I have been studying “waiting on God” for the life group I’m in right now, and God showed me something most of you probably already know. But it was a powerful lesson for me!
James 1:2-4
2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
JOY: cheerfulness, that is, calm delight: gladness
DIVERS: various in character
TEMPTATIONS: a putting to proof, by implication, adversity
ADVERSITY: difficulties; misfortune
TRYING: a testing; by implication trustworthiness
Isn’t it interesting that when we experience adversity in various forms, that we are called to face it with calm delight and even gladness?
Did you roll your eyes at that statement? I might have.
Honestly ask yourself this question: How much does it take to make you feel annoyed? How many things have to go wrong in your day before you lose your cool and act cranky toward the other people around you? Or just want to crawl back into your bed and start over, and when you can’t, you let everyone know how bad your day is by how you behave?
You hear people say that getting cancer is a trial of your faith, or losing your job, getting in an accident that takes a long time to recover from. Yes, those are BIG trials.
If the definition of adversity is “difficulties, misfortune” then that means there are other, smaller trials we face on a daily basis, right?
Let me give you some examples:
– Spilling coffee down your front right before leaving the house.
– Locking yourself out of your car
– Getting stuck in traffic when you’re running late
– Having to park far from the entrance when it’s raining
– Getting to work and realizing you forgot something important
– Having a teenage or child with an attitude
– Not sleeping well but having a busy day ahead
How many of these have you faced this week? How many of these did you face with calm delight?
If we think about it for a minute, is it in God’s character to just prep us to face the big stuff in faith? I don’t think so. He wants us to persevere through ALL the trials (difficulties, misfortunes) we face in life with joy, because we are to live out our faith in Christ EVERY MOMENT OF EVERY DAY- not just when something ‘big’ happens.
Why are we to face adversity with gladness? Well, verse three tells us that these trials (big and small) work patience in us.
PATIENCE: Cheerful (or hopeful) endurance, constancy: waiting.
It doesn’t say we only learn patience through big things. It doesn’t say “When your marriage is struggling, and your kids are in rebellion, and your finances are a nightmare, or your house burns down…then you will learn patience.”
No, we are to gain patience in the day-to-day difficulties and misfortunes we experience, and let them teach us to consistently endure with hope, because Jesus is alive in us, and working in our lives.
Has the Gospel meant something to you? Would someone be able to look at your life and see the hand of God, or something ‘different’ that they can’t quite explain?
2 Corinthians 4:15-16
15 For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.
16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.
PERISH: rot thoroughly
RENEWED: to renovate
We have to ask ourselves some tough questions sometimes: Is my joy found in the perfect cup of coffee I brewed this morning, and then taken away when it gets knocked over, or left on the counter in the morning rush of leaving the house? Or is it in Jesus who never leaves me nor forsakes me?
We see here that the patience developed in these daily difficulties, these misfortunes, is not “one and done”. Vs. 16 says we are renewed (renovated) “day by day”. Renovations take time. They are messy. They cost us something.
I have to learn to change my perspective on the frustrations and trials of life. Instead of looking at them as inconveniences and frustrations, I need to see them as part of God’s renovation of my person.
17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
LIGHT AFFLICTION: easy pressure that is so short-lived
EXCEEDING: beyond measure
ETERNAL: perpetual
WEIGHT: abundance, authority of
GLORY: dignity, glory (-ious), honour, praise, worship
So we see that these short-lived, temporary pressures and trials are working beyond measure a perpetual abundance of dignity, honor, praise, and worship in our hearts.
Oof. Does that smack your in the face a little? Is this how you currently respond to the little trials God gives you in your every day life? Changing our perspective really changes everything.
Let patience have her perfect work. Let God renovate you daily. Live in the power of the Gospel.
I definitely have some work to do.
Of Faith & Fortitude 
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