Profiting from trials in our lives
James chapter 1:2 & selected verses from James
Good Morning church
Please turn to the New Testament book of James Chapter 1 and we will begin by reading just verse 2 and then some other selected verses from James.
James 1:2 Read slowly
You listen on TV and read things written on the internet and you quickly see that many people profit on the backs of someone else’s troubles and trials.
Ambulance chasers so to speak that because of someone else’s misery will make a profit.
Revolutionary, Greatest Ever!
Wild claims that their product is the best, their ways of doing things is the best…the product is new and improved…capable of changing our lives forever if we would just buy.
For a few dollars a week…you can have whiter teeth, cleaner clothes, glamorous hair, better tasting foods.
Politicians kissing babies and promising the moon and never getting their ideas off the ground.
You get the point… talk is cheap.
If you do not do what you say or the product does not do what you promise, then they are empty words with no meaning.
One commentary went as far to state that if we are not careful that even Christians sharing and living out their faith can counterfeit the gospel by a contrasting life.
Jesus is the answer! Believe in God! Follow me to church.
All these thoughts on bumper stickers mean nothing if you are not living the life that you are claiming.
What happens if you are following the person with those bumper stickers on the car and you see them doing things that contradict the saying they ride along with?
James the half brother of Jesus confronts this head on!
It is not enough to talk about the Christian faith…he says we have to live it.
James chapter 2:14 says “What does it profit, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? The proof of reality of our faith is a changed life!
Don’t tell me how much you love Jesus show me!
Don’t tell me how much you love God’s people show me!
Don’t tell me you want to see people come to know Jesus show me!
What does it profit brother? He is talking to the church here not the unsaved and ones that do not know Jesus as Lord.
Our text looks at some general characteristics of the Christian life.
Blueprint of James-
Right relationship with the Lord
Genuine faith that pleases God
Wisdom that comes from God
This will be a quest of character as we learn from scripture how we should act in trials and persecution.
Quest for character is a search.
The world searches for stuff and material things, godly people search ways to please the Lord with their lives.
Character is not made in a crisis, it is what is revealed in a crisis.
Character is what we are made of.
Look to the one on your left and say “I am the best”, now look to your right and say “you are right”
There is your ego boost for the day- now let’s look at what James wants us to learn!
Points of interest to see this morning so that you are not acting like the early church that confessed Jesus is Lord and then did not act like it when they going through some of their trails
profiting from trials
loving God under trials
Qualities needed in trials
Profiting from the trials in our lives
making what we go through account for something in our lives
(2) “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials”
No one except someone filled with the Spirit of the living God is able to say that you have joy when you are going though trials and troubles in your life.
Ever since the martyr of Steven (Acts 7) the church has come under persecution for their faith. The early church scatters and evangelism explodes but so does the persecution of the people spreading His word.
From day one there has always been a cost for following Jesus.
James does not tell us we might face trails, he says that we will.
You can expect it …when you face trials.
He says that you will and he says that you can profit from the trials that are in your life.
You would have to be pretending to be happy when these trials and hardships are going on in your life and you run around with a big smile on your face-don’t pretend to be happy.
That would be a little sadistic. The point is not to pretend to be happy, it is to have a positive outlook or attitude when you go through them because of what trials can produce in your life.
Turn them into a time of learning-
Tough times can teach us patience-
Perseverance, patience and the word steadfastness mean the same in the way of longevity.
Romans 5:3- “And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations; knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance character, and character hope.”
Romans 8:24-25- “For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.”
2 Corinthians 6:3-“We give no offense in anything; that our ministry may not be blamed. But in all things we commend ourselves as ministers of God; in much patience, in tribulations, in needs, in distresses, in strips, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleepiness, in fastings; by purity, by knowledge by longsuffering, by kindness, by Holy Spirit, by sincere love, by the word of truth, by the power of God…”
WE will not know the depth of our character until our character is put under some pressure.
It is easy to be kind when everything is going your way.
But can you be kind when things are tough and you are being treated unfairly?
James tells us there is profit in us going through trials and the Lord will use those times to strengthen and grow our faith and put confidence in the Lord instead of ourselves.
Guidelines and guardrails are set up by God to help us to navigate those times when there is hardship.
We have the option of trusting God or doing things our way-
Trials and Temptations
(12) “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 that love him.”
I want you to see something here- He (God) says that when we go through trials, those life test that most of the time are unavoidable and usually not our fault, when we get on the other side of them we are stronger than when the trial began.
This is different than learning something the hard way.
This is going through something because of the actions of someone else. The unavoidable issues of health that maybe you were born with.
Job loss because of down-sizing or company moving to another state or country.
He says on the other side of trials that we will be stronger, smarter, and ready for the next huddle so that in the end we will journey home with the crown of righteousness
Do you know why a golf ball isn’t smooth? They found that a ball travels farther after it has been dented and banged around a bit. They build them with the dimples in them to fly farther and faster.
Think maybe that is why sometimes the Lord allows us to go through some trials so that we can fly farther and last longer after we have been beat up a little bit?
Running away from our trials may be easier but it will not give us the results that God intends for us. While some of the things we go through God may be telling you to run as far away from it as you can. Run Forrest Run! Get away, get some distance between you and the thing that causes you to stumble.
Most of the time, we will need to face our problem head on, and trust that God will help us through it with His strength and His wisdom.
Loving God under trials
(12) “Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”
Nike may say “just do it” but truth is, most things we cannot do without the Lords help and His strength.
David, cried out to God when He realized that he could not do it alone. (Create in me)
Job, fell down and worshipped God, and didn’t listen to bad advice from his friends when he needed the Lords help.
Paul humbled himself before God and needed his power to endure what was ahead of him.
Paul realized that without God he could not accomplish what God wanted from him in his own strength and no one that I know of was beaten up and bruised more than Paul’s ministry for Jesus.
This is what the Lord says about trials in our life.
There are some trials unavoidable. Things will come up. He is telling us that trials will happen.
He makes no promises that we will not have trials in our life.
God doesn’t paint a pretty picture of exemption from hard and bad things from happening to God’s children.
That is a trial- it is a test of performance like an athlete to make sure that you are ready for the next event or situation that comes up.
God allows tests to make you stronger and gives us wisdom if we will take it to bring us to new levels in our walk with Him.
New Testament scholar F.J. Hort writes
The Christian must expect to be jostled by trials on the Christian way. All kinds of experiences will come to us. There will be a test of the seductions which seek to lure us from the right way. There will be the tests of the dangers, the sacrifices and the unpopularity which is so much a part of the Christian way. But they are not meant to make us fail; they are meant to make us soar. They are not meant to defeat us; they are meant to be defeated. They are not meant to make us weaker; they are meant to make us stronger.”
If we meet the testing in the right way, it will produce steadfastness, it will produce patience, it will produce a consistent walk with the Lord.
Qualities needed
James 1:19- “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
This verse tells us 3 qualities needed and what is not needed.
Anger will take us away from the things of God.
To be un-teachable will take us away from the things of God.
Un-forgiveness will take us away from the things of God.
V(21) tells us how to have a teachable spirit- “Strip yourself of all filthiness, and in gentleness receive the inborn word which is able to save your soul.”
Inborn meaning do not let the world soil you from your relationship with the Lord
Inborn meaning what God has planted in you through His word, to use it to allow His word to change you
Inborn to receive the word with gentleness and allow God to take away anger and give you the right spirit toward God and others.
As we close this time, we have an opportunity to use what we have gone through for His honor and for His glory to help us and to help us help others with their relationship with the Lord.
Illustration
Mortacai Hamm, a preacher born in the late 1800’s was preaching a tent revival in 1934 in Charotte North Carolina, when two curious boys decided to see what all the commotion was about. The two boys went inside and saw that there were no seats available and they started to leave. An usher who to this day nobody knows his name saw them and reached out to the boys and said that he would find the boys two seats so they could seat together. He got people to move closer and found them seats. The two boys we now know. One was Billy Graham who is probably the most influential preacher of modern day and the second was Grady Wilson who became the manager of all his stadium crusades all over the world.
Moracai Hamm was not the most important
Billy Graham was not the most important
Grady Wilson was not the most important
The most important was the usher who we do not even know his name who saw these two boys and reached out to them so that they might hear the gospel and for the Lord to use them.
Le the Lord use you…
Let Him use what He has brought you through…for His honor and glory.
Your job may not be to change the world, your job may be to change someone’s world so that together the world is changed.
Prayer-
