so... TECHNICALLY its a sermon I delivered for Speech class. Before anyone wigs out, there were only two guys there and one was my professor. The other 20 people were my classmates and they were all girls. Anyway here are my notes. Hope you enjoy. ;-)
I'm going to read the text from the Light side of the force and the Dark side of the Force. THe dark side, the KJV, and then the light side, the ESV. The two translations use different words that capture the meaning really beautifully.
Count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.(KJV James 1:2-4)
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (ESV James 1:2-4)
Introduction: this is a difficult passage; telling others to rejoice in suffering. How could we be so heartless to tell some one to 'suck it up, be happy and rejoice' when they are going through a painful time?
However, James uses very familiar terminology in this passage and is exhorting fellow believers as family. That is our duty as well, to exhort one another and offer encouragement freely to those undergoing trials. One of the most important, beautiful characteristics of Christianity is to lift one another up and encourage each other. We are all going to go through trials and temptations, and we must be ready when those times come in our own lives and in the lives of our Christian family. In order to do this, we must understand a few things about trials and temptations. So today I’d like to talk with you about four aspects of the Christian undergoing this type of fire.
1. The essential point of temptation is your faith. – how is faith tried.
ThThere is invaluable blessing gained by the proving of your faith.
3. Priceless virtue which is produced by testing
1 ) You can’t have faith unless you are believer. And you can’t be a believer without faith. This is what is peculiarly obnoxious to Satan and the world of which he is prince. If you didn’t have faith they wouldn’t care, they wouldn’t be enemies of yours because you would be invisible to them. However, God is glorified by the visibility of your faith, and when God is glorified, Satan is annoyed. Satan sees his defeat in the faith of Christ’s believers.
Faith isn’t visible unless it is tried, and God is glorified when faith is visible. Therefore God will surely try your faith.
1b) How is your faith tried? Through Temptation to sin, or through persecution. Scripture is full of the testimonies of the persecutions of believers. We have all experienced persecution.
God doesn’t tempt us, but He may put us in way of/allow us to be tempted.
Trials have in them a measure of temptation, (i.e. if we are hurt we are tempted to react in a way that might hurt those around us) which is why we are instructed to say, ‘lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.”
Trials and temptations are distinct to each individual. For some they are physical, like being beaten. For others they are emotional. When my mom first became a Christian, her parents were really upset because they felt like she was insulting them by saying they weren’t important to her. When she broke up with her boyfriend – who was wealthy and dishonest – and started dating my dad – who was poor and outspoken and a Christian – they started going out of their way to make her life miserable. They cleaned out her room and threw all the stuff onto the front porch, kicking her out. My grandpa told her he hated my dad. There wasn’t any reason, he clarified. He just hated him. My mom could have responded in turn by finding ways to make their lives more difficult. But instead she prayed for them until they died and encouraged us to pray for them as well.
Temptations/trials come upon us when we least expect them; when things are peaceful and quiet. Things were fine for Job then suddenly one day he was struck to the core in every area of his life. He didn’t have breathing room between the blows of destructive news. Even the strongest are tempted and hurt, but when we remain faithful despite the trials, even heathen cry “there must be something in the religion of God or else how can these people gladly give up their lives and happily bear these troubles?”
Happy is the man whose shield can catch and quench all the fiery darts of the enemy.
2 ) The blessing gained is this, that our faith is tried and proved.
We try self examination often but it doesn’t help much; actual trial is much more effective for revealing ugliness inside. The way you find out if you are a good soldier is to go out to the battle, testing the ship is by putting it on the water and see if she weathers the storm.
Trial proves our sincerity.
Proves the truthfulness of the doctrine itself.
Your own faith in God is proved when you cling to Him in temptation/trial.
It is a beautiful thing to learn the great strength of our Lord. One feels great internal victory when it is proved to Satan the purity of motives.
Trials are like fire, they burn up nothing but the dross, and they make the gold all the more purer. To be refined, metals must be heated up to extreme temperatures and then beaten. It’s the same with our faith.
Trials teach us patience and how to take abuse without retaliation; wisdom teaches us to act without undue haste. Suffering teaches us patience, patience without unbelief, and belief without wavering.
The last year and a half I and both my parents have suffered extreme illness and injury, have lost close family members to death, been rejected by those most dear to us, and betrayed by those we trusted. In one week I recovered from swine flu, my parents’ house burned down, my aunt died, and I had to go to the emergency room. And that was just the beginning. My nick name was Job. But I learned through all of that that God is sovereign, He is faithful, He provides, and He never leads us to what He won’t bring us out of if we trust Him. Since then, when hard times come I am less quick to panic and far more ready to fall on my knees in prayer. I am learning to pray three times more than I talk about a thing.
The Christian learns to say, “I believe my God, and therefore if the vision tarry I will wait for it. My time is not yet come. I am to have my worst things first and my best things afterwards, and so I sit me down at Jesus’ feet and tarry his leisure.”
We learn endurance. We learn to be grateful. Little things. It seems like every time I go overseas, there is some traumatic experience with getting clean. The first time the power went out right after I had so many soap suds in my hair it looked like I had a white afro. For some reason this effected the plumbing, and the water died as well. It was interesting trying to get to a place appearance wise where I felt confident showing myself in public. Another time our indoor plumbing died altogether and the well was about three blocks away uphill through cow paths and washed out gullies. I couldn’t bathe for a week, but I was going in and out of Gypsy villages and the little girls all loved playing with my hair. But to them, lack of bathing is normal, so when they played with my hair, all the dirt and grease from their hands was transferred on to me. When our water was fixed and I finally washed my hair the water was black. I think it’s almost every time I get into the shower here in the states that I thank God for dependable, hot running water!
And the cool thing is that people watch what is happening to us and see that we will endure. Then when trials come into their lives and we encourage them, they see the depth of our words because we know what we are talking about. My host grandma died last year and I was able to call my host mom. Usually when Americans try to comfort internationals they aren’t too sure about taking their comfort because it seems flippant but because she knew what my family had been through she listened and it meant a lot to hear once she heard what I had to say.
Conclusion: We are all preparing for ministry, and many of us are preparing for leadership in ministry. While leadership initially looks glamorous and like it ought to be a fun experience, the fact of the matter is that there is a lot of dirt and pain in that role. The same is true of ministry of any kind, or even just Christian living.
Instead of being shocked when hard times come, let’s begin now at learning how to handle these situations; by studying passages like James 1:2-4. Let’s learn how to encourage one another now and begin asking God to put a guard over our mouth so that we bless one another and give glory to God through all our hardships.
