James 1:2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.
Ooh, this is a hard one. I feel anxiety rising just thinking about facing trials. But that is not the proper response, trial or just the thought of it. We learned that recently with our devotion about taking thoughts captive.
Jesus told us we would face trials, that we would face hardship (Matthew 5:11). We were never promised an easy walk once we accepted Christ. The question is how we respond when those trials and hardships arise. Are we going to crumble under the stress of it all? Are we going to cry and whine to God about the injustice of it all? Or are we going to count it all joy, as in our verse today?
It is in trials that our faith is tested. We can come through pure (like a refiner’s fire), stronger from the experience. Remember, in our weakness He is strong (2 Corinthians 12:9). The trials we face are opportunities for us to grow. They are chances for us to trust Him, to grow our faith, to learn new things. And sometimes those lessons are hard. Sometimes they hurt. But God is near the brokenhearted (Psalms 34:18; Psalms 147:3).
When we are told to consider it pure joy, we are not being told to consider the pain and suffering as a joyous event. Rather, we should see the overall experience with joy because we know it had a purpose in our life and we grew as a result. Whether we grew spiritually from it or not, we still learned from it and it became a part of our personal story, our testimony. The overall experience is something we should be happy to have made it through. We might not have found joy in the moment, but we can feel joy after the fact. – we decide how we view it. Personally, I like the idea of considering it joy. Positive attitudes are so much better than negative ones.
Are you ready to shift your thinking from an Eeyore, woe is me view to one of joy? It’s all in the mind and how you choose to view it.
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