What are your exact thoughts as you read this verse?
Mine include disbelief and despair; disbelief that this kind of attitude is possible, and despair that I fall so short of the standard. I desire to face my trials with an attitude of pure joy, but mostly I’m just trying to “get through.”
This verse cuts through our self-deceptions and exposes the gaps in our faith. It brings us to confession: “Lord, forgive me for seeking my own way out of trials – for trying to close the gaps by myself; I always fall short. Show me how you desire to close the gaps in my faith and life.”
3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
My wife and I spend a lot of time teaching our daughter to persevere. She doesn’t like it, but she is learning to grasp the freedom that perseverance brings. When we cut short the lessons, she misses opportunities to grow in maturity and completeness. The gap remains.
God loves you and me so much more than we love our own children. His fatherly desire is to move us into maturity and wholeness, so that we do not lack any good thing. He leads us through trials because he wants to give us more of himself, not less.
God is a giver. He demonstrated that in sending Jesus the Christ to be our righteousness – to forever close the gap of eternity of between us and the Father. We face our trials with fear and despair because our fundamental perception of God is flawed. We view trials as God’s way of punishing us because he’s angry with us, but James faced trials with joy because he saw them as God-given opportunities to make us more complete in God’s love and grace - to make us whole.
As we move through our trials, we preach to ourselves, and the God of love moves us deeper into pure joy: “Lord, my perception of you is as a taker, not a giver. I have heard of your great love for me, but in practice I take my trials as signs of your displeasure with me – not as signs of your desire to give me more of yourself and to make me whole. Teach me to receive your work in my life with joy. Teach me to receive you as a good father. Drive out the fear in my life with your perfect love.”
In the Father’s love,
Jonathan
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