we’re smart, we’ll take our weaknesses, focus on those, and so the next time a test in that area comes our way, we’re more prepared. Trials, they’re testing of your faith. And testing your faith produces patience, even if we’re not enjoying it at all, as the Lord exercises our patience.
Because, after all, isn’t that one of the first things that we want when we enter a trial? Is, Lord God, get me out of this. But I’ve heard various preachers speak out and remind us that that’s not the best thing to ask for. We should embrace those times of our trials and allow God to do His work, and I use that word lightly because obviously we don’t allow Him, but by going along with it, by knowing He’s going to do it anyway, we get more benefit from it because we can anticipate the fact that it will grow in our patience.
Not in our patience, it will grow our patience. Verse 4. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. This can be a little confusing, and it’s one that sometimes I easily struggle with, because I hear the word perfect several times, and of course, lacking nothing.
And so I’m thinking the perfect world, the perfect life. That’s not what it is saying, unfortunately, because that would be great. I believe that day will come when we are glorified in heaven. But here, perfect means to be fully and completely developed or mature. So maybe perfect and complete, complete refers to also being whole, so completely developed or mature, whole.
Kind of get a picture there. So without these trials, we don’t grow, we don’t mature. But a Christian, we can look at ourself and realize where we have gone wrong. And like those test scores in school can look at the answers we got wrong and realize we gotta do something about it. Need to correct those.
And so I don’t continue to get the wrong answers over and over. He loves us. Our Heavenly Father loves us so much that that is why He allows trials in our lives. But He also promises He will never leave us nor forsake us. So, we’re never alone. We are never alone, even when we feel like it, even when we convince ourselves that this is all new, and no one else is going through this but me, and that God must have forgotten about me.
He hasn’t. And he has given us one another to help hold each other up, to bear one another’s burdens. So, we let patient habits perfect work, that it may be perfect and complete. Now lacking nothing, that’s a little tough for me. My understanding of that is lacking nothing, not that we don’t still deal with our fleshly desires and wants, and so we feel like there’s stuff that we don’t have, But I believe that’s on a higher level, lacking nothing.
So, not our physical needs, but the very fact that we have God himself guiding us, and sometimes leading us, and at other times even carrying us through these trials. And with His Word, in God’s Word, we lack nothing because we have everything we need in His Word. And because we are the temple and the Holy Spirit dwells in us, again, we lack nothing.
Everything that we need. And it should be everything we want. And I know that’s very hard, but we have it. And I pray on a regular basis that the Lord bend my will to His. And so I don’t even feel like I’m lacking anything. Because my desires are more like His. I certainly don’t have that down pat, nobody does, at least not on this side of eternity.
But I do ask for it, and I ask double time when I’m falling away from that, and I start to fall into my own habits, my old habits. Verse 5. 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. Well, we don’t have the time, but one can go right to the book of Proverbs.
And in the book of Proverbs, if you read the first three chapters, there’s a lot about wisdom in there. And in the book of Proverbs, wisdom is personified as a woman and she invites those to come to her. She is very Inviting and open to give to people. James reminds us what we need to do. And that’s to ask.
How much of that is the reason for much of our own problems today? Because we don’t ask God. If any of you lacks wisdom, and James is talking directly to believers, If you are not a believer, this does not imply to you at this moment. And I would encourage you to search your heart and pray. The Lord opens your heart, softens your heart, so you can accept Jesus Christ as your Savior.
So James is talking, though, to brothers and sisters in the faith when he says, If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God because God gives liberally without reproach and it will be given to him. God doesn’t have a secret handshake that we have to learn, a password. We don’t have to earn the status to get to the point where he’ll start giving us wisdom.
No, none of that. We ask and he gives it to us. So if you’re not asking the Lord, well, start doing it. In your prayers, you ask God to give you the wisdom, to give you the understanding that you need as you read his word, because he will give you that understanding. And that brings up yet another point that goes hand in hand, and that point is, we need to be bringing everything to God when we make our decisions in life.
We are so quick to go to a bank. If we feel the need for money, instead of just praying to God about it. Or investors to use the money that we have, instead of praying to God about it. How we deal with our health, when we’re struck with cancer, when we have diabetes, when illness strikes us. We’re so quick to turn to the nearest doctor and say, What do I do?
We’re Christian. We turn to our Heavenly Father first and foremost. Praying isn’t the last thing we do. It needs to be the first thing we do. And so when you’re praying to him, ask for that wisdom. Verse six. But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
Let him ask in faith with no doubting. I get it. That can be difficult. That can be a challenge. And if you feel yourself doubting, the best prayer for that is, Lord, help my unbelief. With that, you’re extending your faith yet again, and he will. He’ll help you with that. Now, ask him in faith. We cannot please God without faith.
Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Not my words, God’s words. We cannot please him without faith. And as we exercise that faith, and that faith becomes stronger, we become used to it, because we use it more, then we doubt less. Because James says, For he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
Now there is an image for us to think about, just for a few minutes here. The large sea. And when waves… are driven by the wind. They are at mercy with the direction the wind is going. With the direction the wind pushes it. So the wave just moves. I like the word driven and the other word tossed by the wind.
Because surely the wind will change directions and start moving the wave in a different direction. And so, one who is doubting is like having an inner battle with oneself. And we can all remember at one point or another, some of us more than others, where we have that inner battle. That unsure feeling that we get, that’s no fun.
I even hate it when I have a certain day, from time to time I won’t be able to think about what to do. Or perhaps the better way of putting it is I can’t make up my mind what to do. Do you ever have feelings like that? Perhaps you’re sitting around with a friend and, What do you feel like doing? I don’t know, what do you feel like doing?
And you go back and forth. And then we start to doubt. Doubting is no fun. It certainly does bring that insecurity. And that wave in the sea, that wave of insecurity, can become a pretty big wave. Verse 7, For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. Verse 8, He is a double minded man, unstable.
In all his ways. So if we are doubting, we’re not asking in faith, we’re just, you know, kind of like a routine thing. Alright, well, Lord, um, this is what I need. And there’s just no belief in it. There’s no faith in it. Well, that person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Does that make sense to you?
I guess it does to me. If we really don’t believe that he’s going to do it, whether it’s because we don’t believe he can, or we just believe he won’t. Either way, it falls short. I, myself, can’t understand, personally, the believing that maybe he just won’t. But that still falls short because that’s me then, doubting his love for me, or just completely forgetting how much he loves me.
And that’s easy for me to do, because, after all, as human, we have a linear sight on life. We can look back, but we can’t look forward. We can remember mistakes that we’ve made, but we can’t see problems and issues that are going to happen soon. And with that linear knowledge, it’s possible. Easy and quick to fall into what we know around us, because we can see people around us, including ourselves, become disappointed in loved ones, or loved ones become disappointed, fail us in some way, or we fail them in some way, and so when we are witness to that, when we feel that, when we see that, Perhaps it’s only human then for us at that point in time to question our heavenly father and think well, you know He’s probably sick and tired of me asking or he’s so disappointed in me.
Why is he going to answer my prayer? But Christian that’s us. That’s all on us. That is not on our heavenly father at all His love for us far exceeds our knowledge of what love is, but we should not expect that we receive anything from the Lord when we don’t ask him in faith, when we are doubting. And James, when he says that this person who doubts like that, he’s a double minded man, unstable in all his ways.
Unstable in all his ways. Think about that. That’s concerning because when we don’t have faith in God and we are doubters, we walk around just questioning. We question God. We question our loved ones. We question other people’s motives. We question, question. We’re double minded. Double minded is, like, insane.
And that makes a person unstable in all their ways. In their relationships, in their work that they do. Can you think of somebody who is unstable in all that they do? Are double minded, they can’t trust people. They might, but at the same time, well, yeah, he or she seems okay. But you know what, I don’t know, there’s something fishy about them.
They can’t commit to something. They can’t commit to relationships. They can’t commit to, you know, a job, work. They can’t commit to reading God’s Word every day. They can’t commit. They’re double minded. They’re unstable. They’ll believe one thing one moment and the next moment it’s something else. So to wrap this up, James is really showing us In these verses, the trials are used to strengthen God’s children, and in that process of being in a trial, we use our faith to trust in Him, that whatever the outcome, it’s the best thing.
It might not be… The most fun or even the most beneficial at that time and place, but it’s the best thing overall because it’ll glorify him when we trust and we have faith that he is doing it because it will glorify him. That also means then that he loves us and it is for our best interest. And in that process of having faith, it produces patience.
And in that patience, that you may be perfect and complete, not perfect as in not making any mistakes, but perfect and complete as in maturing and growing and becoming stronger. Your faith becomes stronger. Your patience more reliable. And then he goes on to remind us, James says if you lack wisdom, then just ask God and he will give it to you.
If you lack the wisdom to know what to do, just ask him for that wisdom and he will give it to you, but you must ask. And when you do ask, James says, do so. In faith, with no doubting, just know that he will give it to you, because if you continue down that path of doubting, and your faith becomes weaker and weaker, then you run the risk of becoming double minded.
And very unstable in your ways, James says. God’s Word is amazing. I love reading God’s Word. It truly gives me comfort. I’m so quick to forget just the basics. And it’s words like these in the book of James that reminds me what to do and how to do it. And that I’m not alone. God is with me. Always, and Jesus is my savior.
He died for me on the cross and I get to spend eternity in his presence. And I hope I get to spend eternity with you. So brother and sisters, thank you so much for joining me. Hope to have you again next week. Listen in as we continue. In the book of James chapter one and we’ll be starting with verse nine.
Remember to read his word daily. Pray to him daily. Continue to build that relationship with him. Just love him because he first loved you. Open your life to him. Give him your time and he gives us so much more. And if you don’t know him. Now’s a good time. Now’s a good time to search your heart. Repent of your sins.
Know in your heart that you are a sinner. Know that you are broken and that on your own, you can’t fix it. There is nothing that you can say. There is nothing you can do. There’s no ritual. You can’t behave yourself good enough. You can’t grab onto the coattails of any pastor, priest, pope. Wonderful mom or dad, your wife or husband, nope, it’s personal between you and God.
And he’s saying, I love you, I’m here for you, and I gave you my son. So if you have that faith in his son, Jesus Christ, Romans 10 says it, that with the mouth one confesses the Lord Jesus. And in your heart, know that the Lord God raised him from the dead, and you will be saved. That’s it. Thank you again for joining me, and until next time,
God bless.
Songs
“Heroes Inspire Hope” and “Mountainscape” by Humans Win
“Inspiring Orchestra” by Boris Skalsky
Sound Effects from Storyblocks.com