The young woman was having a crisis of faith. She sounded so confused as she asked, ‘If all this is true why aren’t we having continuous mountaintop experiences?’ The short answer, of course, is because the work is in the valley. I hope I helped her as I unpacked the answer and tried to get her to understand, ‘in the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.’ (John 16:33)
Refusing Reality
An awful lot of Christians today are being sold the idea struggles and suffering shouldn’t be the everyday experience of the believer. I heard one Christian leader declare confidently that he was protected from disease because of his faith and status in Christ. He could walk without fear or apprehension through a world struck by pandemic.
Another, even while friends and loved ones are suffering around him, refuses to acknowledge sickness and suffering in a world where grace has been poured out. If we can just muster enough faith we can create our own healthy and prosperous little world. His refusing reality seems futile given his circumstances.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could just think or pray reality into existence, thereby avoiding everything that would threaten our plans, hopes, and aspirations? Well, not really. The Bible makes it clear God’s purposes don’t work out that way. We are tested much more than we are triumphant, and there is a reason for that.
Oh, joy, Here Come More Trials!
James, the brother of Jesus, and the leader of the Jerusalem Church, wrote the most practical of all the letters in the New Testament. It comes from a man who knows about having his faith tested by the enduring of various trials. Some of the soundest advice for the practical Christian life can be found in these five chapters. He begins:
‘Count it all joy, my brothers, when we meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.’ (Js.1:2-4)
When is the last time you heard that preached from the pulpit? If we were asked if we wanted to be a complete Christian, being perfect and lacking nothing, I am sure there would be an immediate positive response. We may not be quite so ready to go through the process James describes to get there.
These verses are so foreign to the thinking of many of us as Christians. We always expect God’s blessings and we always expect Him to give us exactly what we want.
If the answer we receive to our prayers, the reward for our faith, is in the form of hardship that could not be God because we are not being “successful.” If the trial we receive is in the form of illness, that cannot be right because God ‘wants you healed!’ However I think you can see the difficulties we can get into if we look at things that way. And the message of James reflects that of Jesus who declared:
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt.5:11-12)
There is a pattern here, beginning with the prophets, continuing with the experiences of Jesus and His disciples, and carrying on with a promise that much the same will be the lot of all those who believe - and in it all encouragement.
We are told to count it all joy when we encounter these trials because they will work a depth of spirituality in our lives that nothing else can. We are also to draw from this that these trials may even come direct from God (Gen.22:1-2 c.f.) who knows all things and certainly will always seek to do what is best for us, not necessarily what we think is best for ourselves - He is on our side!
Indeed, it is the embracing of these trials, whatever their source, and the permission given to God to let them work in our lives what he wants to work, that brings us through to a position of perfection and completeness.
The converse will also, therefore, be true. If I reject these trials as not coming from God, or not at least capable of being used by God. If I refuse to let them do His work in my life I will inevitably be shallow and lacking so much in my Christian walk. Tragically I believe we see that the result of a “bless me” mentality in the Christian life is a lack of depth and knowing Christ as we really should.
The ‘Complete’ Christian
This word ‘complete’ comes up in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. He ends Matthew chapter 5 with the familiar words, ‘You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ That word ‘perfect’ has discouraged a lot of people over the years. It is a very high bar, perfection.
The meaning of the Greek, teleios, here is ‘brought to completion; fully accomplished, fully developed, mature, finished.’ James uses both the word perfect and the word complete to convey the same definition – mature, the complete person.
The new believer is saved, counted righteous before God because of Jesus, but is also immature, undeveloped, an unfinished product of grace in need of considerable work to be brought to completion. It is through those very trials of various kinds James writes about that we come to completion.
It is those same trials, so necessary for our growth to maturity, that many would consider signs of faithlessness. Like Job’s comforters, they would speak confidently of hidden sin, a lack of faith on the part of those suffering the very trials that go to make us, that work in the valley.
Perhaps they need to go back and read Hebrews 11, consider those who:
‘All died in faith, not having received the things promised but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that thy are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.’ (Heb.11:12-14)
Are you seeking that city, that homeland, or are you looking to get comfortable in this world? The way some talk I get the impression they want to go back to Egypt. Let them, but let us be steadfast, ‘that we may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.’
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