“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.” James 1:2&3 NIV
Whenever my family was going through a hard time, my dad loved to quote James 1:2&3. As a kid, I found this highly irritating and sometimes maddening. How could there be any joy in a friend turning on you, a nasty church split, being sickly, being tired all the time, having an emergency bone scan because you might have a tumor, or facing the loss of your three year old sister.
When these things happened and my dad quoted the verse I wanted to scream. How could there be anything in this pain, fear, and heartache to be happy about? And there was my problem. Like many other people I confused joy and rejoicing with a happy feeling. I wasn’t until the recent few years that I truly came to understand what joy really was.
Joy is not a happy feeling, and rejoicing does not always stem from feeling great about life. Joy is knowing that good will triumph in the end, a sense that I am going through this hard time for a purpose. Rejoicing and praising God out of my pain and brokenness, knowing that his master plan is at work.
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ; We will all suffer in different ways and to different degrees. You may live with unbelieving parents and/or siblings, you may have a co-worker that makes your job miserable, you may have a friend who deserted you in a time of need, you may be dealing with the loss of a loved one, or your life may feel like it is not worth living but there is joy to be found.
Every challenge I face now, I can now quote with my dad the verse from James, because I know that there is a reason and purpose.
”In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold…may be proved genuine and may result in praise… Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy…” 1 Peter 1:6-8 NIV (selected sections)
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5 comments:
Beautifully candid post, Sarah. It's reality of your heart's journey is very encouraging. Thank you for sharing your heart with us.
I'm slowly learning this lesson. It's not a fun one to learn, but oh so important. Great post, Sar :)
Very good post, Sarah. This issue is harder to talk about than some of the others we've written about in the past - but I think it's a wonderful thing. I hope some of our blog readers are blessed and ministered to through this topic! :)
Thank you for this post! Very encouraging to me! Was a blessing to read... Something I needed to hear and be reminded of today! :)
In Christ,
Karissa││Romans 12 <3
Thank you, Sarah, for being brave enough to be truthful and yet somewhow uplifting as well. It is a joy to read your writing!
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