Does "Every Good And Perfect Gift” Include Trials And Suffering?

This message is the third in a recent series about ‘new’ challenges I am facing, and they are a result of my reminding myself how to break the chains of regret, disappointment, and disillusionment that keep trying to bind me. There is some redundancy in the thought form with other messages for clarity.

Throughout my life, there have been endless trials and heartbreak. My late wife suffered horribly for 36 years from a debilitating disease until it stopped the moment she graduated from this life. It led me to question everything I had been taught about faith, healing, and the goodness of God. One year in particular, when a series of cataclysmic events came one after another, God ambushed me with His love, captured my heart, and took my breath away like a person caught in the crashing of breakers on the seashore. As I was tossing and turning in His endless waves of love pouring over me, I gasped for more of Him, and He delivered! Even in the midst of current challenges, I have never questioned His love and merciful goodness since that day.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, a 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. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls, and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.

Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” (James 1:2-18 NIV- emphasis mine)

Let’s unpack verse 17.

- “good” (Gk: agathos = intrinsically good and honorable because it originates from God)

- “gift” (Gk: dosis = the act of giving a gift)

- “perfect” (Gk: teleios = having reached its end, consummated, complete by fulfilling the necessary process)

The words “Every good gift and every perfect gift” in Greek include two different nouns. The first expresses the abstract ACTS of giving (See also Philippians 4:15); the second “perfect” free, large, and full gift, as ACTUALLY given and carries the thought beyond all temporal blessings which are incomplete in this life (See Romans 5:16; James 1:18). The ‘perfect” gift is the Holy Spirit and the crowning gift of all, who comes to dwell within the Christian as His dwelling place, the Holy of Holies (Gk: Naos). They have become ‘children of light” (Ephesians 5:8; 1 Corinthians 6:19).

- “gift” (Gk: dóréma = a bestowment, to present as a gift or honor; to confer an award)

- “from above” (Gk: anóthen = from a higher place, from the beginning, from Heaven)

- “coming down” (Gk: katabainó = to go down, descend, sent down)

- “Father” (Gk: patér = originator, imparter of life)

- “of lights” (Gk: phós = brilliant illuminating light) [where the word ‘phosphorous’ comes from]

- “variation” (Gk: parallagé = change, fickleness, variableness) There are scientific “parallaxes” of the stars which eclipse one another by shadows projected through space. However, the grace, mercy, kindness, and goodness of the Father have no variableness whatsoever because His radiant glory is unchangeable. Every good gift of His divine grace and spiritual blessings is how we become a different person from what we were before repenting of our sin and receiving Jesus as Lord and Savior.