Now there is an old bit by the comedian Mark Lowry where he said that his favorite Bible verse is this, and it came to pass. And that's it, that's his favorite Bible verse right there, and it came to pass. Because whatever we are going through in life, it comes to pass. Sometimes good things, whether it be youth or strength or something else, or bad things in trials. We considered some trials this morning, some suffering that our Lord was talking about in John 16, and how the Lord could turn our suffering into joy. We considered there that we do all face trials. We're either going into a trial, we're in a trial, or we're coming out of a trial. We all face trials. Trials come, but thankfully, trials come to pass most often. Now last week, we began introducing the book of James here, and James makes this a point. Of course, James, as you remember, is written by someone named James, so that makes the title of the book very fitting. He is the brother of our Lord. He's the half-brother, to be precise. He grew up with Jesus, and he rejected everything that our Lord Jesus believed and taught at that time. He did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. He rejected the truth about his brother, even scoffing about it. But our Lord and his grace came to his brother in the resurrection. And he got to see the truth. And he was gloriously converted by the grace of our Lord. And praise God, the Lord doesn't leave us where we are. We can even be scoffing at him and mocking his name, and yet he can still save us. And this is the good news of the gospel once again. And this is what we see with James, the transformed brother. He, as a man who is formerly of the world, was willing now to bow his knee to his brother. He went from scoffer to saint, we saw. Because his Lord exposed him to his sin and his need for him. Because Jesus had transformed him so much, now he is willing to write to believers who need encouragement, believers like the scattered or dispersed abroad, here he writes of in the first verse, the Christians who are scattered because of persecution that had come upon the church. James writes to them to encourage them in their suffering. And so this is why we have such a theme in the book of James on trials, on suffering, because the ones he is writing to, who are receiving and reading his letter need these words of encouragement and perhaps a few words of admonishment as well. We'll get to those as we get through this. But in this passage, this evening, we are going to see that sudden trials develop or mature us. And this is how James first encourages them. He gets right to it and he jumps right into it so that they can know that what they're going through is something that God is using for their blessing. And that's a hard pill to swallow sometimes when we are going through trials. To think, we have an advantage in this, we would rather not go through this. but the Lord has something in it for us. And we'll see here three points this evening as we consider how we are growing in trials, how the Lord develops us in trials. The first of these is that we must rejoice in trials. We have that command in verse three. or verse two, excuse me, the command to consider it all joy. The second point that we see this evening is that we will grow through trials, we will grow through trials. They do develop us, they do make us more mature, and that leads to the third point, naturally, we will be mature because of trials. We will become mature Christian believers because of the trials that we are going through. so a very simple outline we must rejoice in trials because we are going to grow through the trials and we will be mature in the trials and so let's look at each of these this evening first we must rejoice in trials and so verse 2 again says consider it all joy my brethren when you encounter various trials Well, James begins here with a command, perhaps one of the most difficult commands in all of scripture. This text, I'll say before I get too deep into that, acknowledges implicitly that this is not our natural human. bent. This is not what we would normally do. We would not normally rejoice when we get into trials. In fact, the unbeliever, of course, would not do this. There's no point of the trial if he doesn't believe in God or doesn't believe that God is sovereign over his life. These are just things that happen in life, and you just deal with it. You just suck it up. But there's no rhyme or reason. It's just part of the random universe, and then you die. That's kind of a depressing view. But here we see that there is a point to trials. But we're inclined to become angry with someone or depressed when things don't go our way. That's our typical bent as people. But James commands us to change our thinking about our circumstances so that we will begin thinking differently about trials. We need to begin thinking differently about trials. And the term consider here has interesting implications here in our language as well as the Greek language, it implies conscious evaluation. Consider the word consider. You are considering or thinking about or rolling something over in your head so that you can understand what it means more. And when we apply it to our thinking, we should also see that we should change our thinking from what our natural bent is to joy. Now this is something that Paul commanded to the Philippians. Look at Philippians chapter three, for instance. Right after the book of Ephesians. Philippians chapter three, verse one. says, finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble for me, and it is a safeguard for you. There are things that the Philippians were going through. They were going through their suffering as well. And yet he is telling them in the midst of what they are going through, rejoice in the Lord. And of course he repeats it and he says it again, this is something that we are to do. And of course this is what the word says, rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say, rejoice. Even in the midst of trials, yes. In fact, especially in the midst of trials, rejoice. This is difficult to receive, though. Let's look over to 1 Peter. So we have Paul, we have James, now let's see Peter, just a few pages to the right here. 1 Peter chapter four, 1 Peter chapter four, verses 12 and 13. We read there, Make sure I'm in chapter 4 verses 12 through 13 Beloved do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal or trials bless you Among you which come upon you for your testing as though some strange thing were happening to you but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of his glory, you will rejoice with exaltation. And so throughout the New Testament, throughout the New Testament writers, we see this command over and over again, to rejoice, even in the midst of fiery ordeals, which may befall us. How is this a command in Scripture? This doesn't seem like something that we would want to do. You might say, this is strange. What is our Lord commanding of us? Is He talking about putting on a false face? Is He talking about just pretending to be happy? Fake it till you make it? I don't think that's quite what the Lord is commanding here, right? Lord's not asking us to play pretend. We certainly don't want to have a twisted sense of laughter when hard times come. We're real people. We're people of truth. And so we encounter things truthfully. But we also understand when we face other temptations, we do have to change our thinking. If you have a temptation toward stealing, for instance, and you see the money box, guess what you should not do? You should not steal. You need to change your thinking. If you have a temptation toward lust and you see someone who is pretty in your estimation, what should you do? Well, you should change your thinking. Say, nope, I'm not going to think about that. When you are angry at someone for something they have done, what should you do? Should you go and accost them or should you change your thinking? Of course, all of these are generalizations. Of course, there are little circumstances that could be considered with each of these situations. The idea here is that we need to change our thinking. We need to consider it joy, in this case, when we encounter trials. The temptation is to consider it as something bad befalling you, to be surprised by it, to think that there's something wrong if you are going through a trial. No, no, consider it as a opportunity for joy, as an opportunity for joy. Christian should see the sovereignty of God and take a deep abiding trust in what the Lord is doing and say, wow, the Lord must have something in this for me. In fact, it's even possible in the midst of trials, it's possible in the midst of trials to shed tears And I would say it's natural, yes, there's a time for mourning, Scripture says. If you've lost someone, for instance, Scripture's not telling you to laugh like the joker, you know, because you've lost someone. You weep, yes, but even as you're shedding tears, it is possible to shed tears and have a strange calm in the soul. And that's because of the joy. that the Lord has for you. It's possible to experience heartache and rejoice that the Lord is near to you in times of trouble. Now, in all of this, one of our cultural problems that we have is an assumption that we are controlled by our emotions, that you can't help how you feel. And that's not true. You can help how you feel. You can control your emotions. In fact, this is what we teach kids to do all the time as parents. It doesn't matter that you're mad at your sibling. You're not allowed to say that. No, put down the baseball bat. You're not allowed to use that. I don't care how angry you are. You're not allowed to use that. Maybe we can put on some boxing gloves or something. We really need to work it out. But no, we teach our kids to regulate their emotions, especially boys. It's very important because boys who grew up never knowing how to regulate their emotions become very dangerous people as adults, right? Girls can be as well. We are not slaves to our feelings. We can regulate them, we can control them, and we can do that through thinking differently about them. We can control and redirect our emotions by a choice of will. I'm not saying that it's easy. Don't mishear me. This is one of these things that is easier said than done. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. It can be done, and it can be done through discipline. Oh, there's that word. We don't like that word. Yes, it can be done through discipline. It can be done through training. It can be done where we are saying, okay, I tend toward that feeling. You can't have that feeling. If you're someone, for instance, who's always pessimistic, you can't be a Debbie Downer all the time with other people, right? You know that that's not the way that Christ has taught us. We need to be encouraging one another with our words. And so you train yourself, okay, I can't be that way. Maybe you're someone who's overly optimistic. You have to train yourself and say, okay, I have to rein that in sometimes. because I have to be realistic about the issues that are in front of me. And if you're someone who thinks that the trials that you face are bad and you're upset and you hate God, you hate the world, you have to control that. You have to say, okay, no, God, I ask forgiveness. This is not the way that I should be. You are not a slave to your emotions, not unless you allow yourself to be. You can control your emotions. And that includes in difficult circumstances. Now again, this is not our natural reaction. This is not our natural reaction, but through our Lord's help, we can do this. We can accomplish this. Our Lord has overcome the world. He can overcome our sinful hearts. we can think differently about our situation. I'm spending a little bit of extra time on this than I planned to, because I think this is an important point for us to get. When we are commanded here to consider it all joy, we are commanded to do something that is countercultural, to think differently, and to train ourself to have different emotions. That is possible. And it is possible as the sovereign hand of God is at work within us and through our various circumstances. And these circumstances may include various trials, or as the King James says, temptations, temptations. Christians will face these troubles. We are nowhere promised health and wealth. We're not gonna have a happy life all the time. There are woes that come upon us, woes perhaps from the devil who does want to tempt us. He wants to see us fall. But the Lord will sustain us through these instances with his sovereignty. And from our perspective, maybe we encounter these trials like we encounter puddles on the ground. We just are walking along the path and suddenly our socks are getting wet because we stepped into a puddle, right? Where did that come from? It's not necessarily something that we are responsible for. You might say, well, you could have watched a little bit better. But you can't always see everything that's coming at you. Sometimes we encounter trials. It is not necessarily something that is a result of our own sinfulness. There are a lot of issues in our life that do arise from our own sinfulness, and that's something to address as well. But when we're talking about various trials here, it is important for us to see that sometimes these are just things that we encounter that are not necessarily the result of our own sin, of our own poor judgment. It is something that Satan does. When Job was Facing what he faced, it was not his fault. I think we can all agree to that, right? It was not his fault. And yet a lot happened to him. He encountered trials, various trials, health trials, the death of his children, the loss of his business, all of that, including a nagging wife. Various trials he experienced. but the Lord sustained him through that. Even though he didn't always, he didn't do it perfectly, or Job didn't do it perfectly, the Lord sustained Job and Job kept the faith because the Lord helped him to keep it. So how do we respond to trials? Well, don't automatically think of trials as God's judgment against you. Don't automatically think that you've done something wrong, that Jesus must now hate you or something, and that's why you're going through what you're going through. Wow, God's really, really, God has it out for me now. That's the way the world thinks about these things. But we are to be informed by Scripture. But we see, okay, wait a minute. The Lord has something that he is working out in this situation for my benefit. Therefore, I'm actually commanded to have joy when I experience these kinds of trials. It's not that I'm looking forward to this. It's not that I want to go through this trial. It's like taking a test at school. I don't want to do that. But I suppose through the studying process, and hopefully it's a studying process and not just a cram session, through the studying process, I'm actually learning something because of those tests. It's forcing me to do something else that I don't want to study instead of playing video games or something like that. And so, yes, these trials do prepare us. They do teach us, and that is important. And James is showing us that, that we're not a slave to our emotions, that there is something that God is doing, and we should see this as God working. As R.C. Sproul said here, this is a call to understand suffering from the vantage point of confidence in God's sovereignty. This is a call to understand suffering from the vantage point of confidence in God's sovereignty. Wow. So we are to rethink this situation. God is working this out for some reason. This is something we have to embrace. God has a purpose behind the trials we go through. As to those purposes, well, that's where we turn next. Second, we will grow through trials. We will grow through trials. Looking at verse three, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And we don't often think of trials as being beneficial, as I said, but they are. They're not random. They serve a point in our lives. They test the genuineness of our faith. Now, we might be tempted in our own sinful flesh to think, okay, God's trying to see if I'm gonna fail, and he keeps giving me trial after trial after trial, because he really wants me to fail, and I didn't fail last time, so he wants to see me fail this time. Actually, you're failing in that moment to think properly about your trials. God is not trying to trip you up. In fact, later on, we read that God does not tempt people to sin. God does not tempt us to sin. So what kind of testing are we talking about here? Well, the original meaning of the word refers to proving something's worth, like perhaps a precious metal. You might even take that gold you You test its worth. Of course, you can bite it and do other things to see if it's real. And you can even refine it further by exposing it to fire. And through that process, through the smelting process, you can actually remove some of the dross and some of the impurities there and make it even more pure and make it worth even more. That's what God is doing with us. He is not trying to make us fail. Rather, he's proving us. That's a different perspective on it. He's actually making us better through the process. Our faith is being proven through difficulties. You know, Peter echoes this in 1 Peter. Let's go back over to 1 Peter for a moment. 1 Peter chapter 1 this time. 1 Peter chapter 1. In verse 7. Actually, let's start in verse 6. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So Peter there also compares the testing of our faith to the testing of gold. The idea there is not to make the gold fail some kind of test. It's to make it more pure. It's to improve it. And in fact, we even see there a truth that sometimes we ignore. Gold is not eternal. Gold is perishable. Gold is one of the Longer lasting precious metals out there, but it does eventually tarnish it does It can have corrosion on it And if you ever see some ancient gold coins that are dug up out the ground, you know what I'm talking about there now they can be recleaned and everything else but Gold is not eternal but our faith can be our faith can be And so it's important for God to test our faith right now, for God to put us through these kinds of trials to refine our faith. Dr. Greg Harris is a professor I had years ago, and he wrote a book called The Cup and the Glory, where he is talking about suffering and the glory of God. In fact, I think that's the subtitle of the book. But he says there on page 19 of the book, Suffering shines as a light into our souls and reveals what is hidden It deepens our trust in God Wow, that's not how we typically think of suffering of trials Revealing something about ourselves. Well, yeah, it does it reveals who we are and And it does deepen our trust in God. As we go through the trial, we're leaning upon Him where we start to see, okay, we don't need some of the other things that we thought we needed in life. Sometimes God wants to kick the crutches out from under us because we don't need them. We just need Him. This is something that we have to remind ourselves. In fact, the text here says that we have to know this. This is something that we should be knowing. See, there's a consideration in verse two. Now there's a knowing here. It's not that this is a command, but it is a state that we should be in. We should know this truth. We need to get it into our heads so that as we are approaching the trial, so that we are going through the testing of our faith, we know that it is there to produce endurance. And so this is something that we have to prepare ourselves for. Why? Because if you're not preparing yourself right now, if you're not in a trial and you're not preparing yourself, you're going to get into the trial and you're going to be surprised by it. and you're not gonna have the theology that you need for. You're not gonna be prepared for why God might be putting you through this. You might think, like I said earlier, God's mad at me. God must hate me. Maybe God's telling me I'm not really a Christian. You know, even with those kinds of thoughts, God is refining your faith, though. And so know this, that this is to produce endurance. If you can get over some of those thoughts in the first and second and third trials that you have as believers, and you get to the fourth and fifth and sixth trials as believers, you're like, no, God brings me through this every once in a while. I know that he'll bring me through these kinds of trials again. He's faithful. And suddenly you see that you are starting to grow. You're starting to grow in your faith. You're starting to have more trust in him. You're starting to believe him more. What good is this? We've already said that it leads to endurance. It produces endurance. The Legacy Standard Bible here says that it produces perseverance, or excuse me, it brings about perseverance. It brings about perseverance. Now, understand this is more than just surviving. This isn't where, oh, well, All I have to do is make it through here, and you just barely make it. This isn't just about surviving, right? This is about even thriving in the midst of hardship. This is being able to withstand and even produce spiritual fruit in the midst of this. Hebrews 6, 12 says this, that God doesn't want us to be sluggish, but he wants us to be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherited the promises. He wants us to become imitators of those who have demonstrated good faith. You say, well, who have demonstrated good faith? Well, we could, in the book of Hebrews, look to Hebrews 11, for instance, or we could look to someone even greater than that. That would be Jesus Christ. Let's get back to 1 Peter for a moment. There's a lot of parallels between what we're studying in James and 1 Peter, right? So 1 Peter 2 now, 1 Peter 2. I mean, you have James, you have Peter, but it's almost like even though these are two different men, there's the same author over both of them, inspiring them. Imagine that. Even though the Bible's written by a bunch of different people, it is one message from one God. And in 1 Peter 2, verse 21, we see there, for you have been called for this purpose since Christ also suffered for you. And watch this, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps. Now we know that Jesus died for our sins. Okay, first of all, and I don't want you guys to think that I'm denying that at all because It is important, it is essential for us to proclaim the truth about the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, the penal substitutionary atonement. But there are other theories of the atonement out there, and I think that they are weak in comparison to the penal substitutionary atonement, but that doesn't mean that there weren't secondary Issues that God was accomplishing in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ One of those is that he was an example to us That being an example that is not the sum total of his atonement But it is a secondary reason for the atonement He suffered for us as an example for us to understand that we should also suffer We should follow in his footsteps. Just as he persevered under suffering, we should also persevere under suffering. And we see that with all of the other saints of scripture, saints being believers. We see them also suffering under Christ and in Christ. They persevere because the Holy Spirit gives them that strength. And so this is an example where we should have endurance. We should have perseverance. We should move in this direction. I put endurance twice on that slide. The last word should be steadfastness. We should have a steadfastness there. That's what happens when I'm preparing things very quickly. There is so endurance perseverance steadfastness Now you say okay, that's what I should have how do I get those guess what the Lord actually works that out for you the Lord will give you trials and Then you begin to go through those trials and you will produce these things now I want you to be clear on that because one you do not secure your own salvation. You cannot persevere enough in your salvation to keep it secure. The saints will persevere. In fact, there is a doctrine known as the perseverance of the saints. Scripture teaches us this right here, and we will persevere. Why? And I just have a lot of references up here, so I just threw a paragraph up here. How do we know that we that we will remain until the end? Well, we are secured namely by the power of the Lord It is not by our own strength that we are secure. We are secure by the power of the Lord He has promised that he will keep us secure We read that in John 10 28 that he will keep us secure and he even prays that our faith will not fail He prays that our faith will not fail His very presence within us through the Holy Spirit keeps us secure until the day of redemption. And these are just a few references that we could throw up to show us that we will persevere to the end. You say, well, yes, but scripture calls us to overcome the world. That's right. And greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. Guess what? He has already overcome the world. And so we can persevere because of the strength that he gives us. You say, oh, okay, so why do we need to go through trials? Ah, that is the question. I'm glad you asked. Why do we need to go through trials? Because God is a God of means. And God sometimes uses means like trials to help us to grow so that we will persevere. We will persevere. but God will send us trials to help us to make it to the end. This is how he works. He uses trials as a means of getting us to persevere. And consider the growth that we experience through trials. Take a look at James 3 for a moment. As we grow in patience, we begin to, Embrace a heavenly wisdom we begin to display that in our lives James chapter 3 verses 13 through 18 says this Who among you is wise and understanding so we're talking about wisdom let him show By his good behavior let him show by his good behavior his deeds and the gentleness of wisdom but if You have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteous is sown in peace by those who make peace. Now what does that have to do? with what we're talking about this evening. Well, let's consider this for a moment. Let's say that you don't know how quite to control your aim. Maybe you strive against others. Then you meet someone who's calm and collective and they seem to encounter some issues that would make you mad. We say, wow, they're going through this, their car breaks down, someone cuts them off in traffic. Once they get their car fixed, they get into a car accident. It seems like this person is facing all of these issues. I would get mad. And yet that person is taking it all in stride. How does that person become like that? In fact, this person even has words of wisdom in the midst of this. Well, that person has gone through trials, and through trials has learned wisdom, has learned how to control himself, has learned to react differently to times of trial. If you are someone who's always looking for someone to blame every time something goes wrong in your life, then you have embraced worldly wisdom. If you're someone, like something goes wrong and you assume that everybody has it out for you, you have a worldly wisdom. In fact, it probably comes from a place of selfishness and jealousy, just as the text says. Because you believe that you deserve better and that you are owed comfort and your desires in this world. Nobody owes you anything. And maybe you wouldn't say it like that. You'd say, oh, yeah, I know. I know that no one owes me anything. Yeah, but you act like it. You're someone who hasn't matured yet. And how are you going to mature? How are you going to gain that wisdom so that you can react differently in the future? You need to go through the fire a little bit. Now that's not something you want, and that's not something that any of us really want, but if you're looking for change, you must allow this process in your lives. Because this is how God works. It's painful, yes, but so are growth spurts. When you're younger, and your bones are still growing longer, and your muscles are strengthening. I remember as a kid just laying in bed, just silently groaning. As I was going through growth spurts, it was painful, especially my legs. It just always felt like there was pressure. But that was important. And this is especially true if you add athletics on top of all of that. Right, because you're putting pressure upon yourself. You go to the gym, lift, what are you doing? You're adding resistance to your muscles, which then also adds resistance to your bones. And all of that has to thicken, and it's painful. There's a reason no one likes leg day, because you feel it for the next three days, it feels like. And once you finally get over it, oh great, it's leg day again, right? But it's important, especially if you want to see those gains, you have to go through some pain. Well, I'm explaining things in a worldly way to help you to see how the spiritual aspect of this works. You have to go through trials so that you can have spiritual gains. We have to allow this to happen if we want to grow. if we want to become more mature. And we see that with the last point here. Third, we will be mature because of trials. We will be mature because of trials. Look at verse four. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. The goal of endurance is spiritual maturity. That is the goal of endurance. We want to be mature, but we have to allow it to happen. We pray in the Lord's Prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Do we believe that? Do we really want that to be the case, thy will be done? Well, a little bit of my will be done too, right? No, thy will be done, and that includes trials sometimes. It's important to know this, and it's important to know that there is a perfecting that happens. Now, I want you to understand, when we talk about perfection here, we are not talking about like sinless perfection. There are some people who think that, right? That they've gotten to a point where they have achieved sinless perfection. We actually had someone tell us that. One of the inmates at the jail told us that once. He said, no, I don't sin. And we're looking at him wearing the jumpsuit there. You don't sin? Well, you know, this is man's law, but I don't break God's law. Really? And he had just gotten a hold of them. bad teaching like Joyce Meyer or someone who says you don't sin, and he just had taken that to himself. He was lying to himself. He was excusing his sin, right? He was saying, oh, I'm only breaking man's law, not God's law, things like that. So he's not maturing in his faith. He's actually becoming more immature in his faith, because he's learning how to excuse his sin and not see it as sin. What does 1 John say? If any man says he doesn't sin, he's a liar. John says it right out. He's a liar. And of course we know that's the case. So we're not talking about sinless perfection here. But as you become more mature, hopefully you'd start to sin less, especially in certain areas. but you're still going to sin from time to time because you have a sin nature that still dwells within you. It's not as though you're gonna go through a certain number of trials and then suddenly stop making mistakes, right? That would be nice. I just hit my 100th trial, so now I'm good. I'm good. That would be great, but unfortunately that is not the case. What is this referring to? Well, perfection has other meanings, and this refers to completeness or maturity. You know, once that seed of the oak tree hits the ground and it breaks open and it begins to grow. We see it go through its stages, the sapling, and then it grows and grows deeper roots and it starts to go through some hot and cold cycles and the leaves begin to expand out more, the branches start to expand out more, and we see a tree now. We see a full-grown tree. We say that is a mature tree. That tree's still gonna continue to change over time. It's still gonna grow in other ways. But we understand that there's a point in which, okay, now it's a mature tree. This is where we need to get to, where now we are mature Christians. And this is what God is working within us as we go through trials. Sometimes God will make us go through a period where we have to wait on something. Can you believe that we have to wait on something? There's a writer who talked about this. He said, life is composed of waiting periods. The child must wait until he is old enough to have a bicycle. The young man must wait until he is old enough to drive a car. The medical student must wait for his diploma. The husband for his promotion. The young couple for savings to buy a new home. The art of waiting is not learned at once. We have to go through it time after time after time. It seems like every time we have to wait for something, it's like we're back to square one. We got so excited when microwaves came out. Now we're upset that it takes us a minute to defrost something in the microwave. That would have taken us all day before. What are you talking about? We just let it sit out. But we have to learn how to wait. I used to tell people in the jail ministry that patience is forced upon them. They have to wait. There's nothing more than they can do than just sit and wait. They have to wait for their lawyer to finally return their call. They have to wait to hear from people on the outside to see how things are going. They have to wait to find out how their case is going. They have to wait. You know what, God's working something in that. And that's what I tell them. God's working something in you as well. You are having to go through something where you are having to wait because patience can bring about God's purposes in your life. God's going to teach you patience one way or the other. It used to be that joke. Don't ever pray for patience. But you know what? If you don't pray for it, God's going to give it to you one way or the other. You just don't know what he's doing all of a sudden. Why am I having to go through all this? Because God's trying to teach you. Sometimes we pray for relief from trials, but God says, no. I need you to go through this. I want you to go through this. That's what the Apostle Paul faced, right? Paul had, according to 2 Corinthians 12, seven through 10, a thorn in the flesh. It reminds us sometimes that God, God's answer to our prayers is to let us endure the trial, to let us go through what we're going through, to keep us humble and dependent upon him. Because through the suffering, he refines us and makes us more like Jesus Christ. This doesn't mean that we should never, I don't want you guys to misunderstand me. This doesn't mean that you should never try to get out of a trial. If you are in a tough spot, you should just endure it, grin and bear it. I'm not saying that you shouldn't pray to the Lord to get out of it. Maybe that was the only point of that trial was to get you to that point where you would actually pray about something. And you pray about it and the Lord provides a response. Now you are out of that trial. Yes, you can pray about that. And James reminds us later in chapter 4 verse 6 that the that God gives grace to the humble. And that the devil will flee from those who resist him. Verse 7 there. And so we can petition the Lord. He will answer it in one of many ways. He may. Remove a trial? He may not. But ultimately, we should be willing to pray as we have been taught to pray. Thy will be done. Thy will be done. The worldly wisdom teaches us to avoid all this. That's worldly wisdom. Heavenly wisdom teaches us to rejoice when trials come because God's got something that he's teaching us. It doesn't mean that you should put on a false piety. It doesn't mean that you need to throw a party. Hey, look, my dog's dying, let me put on a party. No, that's silly, that's foolish, it's nonsense. But you understand that God is working something through that process. Even through hurt, through heartache, as you are enduring something, that God is teaching you something in that. God's refining you, and in that you can rejoice. I don't like what I'm going through right now, but you seem content to have me in it. Thank you that you're keeping me secure through this trial. and thank you for whatever you're teaching me in this. You will come out stronger on the other side, I promise. You will come out mature on the other side. That is the result here. That is the result of all of this. He says here at the end of verse three, or excuse me, the end of verse four, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. He wants to make sure that you are full up of what you need, whatever you need to get to the end so that you will persevere. Another commentator notes this. I didn't add this one to the slides. That is the end result of trials, maturity, completeness, not lacking in anything of spiritual importance and value. If you want to be a mature Christian, you have to allow the Lord to take you through trials. You can't just avoid them. You have to allow it. And if you allow it, you'll find that you have a loving father who is taking you through some steps that you need to go through, a training regimen that you need in your life. So as we wrap this up, yes, we don't like trials. Of course, we don't like them, especially when we're in the midst of them, but We should be dealing with them with heavenly wisdom. That calls us to three different applications here. The first is meditation. Consider trials as opportunities for joy, not despair. Consider trials as opportunities for joy, not for despair. So meditate on it. The second is conviction, conviction. Know that trials produce endurance, shaping us into Christ-like maturity. That is a conviction you have to bring into a trial. If you're gonna make it through, you have to have that conviction brought with you. Know that this trial will produce endurance within you, shaping you into Christ-like maturity. And number three, expectation. Look forward to the spiritual growth that comes as God refines us through suffering. God is making me into something. I don't know what it is yet, because I'm still in the process. But the Lord knows, and I know the Lord has only good for those who love and trust him. We should trust God's purposes and trials. And when we do, we are strengthened, we are refined, we are matured. As Romans chapter five verses three through five reminds us, we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope. These are all pathways to becoming what God has intended for us, to become mature, complete, and lacking in nothing. So let's embrace the trials that we have in our lives with joy, as counterintuitive as that seems, it should now at least seem more intuitive to you. Embrace these trials with joy, knowing that God is at work in your lives, even through the hardest circumstances that you face, to grow you into the image of Jesus Christ.