Pastor’s Corner: “True Colors”
James 1:2-4 (MSG) – Faith Under Pressure – 2-4 Consider it a sheer gift (Pure Joy (NIV)), friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.
This way of viewing our hardships feels so unnatural and impossible. How could we view our suffering, our unmet expectations, our losses as a gift? Most anyone who has lived a little while knows that storms come with the territory. It’s an unavoidable reality in this world. So, if we cannot change it or even pray it away, what can we do?
We need to redefine how we view goodness. The “good life” isn’t one that lacks hardship, but rather, one that requires it. James teaches, we will be incomplete and immature if we don’t go through challenges. I know what you are thinking: “I think I have gone through enough maturing for one life, I don’t’ need any more hardship.” So much of our mental energy is spent fearing what might happen in the future or staying stuck in shame and regret for what has happened in the past. What if we chose to view our inevitable hardships as the path to experience the goodness of God even more powerfully? As the avenue to our healing? As the truly abundant life? Without hardship, we would never grow and mature. The truth of this scripture should not make us afraid.
James 1:3 (MSG) – You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. How things look on the outside do not always represent what is really going on underneath. We may feel that we are mature, but you don’t have to wait very long to know for sure. When the pressure shows up, and life begins squeezing you, what comes out? Is it anger, bitterness, resentment? Or is it peace, patience and love? What will make a bigger impact on those around you for the Kingdom of God? Blending into the noise and rabble and constantly griping, or approaching things in faith and peace, knowing that God’s got the stuff that really matters?
The pressure is an opportunity to help the world see how Christians are different. We’re calm and collected, even if the world is saying that the sky is falling. Think about David and Goliath, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, Mary when the Angel told her she would give birth to The King of Kings…people of faith don’t go into their rooms, shut the door, and simply gripe about how bad this is. They trust that at the end of the day, what really matters in life is already taken care of. This is maturity. We are given an opportunity to witness to others every day-not by preaching or speaking…but simply by living differently.
It takes a long time and an incredible amount of pressure to turn a worthless piece of carbon into a valuable diamond. Once you grasp that scriptural truth, whenever your life is interrupted by problems or circumstances you didn’t anticipate, you’ll begin to see God’s hand at work in all of it. The truth is that you’re either in a trial right now, just coming out of one, or heading toward the next one…….AND IT IS GOOD!
The good and the hard things in life aren’t mutually exclusive. We hold them in tension together because the good/hard life offers a depth to our experience with God and our compassion with others that we can’t get any other way. This redefining leads to our refining. It won’t happen overnight. And it won’t happen unless we open our hands, releasing control over what we thought our life should be in order to receive God more fully. In this process, we can find gratitude and even joy (pure joy) because we know a new kind of perseverance, character and hope will be ours.
In His Grace,
Pastor Hamilton