My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, ³ knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. ⁴ But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. ⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. ⁶ But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. ⁷ For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; ⁸ he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (Jam 1:2-8)

The missionary to China, J. Hudson Taylor once had a young missionary sitting with him at the table. The young man was about to start his service in China. Taylor wanted to help prepare him. “Look at this,” he said, and he slammed his fist down on the table, jolting the teacups into spilling out on the table. The bewildered young man stared at Hudson Taylor. Taylor looked at him and said, “When you go to China, you will face all kinds of tests and trials. You will be buffeted from every side. The trials will seem like blows. But always remember, just as this blow did to these tea-cups, so the blows will only bring out of you what is already inside you.”

Taylor understood the biblical doctrine of trials and tests. Trials and tests do not introduce things into us – they simply reveal what we are, or what we are becoming. James writes this book to help us to understand what is in our teacups. He wants us to know who is truly related to Jesus, the one who does the will of the Father, who matures in the faith, who chooses God over the world.

So James begins by telling us how our faith will be tested. This section, which goes to around verse 18 is rather like the introduction that sets up the whole book. Faith is going to be tested, and we need to know why the tests come, and how we should respond.

Problems, sufferings, pains, troubles, difficulties are inevitable and unavoidable. For the Christian, trials are deeply meaningful, having a specific purpose from God. We need to know how to respond to them, in order for them to have God’s intended effect. We can, as it were, waste our trials, by responding to them wrongly, in which case we not only get the pain of the trial, but we get no profit from the trial. Our response to them either sanctifies us, or delays our sanctification.

In this dense and rich section, James will show us the three godly responses to trials. And what we’re going to see is that these three hang together, like three legs of a stool. You need each of them to have any of them.

I. Rejoice in the Purpose of Your Trials

² My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, ³ knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.

James begins with a very odd command: regard your pains and struggles with unmixed, pure joy. He says, look upon your trials with a new, unusual perspective: that they are something to rejoice in.

This is such a bold and shocking thing to open your letter with: smile, when you are slapped, be satisfied when you suffer, be happy when you hurt. So, now that he has our attention, we need to ask what James means by various trials, and what he means by count it all joy, and why.

The word for trials here means a test: anything in life that tests you. This can be internal or external test to sin or to obey. The Greek word for trial is the same word for temptation – the word used in verses 12-13. That might seem confusing at first, but upon reflection, you can understand how the two are closely related. One is internal, the other is external. A pure temptation to sin is an inward temptation. It never comes from God. It comes from the flesh, and is often provoked by Satan. But when it does come, it is a trial, a test of what we love.

External tests, which is what is meant here, are those circumstances that come upon us and tempt us to sin, but also test the quality of our faith. The external test can come directly from God, or indirectly, by permission, such as when God allowed Satan to test Job. But His sovereignty rules over all of it. What form do these external tests or trials take? Paul gives us a forms these take:

Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2Co 12:10)

Infirmities: this refers to all kinds of bodily weakness, including sickness and disease and weakness related to age. These are tests, trials.

Reproaches: all forms of insults, attacks, criticisms, or any form of mistreatment which you receive from others. All forms of relational conflict and difficulty are a test, a trial.

Needs: this word refers to any situation which causes hardship, any unwanted trouble that is forced upon you. Unasked for trouble that you have to deal with – things that break, crime, job loss, rising costs, lawsuits, accidents, calamities. This is a trial.

Persecutions: suffering for your faith in Christ, being harmed or deprived of something because of openly confessing Christ. This is a test.

Distresses: this refers to any situation of high pressure that makes you feel constricted, stretched, pressured and in anguish.

This is why James uses the word ‘various’ trials. It literally means – multi-coloured. Trials and tests come in so many forms, shapes and sizes, as varying and different as our individual lives are. But as different as they all are, trials are universal. The quest for a trouble-free life is chasing rainbows. You may have brief snatches of time in your life when you have no trouble, but the vast majority of your life will be an experience of being in a trial, entering one trial and completing another.

Yet man is born to trouble, As the sparks fly upward. (Job 5:7)

Man who is born of woman Is of few days and full of trouble. (Job 14:1)

This is why James says when you fall into various trials, not if. Trials will come upon you.

For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, (Phi 1:29)

So James says, when this happens, count, or regard, these tests joyfully.

Now James cannot mean that he wants us to develop an appetite for suffering. He cannot mean that we must come to love what is painful. That would simply make us sado-masochists, and there would then be no virtue in a response of joy, for pain would have become our pleasure. No, James means in your grief, in your pain, in your sorrow, let it all have the gold-plating of joy. In the middle of your tears, open the curtains and let the sunshine of a certain promise cause you gladness to be mixed in. James doesn’t say your pain will no longer be painful. He says, if you are a genuine Christian, then your sorrow should never be unmixed. Your cup of bitterness should have a good few lumps of the sugar of joy.

How do we do that? James says we can do this if we know something. We need to know the purpose of the trials.

knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience

If you know and believe this truth, you can sweeten the trial with joy. Trials are not meaningless troubles, they are not arbitrary hurdles. Trials are God-appointed furnaces to not only reveal the gold of genuine faith, but they produce the precious thing called patience. The word translated patience here means more than not getting irritated with an annoying person. It means endurance, steadfastness, fortitude, staying the course, sustained obedience, unswerving loyalty. It comes from a root which means “remaining under”.

Now why is this something to rejoice in? Endurance is the difference between immature, volatile Christianity, and mature, consistent Christianity. Endurance is simply obedience that repeats, and keep repeating even under pressure. We might know that we should respond to a certain trial with kindness and not insults. If we do that once, that is good. But if we only do it 1 out of 10 times, that’s not mature Christianity. Endurance is when we are approaching 8, 9, 10 out of 10 times. In other words, endurance turns sporadic obedience into habits, into character.

Rom 5:3 And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.

2Pe 1:6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,

You see, whatever trial you are in, there is a godly response to it. Perhaps the response is generosity during a time of struggle, or hope during a time of scarcity, or peace during a time of pressure, or gentleness during a time of provocation, or diligence during a time of need, or gratitude during a time of infirmity. When God wants to shape us into the image of His Son, He doesn’t put us in a classroom and tell us to memorise the meaning of thirty different Christian virtues. He throws us into the classroom of life, and there sends us these external tests, and a response is forced out of us. And the response is a choice between two ways – be like Christ, or please self.

So what James is telling us is this: look at your trial as the thing that not only tests your godly response, but gives you the chance to repeat those responses until they become permanent. Rejoice that endurance will dry the wet cement of godly responses into a beautiful sculpture. Rejoice that endurance will cause what was once so hard to become part of you. Rejoice that the furnace of the trial is going to temper the steel of godliness in your life.

It’s rather like what an athlete feels when the training burns. When the muscles are aching and it is burning, and the sweat is pouring, he needs to find joy not in muscular pain, but in the endurance his body is getting. He knows his muscles are toning, his heart and lungs are strengthening, even his appearance will be improving. Endurance is going to shape him for the good, and so he finds pleasure in what the exercise is doing.

James says, look upon your trials as the gymnasium for your soul. Look upon your trials as what is drawing out the toxins, and bringing the health of Christlikeness to your very soul. Hold up the joy of the future during the present. We put our grief into a bigger, broader context. We say – far greater than this trouble, is what it is cementing in me.

Rom 8:18 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.

Only Christians can have this profound sense of purpose in our suffering. Unbelievers don’t have this. Believers can quote Romans 8:28 to themselves: “All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Believers can quote 2 Corinthians 4:17 to themselves: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, (2Co 4:17).

We can count it joy because we have a deep belief in the sovereignty of God over trials. We know our trial is not meaningless, arbitrary, it is not going on too long, God can end it exactly when He wants to.

George Matheson was a Scottish preacher in the 19^th century. He was the author of the hymn “O Love, That Will Not Let Me Go”. He began losing his eyesight while still young, until he was blind at the age of 20. A young lady he wanted to marry refused him because of his blindness. With all this sorrow, he wrote a prayer that he might accept the trial “not with dumb resignation, but with holy joy; not only with the absence of murmur, but with a song of praise.”

But you can really only have that joy if you do the second thing which James commands here. These three responses fit together like three gears in a machine – each must be present. You can only rejoice in the God-given purpose of trials if you

II. Remain Obedient in the Process of Your Trials

⁴ But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

Let patience or endurance do its work. For you to see the joyful benefit of trials, which is endurance, you have to let endurance do its shaping and perfecting work.

How do you ‘let endurance’ have its work? To put it simply: by enduring in your obeying! For as long as the trial lasts, you keep responding in the Christlike way. The moment you give up enduring in your obedience, you have given up two things: your Christlike response, and the chance for it to become part of you. You took the cake out of the oven before it was done. You stepped on the cement before it was dry. You pulled on the joint before the glue had hardened.

In order to do this, you need to make a distinction in your mind. You need to see the difference between the experience of the trial and your response to the trial. The experience of the trial is the pain and difficulty it brings. By definition, an infirmity, need, distress, persecution, reproach is unpleasant.

But separate from the experience of the trial is your and my response to that trial. We can respond to the trial in sinful ways, or in Christlike ways. We can respond with sinful anger, or complaining, or murmuring, or blaming someone, or rebelling against God, rejecting God’s Word, despairing. We can resent the trial and get angry with God. We can respond by diverting ourselves with sinful pleasures, indulging the flesh. And what the deceitfulness of sin does is confuse the two – the trial is hurtful, so then my hurtful response is one and the same. The trial is painful, so my anger is necessary. No, the trial is a test – and a test means you can give different answers and pass or fail.

But the other response is to keep responding to the pain or trouble or struggle in a Christlike way, whether it is love for the painful work colleague, patience with the incompetence of another, firmness with the incompetence of another, moderation with the extra money you have been given, gratitude with the scarcity of money, gentleness with the person who has falsely accused you, hope and trust with the need that remains unmet, prayer and peace while waiting for the blood test results, longsuffering with the same problem in your spouse or child. James says, keep obeying.

Remember, we are not simply trying to grimly endure the trial. We are enduring in our obedience. There is nothing wrong with trying to end the pain, solve the problem, relieve the suffering. It is not a lack of endurance to want less suffering. The endurance here is not simply enduring the trial any way you can. It is enduring in godliness – enduring in Christlike responses, for as long as the trial lasts.

Look at the beautiful picture of the result of sustained obedience.

Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

The words here mean, let endurance produce its maturing work, so that you may be mature, and whole. It’s the idea of a Christian without glaring gaps, disfigurements. The whole character is taking on the beautiful, shapely, elegant proportions of Christ’s. You are really coming to love what He loves, and hate what He hates.

So one of the ways you keep enduring is by thinking on the joy, the pleasure of becoming whole, mature lacking nothing. The joy of the Lord is our strength, and the thought of becoming like Him gives us more strength and motivation to keep enduring in obedience.

Stop and think about someone who was put in the furnace of trials, and could have abandoned the process at several points. Joseph was unfairly stripped of his prize coat by his jealous brothers, and then wickedly sold against his will into the hands of human traffickers. How could he have responded right there to his brothers?

He then lands in a foreign country, foreign language, foreign food, as a lowly household slave against his will. How could he have responded there? But since he responded in a Christlike way, he is promoted. And then another trial – Potipher’s wife tries to seduce him. How could he have responded to that test? He responds rightly, and things don’t get better! He is falsely accused of rape, and the false charge is upheld, and he now lands up in an Egyptian prison. How could he have responded to that?

But once in prison, he seems to respond in a godly way, until he ends up with a leadership role in the prison. And then he is given the gift of interpreting dreams, and rightly interprets the dreams of the baker and the butler, begging them to remember him at court. But the butler forgets him, and he languishes in prison for longer. How could he have responded then? Finally, when Pharaoh has a dream, the butler remembers, Joseph is brought out, interprets the dream correctly, and elevated to second-in-command of the whole nation. And now in a place of power – a new trial – how does he respond? He can take revenge on the butler, on Potipher, on Potipher’s wife, and on his brothers. But how does he respond to them all? He chooses godly responses.

How many times along the way could Joseph have thrown up his hands and said, “Enough! This is too much! It is not fair! Being godly gives me no advantage in life! Other people get away with evil! I do right and my life only gets worse!” Joseph allowed endurance to have its perfect work, so that we can look at his character and say, though he was a sinner saved by grace, he was mature and complete, lacking nothing. He remained obedient under pressure – both the internal pressure of his own sin nature, and the external pressure of needs, distresses, persecutions, reproaches.

Let the trial have its positive effect, by obeying under pressure. Don’t waste the pain by giving up obeying before it’s over.

To do this, you need the third component.

III. Request Perspective for Your Trials

⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. ⁶ But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. ⁷ For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; ⁸ he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

It does not come naturally to think this way, does it? Who naturally goes through pain, and thinks, I need to have joy alongside this pain, because I am getting spiritually fit. Who naturally thinks, I need to keep obeying, because this is cementing into a godly character of perfection and wholeness?

To think like that during a trial would be to think like God does about your trial. There is another word for thinking like God does, or having God’s perspective: wisdom.

When we go through trials, and we want to rejoice in their purpose and remain godly during the process, we need to ask God for perspective. We default towards complaining. We lean towards despair. We feel very justified for acting in ungodly ways. And without the wisdom that lets us think about our trials this way, we will not rejoice, and we will not endure. We will respond sinfully, and that means the trial will either have to last longer, or begin again, or take another form, for God to shape that character in us. We desperately need wisdom if we are not going to waste our trials.

Now the good news is what James says here about God. Echoing Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount, God is a generous giving God. He does not insult us or belittle us when we ask. Especially when we are asking for something God loves to give – wisdom. He was only too happy to give Solomon the wisdom he requested, and God will grant us wisdom too.

Now understand, wisdom is not so much asking God why this is happening to us. There may be explanations, but God does not always disclose to us the reasons for His providence. Wisdom is not so much a question of why, as it is of how. Wisdom asks how should I respond to this trial? How would Christ respond to this test? What is the godly response to this test, which God wants me to endure in? How should I view this pain, in light of what God values, in light of eternity?

In what way will God give us this wisdom? He will give it to us in His Word. As we search it out in our personal Bible study, as we seek counsel from believers more mature than ourselves, as we read books that distill biblical wisdom and counsel for us, as we hear sermons and gather with the body of Christ, God will give us the perspective we need on our trial: how to respond, what to endure in, how this is shaping us.

But now James puts a warning in here. He says, when you ask for this wisdom, you need to ask with wholehearted, singleminded faith. If you ask with a double-minded, doubting mind, James says, do not expect wisdom from the Lord.

The double-minded man is not simply a man struggling with uncertainty or doubt. The double-minded man has not decided if he wants to obey God in the trial or not. He wants to hear God’s perspective on his trial, but he is not sure that he will like what he hears, or that he will want to do what God says. You have two kinds of people who come to biblical counselling. One kind wants God’s wisdom on an issue in their life, and they want to obey it. The other kind is not seeking counsel, he is shopping for counsel. He wants to hear as many versions or interpretations of his problem as possible, so that he can select the one he likes the most. So he will come to counselling and hear that he needs to repent of certain actions, and begin obeying in others. He hears that. But then he asks his best friends, who tell him that he is normal, and it’s the other person’s fault. He talks to his Mom, who says if his wife would just stop whining, everything would be okay. Then he listens to the radio while driving and hears a psychologist say that our real problem is our low self-esteem. If we were happy with ourselves, we’d have good energy to share with others. And then he decides to Google his problem, and finds in the comments section how many other people feel that churches are legalistic for telling them they need to repent. This man is shopping for counsel. He is not committed to becoming what God wants him to become. He is going to choose whatever counsel is most convenient to him, whatever requires the least, and lays the least burden upon him, and blames others the most.

This happened in Jeremiah 42. After the Babylonians have attacked the land, and left a puppet governor in the land, the remaining Israelites come to Jeremiah and say, please ask the LORD what we should do – should we stay in the land, or go down to Egypt? Jeremiah says, I will ask the Lord for you. And they respond with this super-pious statement:

“⁵ So they said to Jeremiah, “Let the LORD be a true and faithful witness between us, if we do not do according to everything which the LORD your God sends us by you. ⁶ Whether it is pleasing or displeasing, we will obey the voice of the LORD our God to whom we send you, that it may be well with us when we obey the voice of the LORD our God.” (Jer 42:5-6)

Jeremiah comes back and says, “God says, stay in the land. I will take care of you. If you go down to Egypt, the sword will follow you there.” And then here is the response:

“Now it happened, when Jeremiah had stopped speaking to all the people all the words of the LORD their God, for which the LORD their God had sent him to them, all these words, (Jer 43:1) ² that Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the proud men spoke, saying to Jeremiah, “You speak falsely! The LORD our God has not sent you to say,`Do not go to Egypt to dwell there (Jer 43:2)

In other words, the Lord has spoken if we like the counsel, if it is convenient and sensible and fits in with what we already wanted to do. This is a double-minded man. Tell me the truth, but make sure it’s what I want to hear.

James says, a Christian like this is like a piece of driftwood among the waves. He is at the mercy of his own whims and feelings, bouncing from one fad to another, from one quick-fix to another, from one high to another low ebb to another high to another low ebb. His Christian life will not stabilise and grow, because he will not let endurance have its perfecting work. He always wants a way out, and always wants to find some path easier than the one God appoints. So he remains a spiritual dwarf, a perpetual child, tossed to and fro by fads, fashions, trends, superficial religious emotions, bouncing from church to church, counsel to counsel, technique to technique, and you meet him ten years from now and he is in the same place spiritually, still looking for the elusive secret that will make his Christian life work, still blaming others and circumstances for his ungodliness. He is often perplexed, often depressed, often frustrated, often angry, but is still double-minded.

All that can change when you make up your mind to seek wisdom from God and do what He says whether it appeals to you or not. Proverbs 2 describes seeking wisdom with all your heart, with the intention of obeying it. I want to be what God wants me to be, even if I would not have chosen the path to get there, or the process. I trust the end-product, and I will submit to the pain of getting there. I trust Philippians 1:6 more than I trust my own wisdom.

being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; (Phi 1:6)

In this room right now, there are probably multiple troubles and trials for each person. God wants you to know that each of those troubles is there not to annoy you, but to perfect you. So you need three responses. You pray, and say, Lord please help me to see this trouble as a refining furnace as a gymnasium. Give me the wisdom as to how to respond, for as long as it lasts. Then, you put some lumps of sugar in the cup of sorrow. You say, just think of the beauty this is producing in me. Just think of how spiritually healthy and Christlike I am becoming. And with that spring in your step, you sustain your obedience, until it becomes a habit. When these three click into place – rejoicing in the purpose, remaining obedient during the process, requesting perspective – the pain has a profitable, and pleasurable result. And then we can say with Samuel Rutherford, “Praise God for the hammer, the file and the furnace.”