The chapter I keep coming back to

When I was fourteen, my high school pastor Gary Blackshear started a study on the book of James.

It was at this very same time that my dad was diagnosed with cancer, a battle that he eventually lost three years later. James was the perfect book to be studying in that time, because Gary began our study with James chapter 1:

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (1:2-4)

It’s a picture of confronting life’s tough passages head-on. And not denying the adversity, but fully acknowledging it and defying hopelessness and despair. I am reminded of Hebrews 12:2, which speaks of Jesus facing Calvary:

Who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of God…

Is this just positive self-talk? ‘I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and people like me’?

No. The answer comes next in verse 5:

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

Time and time again, life’s circumstances bring me back to this verse. When yet another impossible thing arrives that I have no power over, no resources to deal with, I remember being 14 and thoroughly helpless and sad and reaching out for God, pleading for his wisdom… and yes, receiving it, one day at a time. Receiving the grace of a kind word or a divine appointment… being able to encourage another because I’ve been down the same road they’re on.

Verse 12 shows that we really do follow the same path as Jesus:

Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.

I don’t know why God gives us trials. I don’t know why we’re born into a world that’s already a stage for the ferocious battle between good and evil before we’re even born. But I have a suspicion that in the spiritual realm – throughout all the vast universes of angels and demons and mysteries we’re not even privy to – this battle produces a fruit of endurance that is singular, unique and special to God’s heart. Approved warriors who have persevered are like a prized fruit that grows only on a unique tree, only in a certain part of the world. Merchants travel over land and sea to seek it out.

God loves and esteems His warriors. He gives men and women graces that no other beings have the privilege of receiving. So for now, trust Him – and relish the irony that it is, above all, joy.

Perry Marshall