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Sermon notes:

Resolved to Learn from Suffering

James 1:2-4

2  Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,

3  for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

4  And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Let these words sink in,

Do not allow them to go down too easy

These are not easy words

This isn’t angel food cake and frosting

This is fiber, it’s grit, and it’s tough

It’s the kind of stuff you can feel go all the way down

It lets you know it’s there.

So grab a tall glass water and place it next to your Bible because you’re going to need it to wash these truths down!

I’m glad James wrote these words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, because if I had written them they would say:

“Count it all joy, my brothers, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing!”

Now wouldn’t that be a nice sermon?!

Sadly that is exactly what is preached in many churches, that is exactly what is believed my many Christians, and many of us even though we don’t confess that kind of abridged theology, we have it in the back of our mind a we live as if the middle half of that passage had somehow disappeared!

Many Christians spend their lives running from suffering, trying to avoid it, and looking for ways to get rid of it! Entire industries survive because of it. We spend billions on eradicating it from our lives. You will find shelves of books loaded down with advice on how to avoid it.

Products are sold

Sermons are preached

Pills are prescribed

Counselling is given

Escapes mechanisms are sought

All with the purpose of avoiding the the unavoidable, all with the hopes of living a suffering free life!

But so few face suffering head on has James instructs us here. So few have learned the embrace joy in suffering and see Jesus in it, and beyond it

The longer I live and the more I study God’s Word, the more I’m convinced that one of the greatest weaknesses of the Western Church is a lack of a practical Biblical theology of pain and suffering. Too many have come into the Church believing unbiblical promises about the Christian life. They have been lured into the Church, if that were possible, with dreams of success, health, and an easier life.

These promises of prosperity and health for the Christian are only good at producing one thing, weak willed, shallow rooted, fragile faithed church goers, who are emotionally motivated, pleasure pursuing, and Scripturally starving.

For a little contrast let’s look at two preachers and their mindset on this topic:

Jonathan Edwards resolutions on Suffering

9. Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.

10. Resolved, when I feel pain, to think of the pains of martyrdom, and of hell.

57. Resolved, when I fear misfortunes and adversities, to examine whether ~ have done my duty, and resolve to do it; and let it be just as providence orders it, I will as far as I can, be concerned about nothing but my duty and my sin.

67. Resolved, after afflictions, to inquire, what I am the better for them, what good I have got by them, and what I might have got by them.

June 9, and July 13, 1723.

Contrast these to the the declarations of contemporary prosperity preacher

Creflo Dollar’s declarations for the New Year: