Journey through Perseverance

James 1:2-8 (NIV)
² Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds,
³ because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
⁴ Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.
⁶ But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.
⁷ That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord;
⁸ he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

I was talking to an individual yesterday about the difficult place in life this person finds them-self in.  We've all heard the old saying:  "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade".  It's a lot easier to say it than do it.
Most of us "hate" bad situations.  We want to get out of them as fast as we can.  The longer it continues to go on, a couple of possibilities begin to emerge.  Sometimes people get bitter...blame God and in their anger withdraw from the very things the Bible says will help - prayer, the word of God, community of other believers, even Christ himself.  Sometimes people resign themselves to a fatalistic "this must be the will of God"...a kind of divine resignation that excepts the problem but doesn't seek to grow through it.  I've seen those...more than that, I've lived those.

About five years into our marriage, with one of our kids born, Linda got very sick.  We didn't know what was happening?  They couldn't diagnose what was wrong.  She went to multiple doctors, had more tests done on her than we could keep track of.  They talked about the possibility of a tumor, of MS, of some sort of cancer, of other diseases with long names, or scary initials...and it went on for about nine months.  During that time our life as a couple in marriage seem to disappear.  We functioned to survive, and we wondered, and prayed, and wondered some more.

I went through a lot of doubts.  Did I sin somehow? Was this God's judgement for something I had done wrong?  Is it God's will that we lose each other?  I had a laundry list of things I didn't have answers for.
Linda's illness was eventually discovered and the medicine she took brought the long nine months to end...but it made me stop and think about what kind of faith I had.

Over the years other incidents came along and my doubts and lack of faith emerged all too clearly again.
NOW...after all of those years I've come to learn something about dark times.

EMBRACE THE PAIN

I don't mean accept it.  I mean see the painful difficult times as a means for growth, for deepening our faith in Christ, of learning what it means to truly trust him.

That's why James says "consider it joy whenever you face trials...this testing of faith develops perseverance, and this perseverance brings us to a deeper level of maturity and faith...believe God is at work, don't doubt."

Embrace the journey through the difficulties...through the suffering...through the loss.  I don't say this because it's easy, but because God has a way of showing us much more in our pain than in our pleasure.

Peace