Trial Response - James 1:2-4


You ever had one of those days?  You know, a Monday?  You get out of bed and make your way into the bathroom, stumping your toes on the leg of the footboard on the way.  Reaching for your toothbrush holder, you misjudge and bump it instead of picking it up, causing your toothbrush to fall out.  The toothbrush bounces off the side of the sink and into the toilet because you left the lid open.  The smoke alarm goes off thanks to the smoldering toast your forgot about because you were changing clothes because you were unaware of the hairline crack in your favorite coffee mug until your first sip left a streak down your white dress shirt.  As you head out the door to work, you remember you forgot to get gas the night before, so you are figuring a quick stop to get enough gas to get you to work and back, and as you unlock the door you notice the rear tire on your side is flat, and you can see the screw sticking out the edge between the bottom and sidewall of the tire.  After enduring an unforgiving lecture from your boss for arriving at work fifteen minutes late, you begin printing out the report for your lunchtime meeting, only to have the copier jam every fifth page as you print out 20 copies of your 15 page report.  After watching the rain fall for the last two hours and wondering if it will stop before you get off work, you remember you never closed where you vented the sunroof when you went across town for that lunch meeting.  On the way home, sitting in your water laden driver’s seat with the dampness soaking into your clothes, you get a text reminding you that you are supposed to stop on the way home for dinner with your future in-laws, begging you not to be late.  The battery on your phone dying before you can call and explain your situation.  As you crawl into bed that night, you are never so glad to lay your head down at the end of a day that would make “Murphy’s Law” look like an optimistic statement.
The description of that day may be a little over the top.  However, we have all, at some point in our lives, had those days where it seemed like if anything could go wrong, it did.  I’m not sure how we came to associate those kind of days with “Mondays,” unless that it was because it came out of a day and time when most work weeks were Monday to Friday and workers had just finished a relaxing weekend of family and worship time.
How do we usually respond to those “Mondays”?  Some of us dread them.  Some of us become depressed when we know they are coming or encounter them.  Some of us respond like Garfield and others in the comic strip with, “I hate Mondays.”  Some of us do anything we can to avoid them.
The question is, “How does God’s Word suggest we are to deal with Mondays?”  The Letter of James gives us an answer.  No, James doesn’t say, “When you face Mondays….”  In fact neither Monday nor any of the other days of the week as we call them ever appear in the Scriptures.  However, if Monday represents the day when we imagine anything going wrong, if Monday represents of day of trials and troubles that weigh us down, then we find that James does address it. 
The truth of the matter is that James says a whole lot to us about trials in just these three verses.
First, like Mondays, trials are going to come.  They are not something we can avoid or ignore.  We cannot pull a Garfield and pull the cover over our heads and pretend that Monday is not happening.  James says, “whenever you face trials.”  They are going to happen.  Somewhere along the line Christians have gotten the idea that because we have a relationship with Christ we are not going to have to endure trials and tribulations, that somehow God is going to protect us from having to face them or is going to sweep us away from here before we encounter any true troubles.  God’s Word makes it clear that is not the case.  Jesus says, “In the world you face persecution.”[i]  He also says, “…they will arrest you and persecute you…You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death.”[ii]  Paul says:
Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.[iii]
If what Paul encountered was escaping trial and tribulations, I don’t want to know what trials and tribulations look like.
Secondly, James knows it is a given that we will face trials and tribulations so he tries to tell us how we are to respond to them.  James says our trial response should “Joy.”
James says, “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy….”  James tells us we are not supposed to face our trials with anger, hatred, avoidance, dread, or depression, we are supposed to respond with joy.
Joy.  Joy?  Joy.  We are supposed to respond to the trials we face with joy
James says that we are to respond with joy to any type of trial we face…whether it be a trials of persecution or hardship, trials of sickness, trials of temptation, trials of poverty, trials of any sort.
Why?  Because James understands our trials to be a means of testing our faith, and James understands that when our faith is tested, the endurance of our faith increases.  In this way James is echoing Paul’s words to the church in Rome: “we…boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappointment us.”[iv]
James and Paul both know that the more we endure, the stronger we get.  We can see that in so many ways. 
As I am working on this sermon, Joshua is playing a racing video game.  He battles his way to third.  Rather than give up because he didn’t finish first, he plays again and again, eventually finishing second, and then he continues to race that same race, building up skills to tackle that track, until he comes out on top.
A friend and colleague of mine, Adam Seate at St. Luke in Goldsboro,  is preparing to run in the New York Marathon.  He prepares his body for that endurance run.  He doesn’t do it by running a mile and then quitting.  He doesn’t do it by stopping before he starts hurting.  He doesn’t do it by avoiding running altogether because he knows the soreness will come.  He spends weeks and months preparing.  Pushing his body to the limits.  As he puts his body through repeated trials, he builds up endurance, enabling him to tackle the full 26.2 miles in less than a month.
Think of battling an illness.  When we battle a particular illness, our bodies produce antibodies to fight off that illness.  Once we are well, samples of those antibodies remain in our system to fight off that particular strain of sickness were we to encounter it again.
Consider an addict—whether it be drugs, tobacco, alcohol, eating, shopping—each day we face the temptation to give in.  When we face that temptation head on, fight through the temptation, and find ourselves, one day at a time, coming out clean, we realize God has given us the strength to get through one more day, and He will be there to give us strength for the next.
James, and Paul, tell us as we encounter the trials of life, whether it be troubles with our health, troubles with our jobs, troubles in our families, whether we face temptations to give in to sin, or whether we are persecuted for what we believe with folks making fun of us or ridiculing us for what we believe or we have our lives or livelihood threatened for our faith, when we come out on the other side of the situation and find God’s faithfulness has given us the strength to endure or overcome, our faith is strengthened, our hope is built up, and we come out stronger.
Mondays will come.  We will survive.  We will lay our head down at night.  That way when the next Monday comes around, rather than pull the cover over our heads, we can smile and say “bring it on,” because we know God will give us the strength to endure it,  maturing our faith, as we walk closer with Christ, realizing that He always walks close to us.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…Amen.




[i] John 16:33
[ii] Luke 21:12-16
[iii] 2nd Corinthians 11:24-28
[iv] Romans 5:3-5

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