Not only did we not know that it would be apropos to be going
through James chapter one over the next seven weeks when we set
up this series, we also didn't know we would be changing to do
1 service and I get to be the first one to do this now.
Thank you. If if you're used to preaching
when you preach 2 services and now you go to 1 service.
Let me describe for you a little bit what that's like.
Those of us who maybe have some familiarity with the game golf
are refer happen to be familiar with the term Mulligan.
For those of you who don't know, a Mulligan is when a golfer
comes up at a new hole, puts the ball down and gives it their
very best swing. And they look off in the
distance and they don't see the little white ball going away.
And then they look down. It's still on the tee.
And they look to their friends and say, can I have them all
again? A do over.
I don't get a do over. What happens just happens.
All right, So we're going to be taking a look, as Pastor Daniel
mentioned at James chapter 1, specifically verses 2:00 to 4:00
this morning. So I invite you to go there in
your Bibles, whether you're using your phone app or whether
you have a printed copy of God's Word.
We're going to call this message growing pains.
All right, James chapter 1, verses 2 to 4.
Let me tell you a story, true story in my own life, and it's
one of those times that I didn't really like James Chapter 1
verses 2 to 4. OK.
I was 3/4 of my way through my first year of teaching junior
highers at Heritage Christian School and it had been really
rough, very difficult. I got called in to my boss's
office, very dear friend of mine, his name is Ken, for a
private meeting. Ken told me.
Vance, we have had numerous complaints about you from
parents and also from some of your students.
Now, to be honest, that did not surprise me.
But then he said we're going to need to do 2 things.
First, for the last quarter of this school year, I am going to
take over teaching some of your classes so you can concentrate
on the others. Second, we're going to put you
on a teacher improvement plan beginning next year.
If you do not improve greatly by mid year, we're going to have to
let you go. I was crushed.
I honestly don't remember how I got out of that office and went
back to my classroom. I could lose my job.
I had just graduated from my seminary four years earlier with
highest honors, and now four years later I was in danger of
losing my third job trying to serve the Lord.
Now imagine some well-intentioned Christian see
me stumbling out of Ken's office, had quoted to me
immediately these verses. Consider it a great joy, my
brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials,
because you know that the testing of your faith produces
endurance, and let endurance have its full effect so that you
may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
Seriously, my world is caving in again.
I'm staring down another failure.
I may not be able to support my wife or my young son.
We may lose our house because I seem to keep screwing up.
And you're going to give me something from the Bible that
doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Now reality check. Something doesn't have to make
sense to us to be true. The Bible, God's revelation to
us, provides solid truth. Now the reason why I wanted to
share that story from my own life is this.
Some of us in this room have gone through something.
Maybe you're in the middle of something that's very much like
what I experienced. You're in a situation exactly.
Maybe the circumstances are probably different, but your
situation overall is exactly what I described.
You feel totally overwhelmed in a crisis, not knowing what to
do, and you can't even make sense of why such a terrible
thing is happening now. For all of us, this little
paragraph of three verses is a lifeline.
It's a solid path to get our feet on moving solid ground when
we're struggling. Our main point is simply this.
Our pains can be a huge game. Now I emphasize that word can
all right whether they are or not, whether the trials and
troubles that we are in the midst of, whether we really do
experience it as a gain in our life, it's not up to God, it's
up to us. It's a potential possibility.
We can make a huge gain from our pains that God is taking us
through if we make 2 choices. That's what James is telling us
in these verses. The first choice.
It's in verse 2. Choose a radical new attitude.
Let's look at it again. James 2 chapter one, verse 2.
Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever
you experience various trials. Keyword there is consider.
It has to do with attitude. I like what a preacher by the
name of Chuck Swindoll said about attitude.
So I'd I'd like to read this statement.
For us, attitude is more important than our past, than
education, than money, than circumstances, than failures,
than successes, than what people say or do.
We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play
on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.
I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, a 90% how I
react to it. And so it is with you.
We are in charge of our attitudes.
So James tells us consider it a great joy in the English
standard translation that says count it all joy, Same idea.
Basically, what he's telling us to do is we make a decision, we
make a decision, we make a choice, and we stick to that
choice. Consider it a great choice
whenever you experience various trials.
What does he mean by that? It means that we're walking
along through life, just doing whatever we're doing and
suddenly out of left field, boom, we're hit with a trial,
we're hit with a problem, we're in trouble.
It's the same word translated here whenever that when Jesus
told his parable about the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke,
and he starts off the parable with this man who is travelling
and minding his own business, walking down this road to the
city of Jericho, and he gets mugged.
He gets mugged, he gets beaten up.
He wasn't looking for trouble. Trouble found him.
That's how it works, doesn't it? We cannot avoid hard things.
Or we can take some precautions to avoid some of it, but there's
other things. They just happen.
They seem to come out of nowhere.
That's why, we're told in the book of Job, man is born to
trouble as the surely as the sparks fly upward.
Consider it a great joy, my friends, whenever you experience
various trials. Trials come in all kinds of
shapes and sizes. For some of us, it's our health.
Maybe we're struggling with an ongoing problem.
We can't get seem to get the handle of it.
For some of it, it may be family issues.
You know, you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your
family. Amen.
For some of it, it may be a failures like what I described
earlier. Maybe it's job troubles, maybe
it's money struggles. Maybe it's an addiction that we
can't lick and we're struggling. When James says various trials,
those trials can either be as we know what's going on up here are
in their thoughts. We're really, really good at
beating ourselves up up here. So the trial can be what's going
on in terms of our thinking or the trial can be going on in
what's happening in the world around us, what we're
experiencing, what may be a friend of ours, our family
member is experiencing. All of that is trials.
And by the way, what's a trial for one person is not
necessarily a trial for another, right?
You know, since my 20s, I have struggled with my weight,
sometimes doing better, sometimes not doing so good.
But I have some people that I know that they're slim and they
say I can eat whatever I want. I don't like them.
And you know when those of you who have come over, when we have
greet the team over here in that little area, you know about the
brownies, right? That's not helping me.
The bottom line is this, when trouble comes, and it will, we
can choose how we respond. We can choose our attitude.
Now let me give you 2 examples of this.
OK, first example, it's right out of the Bible.
In the book of Acts chapter 16, Paul and his companions arrive
at a little city called Philippi and they're preaching the gospel
and God is blessing their preaching.
And then to help a slave girl, Paul cast a demon out of her and
the slave girls owners got mad. They dragged Paul and his friend
Silas up before the local authorities tell a false story.
Paul gets beaten up. His friend Silas gets beaten up.
They get thrown in jail. Not only just any old jail,
they're in the inner part of the jail, locked up in stocks.
You know, we've seen pictures of people like this.
OK, That's how they are. And then that night, they're
singing. They're singing praise songs.
They're singing hymns. Yeah, their back is aching and
their wrists and their ankles are chafed.
They chose a different attitude. And then as they're giving this
concert and everybody else is listening in, boy, I hope they
could sing good. But it doesn't really matter.
God brings an earthquake. All the prison doors fly open.
The jailer is ready to kill himself.
Paul yells at him, don't do it, we're all here.
The jailer comes in and asks Paul and Silas this, sirs, what
must I do to be saved? Paul and Silas had a different
attitude. Let me give you an example.
More recent, lot of us know about Thomas Edison.
We can be thankful for him. He invented the light bulb.
If it wasn't for him, we'd all be in the dark right now.
He also invented batteries. He also invented film cameras.
But when Mr. Edison was about 60-7 years old, he had this big
factory laboratory area with lots and lots of buildings, and
the thing caught fire. Over half of everything he had
there was burned up. And in the middle of the fire,
in the middle of the night, Edison's walking around, he sees
his son. He comes up to him and says, get
your mother and all her friends. They'll never see a fire like
this again. After they finally put the fire
out, Edison sat down in his chair at his desk and said,
well, we just got rid of a bunch of rubbish, let's start again.
Our pain, our pains can be a huge gain if we choose a radical
new attitude. The second choice we have to
make is that we focus on the future.
Look at verses 3 and 4. Because you know that the
testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have
its full effect so that you may be complete mature and complete,
lacking nothing. OK, just like verse 2, we kind
of focused on that word consider or count.
This time focus on the word no. You see, the consider thing was
a one time firm decision. This is not that.
No is something we have to keep reminding ourselves of over and
over and over again. OK, it's a present tense.
We keep this knowledge and insight constantly before us.
Our Lord definitely has a goal in mind why we're going through
whatever we're doing. It's an absolute certain future
that He's working to bring about.
Keep our eyes on His prize. Now this is kind of where some
people think about this particular verse in the Bible
and it's helpful. It's Romans 828.
It says there we know. Notice again, no, it's a choice
to know and keep knowing. We know that all things work
together for the good of those who love God and are called
according to His purpose. Now please understand what that
verse is saying and what it's not saying, OK?
It's saying it's not saying that all things are necessarily good.
When you go to the doctor and the doctor says you have cancer,
that's not good. OK?
But that never stops the Lord from turning everything that
we're going through into something that is ultimately
good for us. You understand the distinction.
So let me return to that opening story I shared with you.
I might lose my job unless I change.
Become a better teacher. That summer I worked my tail
off. I had a dear friend, Mike
Bowles, gifted teacher. I went to him for advice.
I read books on teaching. I studied.
When that second year started, I gave those kids both barrels.
Mid year I saw a card. In my little teacher box at
Heritage, it was from Shelly, our principal, and I kept that
card for years. She had written You have
improved more than any other teacher on staff.
The bad stuff Jesus used for my ultimate good.
OK, so we know there's going to be tests.
That's part of the process. Tests can often refer to the
idea of refining. You know, imagine in a mine
someplace, they bring out this big hunk of rock, and maybe this
happens to be a gold mine. All right?
And maybe we see little flakes, little traces, little lines of
gold in there. But we have a whole lot of rock.
What do we do? We take the rock.
We heat it up, we heat it up and heat it up until it melts, and
then all of the impurities, because gold happens to be a
very heavy metal. The gold sinks down, the
impurities rise to the surface, and then the metalsmith people
there scraping off the impurities until finally nothing
is left but the gold. And in the ancient world, they
knew they had gotten rid of the impurities when the metal Smith
could look down at the molten goal and he or she could see
their reflection. That's what the Lord is doing to
us. He's putting us through the heat
of testing so that we become people He can bless and use for
His glory. Now the apostle Paul knew this
in one of the most painful letters, if not the most painful
he ever wrote. At one point he says this.
Therefore, we do not give up. Even though our outer person is
being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by
day for our momentary light. Affliction is producing in US an
absolute, incomparable, eternal weight of glory.
So we do not focus on what is seen, but what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Notice what he's concentrating on.
He's not focused on the tests, and they were hard.
They were really hard. That's not his focus.
He's focused on the end result, the test.
He calls those light momentary troubles.
Why? Because in comparison, he could
see what God was bringing about in his life and eternal weight
of glory. By the way, glory can also be
translated honor. You know what every Christian
should want to hear from the Lord when they finish this life
and they're standing before Jesus.
We should all want to hear Jesus say this.
Well done, good and faithful servant.
Think what that means, to be honoured by the Lord himself.
That's called finishing well. And sadly, a lot of Christians
never get there, partly because they're focused on the test.
They're not seeing the process, they're not seeing the future.
Daniel mentioned his struggles. It's the same for me.
It's the same for all of our leaders.
It's been a hard season, but I can tell you this in the midst,
even though at times, yeah, I, as I've told people I wanted to
run for the door, I was looking for it.
The Lord has repeatedly strengthened and blessed me.
You know, I have a dear friend from my day's teaching at Nueva
High School. And Sergio, my friend, whenever
we were going through a hard time, he'd say, you know, Vance,
he never called me Vance. He always called me Mr. Furtado.
But whatever. God never gives us more than we
can handle. I would nod my head and then I
thought, years later, Sergio, I know you meant well, but that's
not really true. God often gives us more than we
can handle. Why?
To teach us to handle it with him.
What's the purpose of God's test?
Why does He take us through some of the things that He takes us
through? Well, verse 4 in this little
passage tells us there's 2 results that God is aiming for
as a result of the test. The 1st result is where it says
let endurance have its full effect.
English standard version says steadfastness.
Jesus doesn't want us to be wussified, Wimpy pushovers.
Those are the kind of people that usually give up.
Rather, he wants stubborn, determined disciples who will
not quit. Now have a picture of 2 trees.
Hope the guy Yeah good, the guys were able to get it up OK.
The tree that's over on the left, at least that they call it
a tree. That's a bonsai tree.
Linda and I were over at Morro Bay celebrating our anniversary
part of this last week and, you know, went to a place, saw some
bonsai trees. They're, you know, like this,
OK, It's a shrub, but they call it a tree, OK?
But they're cute, you know, people trim them and stuff like
that and do whatever. God doesn't want us to be bonsai
trees. You sit on a bonsai tree, you
have a dead bonsai tree. OK, that's it.
It's all over. God doesn't want that.
He takes us through trials and tests.
He's not after bonsai trees. He's after the tree on the other
side. That's a white oak.
White oaks have some of the toughest, heaviest, strongest
wood of any tree in North America.
When they built those old sailing ships of the US Navy,
they built them out of white oak.
And like the ship USS Constitution that's still in
Boston Harbor, the British said, hey, we're shooting cannonballs
at this thing and they're just bouncing off because the size of
the ship were two feet thick white oak.
They live for over 500 years. They can grow hundreds of feet
tall. That's what God the Lord wants
to turn us into, endurance. 2nd result is that we will become
mature and complete, lacking nothing.
What exactly does that mean? Jesus used the same words in his
Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 verse 48.
Be perfect therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Let me tell you something that does not happen until we stand
before Jesus. But in the meantime, what's
happening as we grow in our walks with the Lord is this.
Each and every person in this world was created, Scripture
says, in the image of God. Now sadly, when sin entered our
world, that image was defaced, but it was not erased.
And when we become a Christian and we begin to grow and we
learn and love the Lord, and we learn to love one another and
we're growing in holiness, God is changing our character.
Bit by bit that image of God begins to re emerge.
It will be fully restored when our sin nature is eradicated and
we are standing before Jesus for all eternity.
That's why we're told this in John first John chapter 3.
We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will
see Him as He is. That's the future we need to
focus on. In the meantime, we go through
the test, We go through the trials.
God is making us stronger and stronger as we rely and walk
with Him. But that's the goal, and the
Lord won't be finished with maturing us until He returns.
That's why we're told this in Philippians 16.
I'm sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will
carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
And by the way, since we're all works in progress, none of us
have arrived yet. What God wants to do in our
lives, we need to cut each other a little slack.
Don't you think so? By the way, if somebody sat in
your spot, somebody took the treat you wanted, cut each
other's slack. We're all growing second choice.
Focus on the future. Now.
In conclusion, again, our main point is simply this.
Our pains can be a huge gain. Now, maybe you're here and
you're not a Christian. Maybe a friend invited you.
Maybe you just wanted to come on your own and check us out.
And by the way, we're all glad you're here.
But let me ask you something, OK?
Have you ever noticed that Christians, they respond
differently when they're going through trouble?
Never wondered why? Why are they weird?
I mean, they hurt like everybody else, they bleed like everybody
else. But why are they different?
There's two things that makes a Christian different #1 they have
a relationship with someone, Jesus, who loved them so much he
died to save them #2 the Christian knows who's in charge
and where they're going. They don't know the details.
They don't need to know the details.
They're trusting the Savior and Lord who laid down his life for
them. Now non Christian skeptic, you
don't have any of that. You do not have a relationship
with the Almighty God who created you, who loves you, who
wants to have a relationship with you.
You do not have that because you have not asked for it.
And secondly, when you're going through hard times and
difficulties like we all do, you don't have somebody to walk with
you. But you can.
Starting today, you can have what every Christian in this
room has. If you want a relationship, a
loving relationship with God right now through Jesus, the
very Son of God. I'm going to invite you to pray
with me. And by the way, I'd like just so
that we don't have distractions, can we all please just close our
eyes? OK, again, if you want to know
God, to know Jesus, pray this with me, whether out loud or
silently. Dear Jesus, I ask you to come
into my life. I ask you to take away my sin.
I ask you to give me a relationship with you.
Lord Jesus, come into my life. If you prayed that prayer, would
you just raise your hand so that I can see it?
Thank you. We can all open our eyes if you
prayed that prayer. Welcome to the family.
If you just asked Jesus to be your Savior and Lord before you
leave this room, would you please visit either our table
over here or our table over here where we have a banner saying I
raised my hand. We want to help you and be with
you as you go on your new walk with the Lord.
Now, Christians, we need to talk.
James is teaching us in these verses that we all have a
choice. We can learn whatever the Lord
intends for us in our trials and troubles.
Whatever's going on right now, we can gain from our pain, or we
can choose to ignore what He's trying to teach us.
We don't want to do that. I can tell you by bitter
experience, you don't want to do that.
Because what happens is, is God's going to bring back the
same lesson that He wants us to learn?
And if again we refuse, He's going to bring back the same
lesson He wants us to learn. Remember about the people of
Israel wandering around in the wilderness one more time around
the same mountain. Don't go there.
Ask the Lord this. What do you want me to learn
from this trial? What do you want me to change?
How do you want me to grow? Now, if we're that honest, that
direct with the Lord, you know what He will respond.
And when He responds, our part is to obey.
Now, as we're wrapping up the service at this point, I'm going
to invite the folks in our prayer team to come forward.
If you want someone to pray with you, please come down.
We'll be happy to pray with you. Whatever you need.
We want to pray with you. You come as the Lord leads.