When Your Faith Is Tested Series

“WHEN YOUR FAITH IS TESTED” James 1:1-4

FBCF – 9/11/22

Jon Daniels

INTRO – First responders face tests all the time.

- Firefighters – Every time pager goes off or call comes in, we know that we will face some sort of test. May be a minor test, a relatively easy test, a quick test. Or may be a huge test of our skills & training, a test of our mental, physical, & emotional toughness. May be a test that lasts a long time – a large fire that we have to fight through the night, or a major accident that requires extrication w/ multiple injuries, even dealing w/ fatalities.

- Same goes for LEOs & the many different calls they respond to & situations they deal with. The social & political climate of our day exacerbates the severity of those tests sometimes.

o Met former LEO on vacation who had retired early from his law enforcement career as a homicide detective in a large city. Made the decision to retire due in part to the way things have changed so much.

Every first responder has their stories. Some we talk about – some we don’t. We all have had those calls that stay w/ us, the ones we continue to think about, the ones that impacted us the most – Rachel’s car wreck. Sometimes we wish we could go back & do things differently or wonder if we could have done something to cause the outcome to have been better.

Sept 11, 2001 was the greatest test that any first responder had ever faced in our nation. Huge response from multiple agencies. Tremendous courage, skill, bravery, & sacrifice – HUGE sacrifice w/ hundreds giving their lives in the line of duty that day & in the week, months, & years that followed.

- Total fatalities – 2996

- Number of Firefighter deaths – 343

- Number of NYPD deaths – 23

- Number of Port Authority police officers – 37

- Bodies found intact – 291

- Remains found – 21,906

- Number of families who got no remains – 1717

- Number of people who lost spouse – 1609

- Number of children who lost parent – 3051

- Number of firefighters on leave w/ respiratory problems by Jan 2002 – 300

- Number of FDNY vehicles destroyed – 98

- Tons of debris removed from site – 1.8 million

- Days fires continued to burn after attack - 99

But it wasn’t just a test for first responders – it was a test for our entire nation.

- Fear gripped us – church members calling me in tears, asking if it was the end of the world.

- Anger gripped us.

- Disbelief gripped us.

- We were stunned like we had never been stunned before – Mama’s cancer treatment. The waiting room in silence

As a nation, we rallied together, grieved together, worked together, &, at least for a little while, worshiped together. For many of us, 9/11 was our Pearl Harbor moment – The day after Pearl Harbor attack, Pres Franklin D. Roosevelt called Dec. 7, 1941 as a “day that will live in infamy” – a moment when our nation collectively saw the true face of evil. Sept. 11, 2001 was another “day that will live in infamy.” The test of our nation’s strength was on full display.

All of us have our 9/11 moments in our lives – those moments when we suddenly find ourselves in extreme pain, fear, uncertainty.

- Planes crash into buildings on a picture-perfect day – Adversity crashes into our lives when things seem to picture-perfect.

- Fires rage out of control causing massive destruction – Situations in our lives spiral out of control destroying our health, our marriages, our families, our businesses, our futures.

- Buildings collapse into huge piles of rubble – Our lives come crashing down around us.

All of these things cause our faith to be tested & we wonder how we will ever come out of it. Questions abound:

- Why is this happening?

- How did I get in this situation?

- What is God trying to teach me in this?

The only place we can turn to in order to find the answers is right here – in the Word of God. And today we are going to strive to understand what’s going on when our faith is tested as we begin this new series from the book of James – “Faith that Works.”

EXPLANATION – James 1:1-4

Since this is my 1st sermon in this new series in the book of James, I want to do some background work to start.

AUTHOR – James, the half-brother of Jesus. According to Galatians 2:9, considered to be one of the first pillars of the Church. Interesting that James did not make a big deal of being Jesus’ earthly little brother. Wasn’t concerned w/ trying to impress anyone w/ his pedigree. He simply referred to himself as a “servant of God & of the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 1). “More significant than being the younger brother of Jesus is being one of His people. And the sign of being one of His people is that we devote ourselves to His service” (James Allberry, James for You, p. 11).