Consider it all Joy

James 1:2-4

August 5, 2007

James 1:2-4 "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.”

Trials are coming, are you prepared?

What are 3 spiritual guardrails that prepare you for trials?

A birth announcement

Trials are to be Expected Continually 

Do trials still come to Christians?

What is the difference between a trial and a temptation?

Duck hunting and the prevalence of Christian trials

Consider it All Joy

Are we to smile through the trial?

Where is the joy in a painful trial? (Hebrews 12:11)

Why do you let a doctor hurt you?

If trials are good for you, should we seek them?

Trials are to be Embraced Completely

Are we to lessen the impact of the trial, or pray for it to leave?

Trials reveal and strengthen true faith

Trials are to Produce Maturity

Applications

Be prepared for trials, they come suddenly.

Don't run from the test when it comes; stand firm with steadfast endurance.

Know that trials are opportunities to show and to grow your faith.

Rules About Contentment

All our disquiets issue immediately from unbelief. It is this that raises the storm of discontent in the heart. Oh, set faith to work! It is the property of faith to silence our doubts, to scatter our fears, to still the heart when the passions are up. Faith works the heart to a sweet, serene composure. It is not having food and raiment, but having faith which will make us content. Faith chides down passion. When reason begins to sink, let faith swim.

QUESTION: How does faith work contentment?

ANSWER: Faith shows the soul that whatever its trials are, yet it is from the hand of a Father. It is indeed a bitter cup, but “shall I not drink the cup which My Father hath given Me to drink?” It is in love for my soul, faith shows me, that God corrects with the same love with which He crowns me. God is now training me for heaven. He carves me to make me a polished shaft. These sufferings bring forth patience, humility, even “the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11); and if God can bring such sweet fruit out of a sour stock, let Him graft me where he pleases. Thus faith brings the heart to holy contentment.

Faith sucks the honey of contentment out of the hive of the promise. Christ is the vine; the promises are the clusters of grapes that grow upon this vine; and faith presses the sweet vine of contentment out of these spiritual clusters of the promises. I will show you but one cluster: “The Lord will give grace and glory” (Psalm 84:11). Here is enough faith to live upon. The promise is the quintessence of divine contentment. In a word, faith carries the soul up and makes it aspire after more noble and generous delights than earth affords, and to live in the world above the world. Would you lead contented lives? Live up to the height of your faith.