James 1:2-4 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
I have looked at this verse many times and I am always amazed simple progression it contains. This progression allows us to understand how the circumstances of our lives fit into God’s plan. When looking at something to comprehend it and apply it to my life I have always found it helpful to keep the end product or goal in mind, in other words, why should this be important to me? To understand this we need to examine this text backwards as the end product is found here.
The stated goal here is to be complete and mature with nothing lacking. Doesn’t that sound great? So how do we get there? Well, we must let work happen in our lives. Unfortunately this work isn’t comfortable because it’s called perseverance and that takes effort and implies exhaustion and pain. Yet this is necessary if we want to be complete in our life and faith. Unfortunately many people put ‘stop work’ orders in effect at this point. They don’t want their faith to be tested or life to be challenging, but this is the only way to reach the goal.
Now you might be asking, how does perseverance work through the testing our faith? The answer is found in the beginning of the text. We must go through trials and not just a few, but trials of many kinds. You see each kind of trial tests our faith in a different area. So to become complete and mature we need to go through many kinds of trials. The reality is that this testing will continue throughout our lives. When we understand that all of this is because God is refining us and making us better and that is why we can and should rejoice.
Are you rejoicing today because God is working at making you complete and mature?
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