Joy from pain

Jas 1:1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.
Jas 1:2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations

Joy.

Counting it joy when we fall into different temptations is not easy.

What is the purpose of being tested? When a person is tested they are given a chance to reveal their knowledge. The harder the test the more knowledge you are expected to have, yes? Is this at all appropriate to this verse? Well if we think about it we are being perfected aren't we? The trials and temptations we face are given to us so that our faith is tested. It's not that we will succeed through every trail we face but we MUST learn from the trials we are given so that if we face a similar trial we will not be overcome by it. We are gaining faith, we are gaining understanding, we are gaining knowledge through every single trial we face. When we fall in to different temptations our faith is being tried, we are face to face with difficulties and we are being tried in fire as gold is tried in fire to perfect it.

We cannot hope to escape trials and tribulations. Trial and temptations of ALL different sorts will come to us, this we have to expect and not just occasionally but often. In fact a lot of times we are barely through one temptation when another will rear up and we are brought face to face with something equally or worse than before. We are being worked! We are being molded! We are being fashioned and we are told as we come to these temptations we are to COUNT IT ALL JOY.


Count it joy. Not count it acceptable. Not count it okay. Not count it painful, depressing, sad, anger-filled, anxiety ridden. We are so used to falling victim to wallowing in the disappointment and pain of the horrible trials we face that we can't imagine truly counting our troubles joy.


There is a huge lesson here that we need to study so that we can count our difficulties joy and not pain.

I'm so tempted to say it's impossible, but it's not. I'm so tempted to say that it's ludicrous to believe that something painful and trying should be counted joy. My Bible tells me that it's not impossible. My Bible tells me that it is not ludicrous. I have to believe, I have to have faith in the word of God. I have to learn from the word of God.

We generally can't plan for temptations, for situations, for trials that come our way. We don't want to plan for the, do we? Who wants to anticipate sickness, pain, despair? How can we plan for the unknown? A lot of people plan for "rainy days', they make financial decisions that will provide for those under their care should something happen. People make contingency plans for situations should things go wrong. They get insurance on cars, houses, valuables just on the off hand chance something will happen, something bad.

So, if we are so incredibly focused on planning for bad situations, why can't we take the time to plan for trials and temptations that we know we are prone to facing? We can't ignore the fact that often Satan goes after us in our known weaknesses. We aren't shocked as a general rule, when a trail comes at us over something we have difficulty with. We might be fed up with ourselves for falling victim time and time again, but we aren't shocked. We aren't however calling it joy when we face these known temptations, are we? We lean towards despair not happiness.

We know that there will be plenty awful situations that come at us completely unexpectedly and throw us for a loop- plenty of them. We know that the shock of those sorts of situations will rip joy from us in a heartbeat, even though we are still to count them joy. We need to fill our minds with the knowledge that it is what God's wants from us- to call it joy when we face trials and temptations. We have to - all by the grace of God- understand that the next time a temptation comes at us we should TRY to count it joy! Seriously, we have to do this, we are told to do this and we need to begin to do this if we haven't done it yet.

Joy.

Out of that joy we should give thanks and praise to God for what we are going through. We need to be aware of the joy. It's so contradictory to us isn't it? Just the mere thought of facing a trial and being joyful sounds very, very odd.

Why do you suppose we are to be joyful in facing different temptations? What does the joy mean? It's not to make us appear insane to others is it? No. The joy is what then?

The joy comes from realizing we ARE being tried, we are being PERFECTED by God! We are HIS! We are under HIS love, His law, His grace, His mercy! This brings us the joy. We don't find the joy in ourselves but IN HIM, wholly in HIM. He is WORKING IN US! This knowledge needs to bring us joy! We aren't to be happy that we are so far from perfection, we are to be happy in knowing we are being perfected. Only that knowledge will bring us true joy.

More on this tomorrow by the grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!



Amen.