Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4 NIV
2020 seems to have cornered the market on trials of many kinds. So according to James, it should be the happiest year in recent memory. I’m willing to bet that isn’t the case for most. Actually, most people I know would say they’ve had an extended stay at Camp Disappointment. We tend to forget that our character is more important than our circumstances. Our circumstances will change from moment to moment, in good years and bad, but our character is something more lasting.
Truly there’s no training that’s pleasant when you’re in the middle of it. But afterward – afterward there’s the good fruit of maturity, of deeper roots in your relationship with God. That’s why James said we should consider trials and challenges to be a gift, because he understood that it’s in the performance testing phase that our faith shows its true colors.
Paul challenged the Corinthians, “Examine yourselves to see if your faith is really genuine. Test yourselves. If you cannot tell that Jesus Christ is in you, it means you have failed the test” (2 Corinthians 13:5). The good result of difficult circumstances is that they have the potential to prove that we really do belong to God, that Jesus really is in us. His power, His strength in us, is the only way we could have gotten through.
What good is my faith if it breaks down when I need it most? What use is my faith if it’s not for the hard times, the difficult circumstances? What does it say about my love for God if it fails the test of endurance?
If my faith is one-sided – God doing all the work with me never responding to Him – then it’s not really a relationship. And I think that’s the beauty of it – God didn’t make robots programmed to obey and He didn’t make clones, copies of Himself. He made children. He gave us choice and freedom. We can accept or reject. We can respond or ignore. That’s how we know it’s love – it’s freely given, not forced, to someone of our choosing.
And love says I trust you. I believe in you. I have confidence in you. That kind of love is worth defending. It’s worth sticking with, fighting for. It’s even worth laying down your life for. There are no great victories without great battles.
After describing his lowest point, Jeremiah said: Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The unfailing love of the Lord never ends! By his mercies we have been kept from complete destruction. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each day. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” (Lamentations 3:21-24)
We don’t need to make peace with our circumstances. We need to know that we have peace with God, that He is not our enemy. God Himself is the foundation for hope that defies circumstances. And the proof that our faith isn’t misplaced is Christ’s death and resurrection – His circumstances were BAD. He still trusted in God’s sovereign plan all the way to the bitter end when He felt utterly forsaken.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. The darkness of Good Friday was completely obliterated by the glory of Easter morning. Christ’s resurrection proves that God can be trusted, that nothing is stronger than He is and nothing can separate us from Him, and He loves us! It’s the kind of love that enables us to do all things, to bear all circumstances, to endure patiently. Because we KNOW our circumstances aren’t the whole story and they’re certainly not the end of the story – something better is coming.