Day 3 - James 1:3

Today we look at James 1:3. Here's the text from both translations.

The Message

You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors.

New American Standard

knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 

I said in a previous post that the book of James is all about the testing of your faith. Faith according to Hebrews 11:1 is defined like this - "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for, and assurance about what we do not see". 

Think about that for a minute.  So to love an unseen God and have confidence that what we're reading in the Bible is true, is faith.  So James wants to see  whether you really love God and have "faith" with a series of tests. There is the test of blame in temptation, which we'll look at later on in chapter 1.

And then there's the test of how we respond to the Word. 

Then there's the test of an impartial love to others, the test of righteous works, the test of the tongue, the test of humble wisdom, the test of worldly indulgence, the test of dependence, the test of patience, the test of truthfulness and finally the test of prayerfulness. Now all of those are tests which a person who truly loves God will pass.

But the beginning test, and what we're looking at in these verses, is the test of endurance through trials. It reveals whether love is really a strong bond, whether it is genuine faith. True faith sustained by true love perseveres in this test.  What happens when a trial comes into your life? How do you respond? If you bail in the middle of the trial and sort of curse God or walk away from God or deny God or ignore God, then that is probably showing your faith may be a bit lacking, don't you think?

Hopefully if you've given your life to Christ, I mean really given it up, then see what happens the next time a trial comes into your life.  Our human reaction will take over first, at least it does for me, then hopefully your faith will kick in and take over and you'll know that God is doing that pruning we talked about previously. So here's the tough part, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when trials will hit. What will your attitude be? What James is saying in these verses is your attitude is to be an attitude of joy because you anticipate what perfecting work the Lord will do through that trial. You learn then to cultivate that right attitude. 

Much easier said than done when you're in the midst of the storm. Let me go to one other verse for today that will give you some comfort- 1 Corinthians 10:13 - No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and  God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.
If you're a new Christian and new in the faith as we've described, God is not going to give you more than you can handle. As you mature in the Christian faith he knows you can handle more and more. Remember the vine. If the first year you plant a grape vine you trim it all the way back down to the root, chances are the next year you're only going to have a plant that maybe grows back to what it was before you pruned it. But if you only prune a small amount from the branches that are showing, those branches will probably double in size the next year.  See the parallel? God will only prune enough to make us stronger in Him and our faith.