Brian Bouwkamp
You’ve probably heard this story before, but there was a young 17 year old girl standing on the edge of a lake on a beautiful summer day, having a great time. Her name was Joni Eareckson Tada. As she dove into the water, she was completely unaware that one moment would change her life forever.
That dive turned into an accident that left her paralyzed from the shoulders down, confining her to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She now travels the world and speaks candidly of the years she wrestled with anger, depression, and a question that echoed in the depths of her soul: “Why would God allow this?”
That’s a question that we all need to deal with at some point in our Christian lives.
Because every person in this room – every single one – has faced a trial or will face some type of trial in their life. Maybe it’s a sudden accident like Joni, or it’s illness, the loss of a loved one, or the betrayal of a close friend or a spouse. How about persecution, or the loss of a job?
Trials don’t skip over you based on your faithfulness. They don’t care about your plans. They come to us all and it’s a lot of times when we least expect them.
We can all resonate with the question: Why does God allow this?
I’m going to try to answer that today, but I’ll also try to answer what do we do when they come and how do we think about them biblically.
If we can understand God’s word, we can handle trials properly.
Today, we’re going to look to the words of James and see what he wrote that can help us.
Context
James was writing to believers scattered by persecution. We can pick the historical account up in Acts 8. The early church was being torn apart. Believers fled Jerusalem – homes abandoned, possessions lost, families separated. Saul (before becoming Paul) was hunting Christians. Stephen had just been martyred.
Right in the middle of that, James writes this letter to those people.
You might expect words of comfort for them:
“Hang in there.” “It’s going to be okay.” “We’re going to fight back.” Those all make sense. That’s what you would expect.
But that’s not what James says.
Instead, he opens with what sounds almost unreasonable:
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
At first glance, that sounds cold. But James isn’t dismissing their pain – he’s reframing it. He’s helping them, and us, see something deeper that God is doing through trials.
We’ll unpack this in three points:
1. The Proper Perspective
2. The Perfect Purification
3. The Purposeful Process
1. The Proper Perspective
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds…” (v. 2)
Expectation of Trials
Right away we see this idea that we touched on in the introduction. Trials are coming for you. Sinful people + fallen world = trials.
James doesn’t say “if” but “when.” James knew that trials are inevitable and they’re terrible and it’s a part of life!
When we look more, we see James isn’t even close to the only one saying this.
Jesus prepared us for this in John 16:33:
“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Paul said in Acts 14:22,
“We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.”
We will get into what Peter says about it a little later.
What we need to understand is that trials are not detours on the road of faith. They are the road. Life isn’t just this straight line where nothing goes wrong.
Minor Application: Stop thinking that if you do all the right things and follow all the right rules then nothing bad will ever happen to you. That’s not true!
The Nature of Trials
James points out the nature of these trials and says they come in “various kinds.” The Greek word poikilois means “multicolored.” They’re different for every one of us – so we have a wide array of trials that will no doubt come in life.
And the language used throughout the New Testament is that they come upon you suddenly – the same word that used is used when telling the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:30 when the man was ambushed.
Trials will ambush you. You don’t plan them; you fall into them. They come when you least expect it.
This is the doctor asking for a follow up after your yearly blood draw. This is the call in the middle of the night that something bad has happened. This is a loved one showing up at your house in tears.
And James, with all of that in mind, says to “count it all joy”?
The Meaning of “Count It All Joy”
Who on this earth would be filled with joy that they’re undergoing life altering change?
Here’s what James is not saying: James isn’t saying we have to enjoy the trial or fake a smile while we are going through it.
He’s not saying to stand there with a smile on your face while someone punches you in the mouth.
What he is saying: The phrase “consider it” (hēgēsasthe) means “to evaluate, to lead your mind.”
Joy, then, cant just be a feeling, it’s a choice. It’s a perspective shift.
You can’t always rejoice in what’s happening, but you can rejoice in what God is doing through it.
And that’s James’ point. Change your perspective and see what God is doing through your trial.
Remember John 16:33:
“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
The trial is there, but so is the one Who overcame the world.
And we have these two ideas running parallel to each other for the time being – there’s all of the emotion of a trial that stirs things up inside of us, and then there’s the knowledge of the One who’s in control of it all. Those can both be true at the same time.
Application: Joy and Lament Can Coexist
David said, “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).
Paul, speaking as some of his challenges as an Apostle, wrote that he was “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).
Turn here! Paul will help us shape this idea:
And in 2 Corinthians 4:16–18 16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
He reminds us that our “light and momentary troubles” are producing an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
Why is our affliction light and not heavy? Because even the worst of it, by the measure of eternity, is but for a moment. This is partially true in the sense that most of our troubles come and go, and “this too shall pass.”
The suffering that we go through on this earth WILL end! And it’s clear that for the Christian there is suffering that’s tied to eternal glory. So while we weep on this earth, we can fix our minds on a day when we won’t weep. We can fix our eyes on the reality that Jesus will call us to Himself. And when we are with Him, all of the things that were lost and broken won’t be a blip on the radar in comparison to the satisfaction and glory that we experience in Christ as sin no longer has any effect on us.
Romans 8:17-18 if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified with Him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
It is as if Paul says, “Go ahead and get out the scale. Put all your afflictions on one side of the scale. Then put the weight of glory on the other side of the scale, and you will see what a light affliction you really have in comparison to the glory.”
The suffering of this world is heavy and unbearable at times, but the point that’s being made is that it does have an expiration date and all the glory that we will face for all of eternity will so outweigh this suffering that it’s not even comparable because the glory doesn’t have an end.
Finding joy in trials doesn’t cancel out the sorry, it finds purpose in it.
Illustration: Joseph’s Life
Think about it this way with an Old Testament person that we know well – Joseph.
Betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused, unjustly imprisoned, and yet years later he said:
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” (Genesis 50:20)
Joseph’s life bore so much more fruit because his brothers mistreated him – and God allowed that because there was a purpose in it. We know that purpose, and towards the end of his life he learned it too. But Joseph lived much of his life not knowing why these bad things were happening to him.
His trials led to something much greater than himself, and it led to God fulfilling his promises through Joseph in ways that will bring eternal glory and praise and worship as the fruit is examined.
Here’s some help to really capture what it means to count it all joy. Look for God’s hand in your trial. Look beyond your discomfort and try to find the things that are valuable for fruit and for the glory that is to come. You will find yourself trusting God’s plan and His leading so much more when you’re looking for it.
Transition
So James tells us to choose joy in our trial. And he’s going to keep on going and show us that when we have Proper Perspective, trials have purpose—they test and strengthen our faith.
That’s our next point.
II. The Perfect Process
“Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” (v. 3)
The Refining Purpose of Testing
The word “testing” (dokimion) refers to refining metals. It’s quite a process. You have a raw metal dug out of the earth, and then the metal is heated up, the impurities rise to the top, they’re scraped off, and you’re left with a metal that’s genuine.
Gold is tested by fire. Faith is tested by trials.
The testing is what reveals what’s there.
With our faith, testing doesn’t create faith; it reveals it.
When the trial hits, what comes out of you? Is it faith? Is it bitterness? Is it humility? Or pride?
Have you ever seen someone hit a trial, and they maybe say it or don’t say it, but it’s obvious that they think they deserve better than what they’re getting? “I’m so sick of this!”
That thought isn’t brand new – it was there all along – maybe unseen and unknown, but the trial is bringing it out and showing a heart issue as an impurity that needs to be scraped off and removed.
Just as the refiners fire doesn’t destroy the precious metals, trials don’t destroy believers. They display what God has built into them. They purify what God has given them. The process is meant to make something beautiful and pure out of something that’s impure.
Peter says in 1 Peter 1:6-9:
6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
We see so much of the same from Peter that we do from James.
Rejoicing over trials
Purification
A look into eternity instead of what we experience here on this earth.
And here’s something to hang on to, as we are uncomfortable and going through this and it starts with the middle of verse 7.
may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.
These trials cause us to long for the day when we are with Jesus. They make us long for the day when He is revealed to us – not just as He is now that we believe in faith, but and we are physically standing in His presence. These trials make us long for the day when we see Him, and we know when we are with Him, we will not suffer anymore. God does an incredible work in us through faith that we are filled with inexpressible and glorious joy at that thought.
More application: Think of that day. In your trial, pray like that. Read your bible like that. Meditate like that. Fix your eyes on the author and perfector of your faith and what it is that He’s done, is doing, and will do. If you’re in the trial, no doubt you’re in the fire. Let the impurities rise to the top. Let that trial do its work. Humble yourself. Let God scrape those impurities off so that at the end of your race you can look at God with great joy, and praise for the work He did in your life.
Back to James, (As if we don’t have enough packed into this verse)
Perseverance – The Endurance of Faith
James says this testing produces perseverance, or patience. It’s not meant the way we think of patience in today’s English.
The word hupomonē means “to remain under”—to stay put under a heavy load instead of running away.
He’s talking about actively undergoing this trial. We can’t think of this as bunker mentality that while this trial is going on we just stop all aspects of life and run for cover and hide.
We don’t see trials as God’s time out corner where he takes us out of the game and we stay home and avoid church, or other believers, or prayer meeting, or personal prayer and bible studies.
We keep going and keep building and keep moving forward with all parts of our Christian lives and exercising those spiritual muscles we have with the rest of the body of Christ.
Whatever your trial is, it will build spiritual muscles just like a workout builds physical strength.
If an athlete stops working out, they never build muscles and endurance.
And without trials, Christians will never grow our spiritual muscles that lead to perseverance and purity. The worst thing you could do, is to put yourself in time out during a trial. Perseverance/patience, either word that your bible has in it, is a call to keep going under the pressure of the trial and to keep exercising those muscles. A Christian without trials in their life would just end up with a spiritually fat and lazy life. And Christ doesn’t want that for us, and honestly we don’t want that for ourselves.
Paul writes in Romans 5:3–4 about this process that a trial leads us on:
“We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
Suffering is the workshop where character and hope are formed. We see this same process throughout the whole bible – Suffering produces perseverance (the ability to keep going), then we see godly character as a person is purified and refined by the trial and is really working those spiritual muscles, and then what comes next? Hope. The hope in Jesus Christ.
As we make the conscious decision to change our mind about our situation, and we focus on Christ and what He is doing and what He will do, it compels us to carry on and keep going and every single day that we keep going is one day closer to Christ and its one step closer to His likeness that’s built into us.
Transition:
So how should we think of a trial if we do see bitterness and anger and hatred instead of this longing for Christ?
When God exposes our weakness, it’s not punishment – it’s grace. It’s a diagnosis before healing. Like a doctor comes in the room and gives you bad news before they tell you they have the cure, God does the same thing by revealing to us our thoughts and actions before He reveals the path to Christlikeness.
Like David prayed in Psalm 139:23–24:
“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.”
David, who seemed to be in constant trials during much of the Psalms, is asking God to search him and expose his anxious thoughts and bring those to his attention so he could deal with them and be done with them and give God the glory for his victory.
If anger, bitterness, bad attitude are present in your trial – you need to view it like this:
Every trial is an opportunity to grow, to draw near to Christ, and to examine what it is that He’s done in our lives – the idea is never to stand back and say “look what I did during my trial”. It’s always, look what God did during my trial as He walked with me and showed me the error of my ways and helped me to grow and be more like Him.
And like my friend Dennis says, “if you Don’t like how you are, then change!”
Illustration: Paul in Prison
Let’s look at one example that we see of a person facing a trial that was done right. This one is persecution. It’s Paul. Let’s flip to Philippians 1.
While you’re turning there…
He wanted to get to Rome really bad. He wanted to preach the gospel to Rome to get the word out to the biggest, best, strongest group of people on the earth so that then they could take the gospel and spread it throughout the world. One small problem, Paul was arrested. He appealed to the Roman government, and they sent him as a prisoner to Rome to stand trial for blasphemy among other things. He was shipwrecked on the way.
When he got there, they put him under house arrest . We see in Acts and other places, like Ephesians and Philippians that he was chained to a guard 24/7. You could say that his life wasn’t going the best!
But, he didn’t see his imprisonment as wasted time. He wrote to the church in Philippi, to comfort them, that
“What has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.” (Philippians 1:12)
Acts 28 tells us Paul used those two years of confinement to preach the gospel to everyone who came.
And while he was imprisoned, and he was preaching and teaching the gospel, chained to guards (the Praetorian Guard) would have been Ceasar’s own Secret Service type of guard unit, they were no doubt hearing what he was saying and believing and then when their shift would end they were going right back into Ceasar’s house and repeating all of this right smack dab in the very place that Paul wanted the gospel to go in the first place.
Philippians 4:22 22 All God’s people here send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar’s household.
You now have Romans, new believers, who once were enemies of Christians, greeting their fellow believers back in Philippi. The gospel was advancing and moving to places it had never been because Paul was in a trial and his physical conditions and well being weren’t in a great spot.
Imagine if Paul had sat in his confinement and scrolled on Facebook the entire time. Imagine if he felt the weight of his circumstances and just sat there and took himself out of the game.
What others saw as tragedy, Paul saw as an opportunity.
The point here is that trials become platforms if you let them. You may never have an opportunity so valuable to proclaim Christ to those you love as you do during a trial. Don’t waste it!! Don’t sit it out, don’t use our modern view of patience as sitting on the sidelines – keep going under the weight of the circumstances and think of yourself like an athlete building muscles and working out and keep pushing! And, as you’re longing for the day when you stand before Christ, bring others along with you as you talk to them.
Transition
Trials are important to produce perseverance—but perseverance isn’t the end goal.
Persevearance leads to something greater: maturity.
III. The Purposeful Process
“Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (v. 4)
Cooperation, Not Resistance
Notice the word “let.” That’s cooperation language. Application: Don’t resist what God is doing; don’t rush what He’s refining. The tendency is to know you’re in a trial and make it as quick and pain free as possible and just “get it done”.
I’m not telling you that it’s a good to purposefully linger longer than we need to and suffer more than we ought, but I do think that while a trial persists it’s a good idea to pay special attention to what it is that God is bringing out of it.
Spiritual maturity can’t be microwaved – it’s slow-cooked over time. This isn’t a TV dinner.
I don’t want this to be too controversial, and I don’t want you to get the impression that God doesn’t care about our physical and emotional needs, but the MAIN goal isn’t your comfort; it’s your character. Character takes time.
And we see that more in the language that’s used.
Maturity and Completion
Some translations say “Perfect”, some say mature. The meaning is the same: full-grown.
“Complete” means fully developed—nothing missing.
The goal is that through your trials and through your life you end up completely full grown in Christ. This is a lifelong process. Trials come and go and the work that they do helps us to continue the growth throughout our whole Christian lives.
Hebrews 12:11 reminds us that discipline feels painful in the moment but produces a “harvest of righteousness and peace.”
This is a work that is started in our lives from the moment we are saved on – to produce the most growth, the most harvest, the most praise and worship of Jesus Christ that is possible, and when it comes to trials, its clear that we can definitely work in relationship with God to help that growth by allowing the trial to serve its purpose for us.
Unfortunately, we are impatient. We like results right now.
We like to put our finger on exactly what it is that we’ve done and how we’ve changed or what’s been done for us and changed.
Spurgeon said it best, “You don’t expect to see fruit on a tree a week after planting it.” Growth takes time. The idea here is obedience and humility to what God is doing, and He’s the one causing the growth so we trust Him with the results. They could be small results, or they could be huge changes, but they’re His.
There’s this thought out there that “God only gives you what you can handle”. I’ve said it. You’ve said it. Stop saying that. God gives us more than we can handle, but He never gives us more than He can handle.
That’s the whole point—dependence, not self-sufficiency.
The results are up to God, so stick the process out. Don’t bail on it because you don’t see what you think you should see fast enough.
Application: Don’t let each other grow weary of the process. Encourage your brothers and sisters. Count them as more important than you. Serve them in their trial. Send them texts or cards or phone calls heaped with love and encouragement.
Illustration: The Long Run
Think of a marathon runner who builds endurance mile after mile. Every stride hurts, but every step strengthens them to run further next time.
If you’ve ever watched someone run a marathon as they get closer to the end and their body is giving out and they’re tired, the crowd cheering on the sides of the street can encourage that person to carry on with their race.
We should be doing the same for one another when we think someone may be having a hard time or going through a trial. We should stand there cheering them on and setting up tables to hand them water as they go and watch as God is using that encouragement to strengthen them to run. And when they finish the race it’s just one big celebration of man working with God and being used by God to help a brother or sister as they were empowered by God to finish the marathon to maturity.
That’s what James means when he says perseverance must “finish its work.” We go through these trials, running our races as Christians, and helping other Christians along the way, aiming for the finish line. And as we are changed and we grow and we finish our race, we are complete and not lacking anything.
Let’s look at what James is saying, and what he’s NOT saying.
The Result and the Hope
James isn’t calling for stoic toughness in our lives. He’s pointing to Christlikeness in our lives. You don’t have to pretend like life isn’t hard sometimes. Jesus wept.
Jesus Himself endured the greatest trial – the cross – “for the joy set before Him” (Hebrews 12:2).
The joy wasn’t in the nails or in the beatings. It was in the obedience to God the Father and the redemption of lost sinners that those nails and beatings would bring.
Romans 8:28–29 reminds us that God works all things for good—not necessarily our comfort, but our conformity to Christ. ALL THINGS are being worked to bring about the good that is found in Jesus Christ.
Hebrews 4 reminds us that we have a Savior that knows what our trials are. He’s in the trial with us.
Conclusion – Growing Through What You’re Going Through
So how do you “successfully” go through a trial. Let’s recap this and start to wrap it up.
1. Count it all joy – Choose a God-centered perspective.
2. Know the purpose – Testing reveals the Perfect Purification.
3. Let perseverance work – Stay surrendered to God’s Purposeful Process.
There’s no way around trials, they’re coming. But we need to reframe our minds that they’re not there to break you – they will build you in all the ways that bear eternal fruit for eternal purposes.
Gospel Connection
The gospel is the ultimate proof that God brings good out of suffering. At the cross, Jesus’ suffering became victory.
Jesus went to the cross and faced the punishment of mankind as they drove those nails through His hands and faced God’s wrath as He who knew no sin became sin. He paid a punishment that He did not deserve and underwent torment that He didn’t deserve. In doing so, in taking all of our sin upon Himself and shedding His blood and giving His life, he was able to say “it is finished” as he defeated sin and death. It led to His resurrection from the dead 3 days later and now He’s seated at God’s right hand.
Whatever trial you face, remember: you’re walking a path your Savior already walked.
He understands your pain, He understands your suffering, and He is making you mature and whole – not out of anger, but out of love. He wants you with Him, and He wants you with Him to be much more like Himself than you would have been if life was easy with no trials.
Closing
Maybe today you’re worn out. You’ve been under that trial for a long time.
Here’s some encouragement: God is not wasting your trial. You may not see it yet, but He’s refining something precious – your faith. You might be uncomfortable, but allow God to complete His work by making you more Christlike for His praise and glory.