“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.” (James‬ ‭1‬:‭2‬-‭4‬ ‭CSB‬‬ – Read the chapter)

I have a friend who is struggling right now. He got an unexpected encounter with mortality, and the whole experience rather understandably has left him shaken. He called me yesterday and asked for a word of encouragement. After spending a fair bit of time in prayer over the whole thing, these words came to mind and wouldn’t leave. So, in a bit of a departure from the norm, let’s talk about trials, patience, and the long and winding path to spiritual growth.

This is perhaps some of the strangest-sounding advice in all of the Scriptures. And, between you and me, that’s saying something as there is an awful lot of strange-sounding counsel in the Scriptures. Think for a minute about the last time you encountered a trial of some kind. You can make your mental search pretty far ranging as James’ definition of what counts as a trial allows for it. The CSB that I’m using here translates the Greek as “various trials.” Other translations put it as “trials of various kinds” or “all sorts of trials” or “trials of many kinds.” The point is that whatever it is that you personally count as a trial, a challenge, an obstacle to your faith in some way, shape, or form, you should consider that thing joy.

Actually, that’s not strong enough. James gives the Greek word for “joy” an adjective. It’s the word pasan which means “all.” These various trials you might face in your life are to be considered all joy. That is, they are to be considered entirely joy from start to finish. Every single bit of this thing you would normally think of as a bad thing, and which perhaps the world around you is insistent even to your face is a bad thing, is to be considered joy of the highest order.

Now, let’s define our terms carefully here. In order for that to make the least bit of positive sense we cannot conflate joy and happiness. Happiness is an emotional response to a certain situation. Joy is a broad and deep-seated contentment that is rooted in our trust in God’s ultimate goodness. Happiness demands that your situation be good and generally in line with your hopes, desires, and expectations. Joy requires none of that. You can experience joy in situations that are hard, dangerous, painful, or even terrifying in a given moment. This is because, again, joy is rooted in your trust and hope in God’s goodness and ability to care for you through that situation and even to bring good out of it.

So, the various trials you might face in life are to be considered entirely joy. There’s one other part here we need to talk about before going on to the rest of the verse. I keep repeating it, but we haven’t addressed it yet. This is the actual command James gives here. What is the thing he is telling us to do? We are “to consider” our trials as all joy. What does that mean?

Again, the Greek here is illuminating. The word is hegesasthe. This verb refers to the action of leading someone or something. It is the act of exercising leadership or authority over something. It is to command or rule. One of the definition lines puts it like this: “a prince, of regal power, governor, viceroy, chief, leading as respects influence, controlling in counsel, overseers or leaders of the churches.”

In other words, when James tells us “to consider” our trials as joy, he is talking about making a conscious decision to think of them in a certain way. We are to take control of our mind and heart and direct them to a certain conclusion about our trials. We are not to be mere passive participants in our emotions, allowing them to blow us this way and that in how we think about our situation. We are to be the ones fully in the driver’s seat determining our mental and emotional response.

And why do we do this? “Because you know…” he says. Think about that. You know. This was not new information James was giving his readers. They already knew this. I wonder how many things we know to be true, but which we don’t really believe to be true because these facts represent hard truths that we would rather hide from than embrace, and so we act as if they aren’t true. But just because we don’t want something to be true doesn’t mean it isn’t. And in this case, the truth we know but don’t always live like we know is a good truth. It’s not an easy truth because it means having to walk through a path that is frightening. But it’s a good truth because at the end of that path lies something better than we have right now.

We are to make the firm, clear, conscious decision to think about all of the various trials and challenges we face in this life as great joy because we know “that the testing of your faith produces endurance.” Do you know what endurance is? It is the ability to keep pursuing a goal even when the journey toward that goal gets hard. Everything in us wants to quit, but we don’t because we know that achieving the goal is worth the pain we have to experience on the way there.

Two of my boys are running cross country right now. Running cross country isn’t easy. But for all of the physical challenge that running is, the mental challenge involved in it is greater still. When you go out to run a long distance, your body starts to get tired. Things start to hurt. You get that awful side stitch. And when all of this happens, your mind goes into panic mode and starts telling you that you’re finished, it’s too hard, and you need to stop. Switch to walking now. Anymore running is beyond what we can handle.

But the truth in that moment is the opposite. You can physically handle more. In fact, you can physically probably handle a lot more. In order to get there, though, you have to push through all of the hollering going on in your mind that you can’t. You have to take conscious control of your thoughts and emotions and keep pushing toward your goal in spite of the very real physical pain you are experiencing. And you do all of this because you know that if you keep pushing forward through that run, and if you keep pushing forward through multiple future runs, they will eventually get easier because you will be growing in endurance. You’ll be training not just your body but your mind to be able to handle more and greater physical challenges.

The trials we face in this life are like that. They are spiritual or financial or sometimes even physical manifestations of the kind of pain we experience when we are out running. And when we experience this pain in whatever form it happens to take, a loud voice in our head and heart is going to start hollering that we have officially hit our limit, and we need to back off or just outright quit. Any further pressure is almost sure to result in our end. Life is over and God has left us behind.

Just like when we are running, that’s simply not true. We can handle more. Maybe not on our own, sure, but God never promised to give us only what we can handle on our own. The oft-repeated line that God won’t give you more than you can handle is non-biblical nonsense masquerading as spiritual wisdom. It is nonsense that has resulted in not a few people being drawn off the path of faith. It is a depressingly successful lie of the enemy that has taken root and borne much bitter fruit over the years.

You can handle more than you think. And, if you are a follower of Jesus, you’ve got the abiding presence and help of a God who promised to never leave you or forsake you. He promised to lend you His strength. And His strength is a lot greater than yours. The extent of trials you can endure is vastly greater than you imagine, especially when you are relying on His help. That doesn’t mean it will be easy. They are trials, after all. But if you take intentional control to lead your mind and heart into what you know to be true, you will grow in your spiritual endurance.

Growing in endurance is a good thing. It is a process, though. It is a process that plays out over time. It is a process you need to let unfold to completion so that you can enjoy all of its benefits, James says. “And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.”

God is doing a work in you. It’s a work you can’t see all of from where you are currently standing. You don’t have the kind of vantage point that He does. As this work unfolds, then, there are going to be unexpected challenges that appear to be dramatic setbacks, but which God from His greater vantage point knows are necessary paths to get you to where He is trying to take you. If you will trust Him and rest contentedly in His wisdom and direction, you will experience the kind of heavenly joy that will free you from the tyranny of fickle emotions so that you can press on to the glorious end He has planned for you. The road will be hard along the way, but the destination will be more than worth all the momentary trouble you encounter along the way.