Endurance and joy

From yesterday: Enduring gets a bad wrap. It sounds negative, as if to “endure” means to just barely make it. As if to imply that we can’t thrive, we can only survive. Today, we’re going to begin to move in the direction of discussing how endurance can be about thriving, but it’s going to require us taking some small steps first. Today is one small step in that direction, so do not be discouraged. Hang in there over the next few days.

We recently talked about the following verses about endurance and joy in both in the blogs and in the weekend messages, but let’s revisit them:

2 My brothers and sisters, think of the various tests you encounter as occasions for joy. 3 After all, you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 Let this endurance complete its work so that you may be fully mature, complete, and lacking in nothing.

~ James 1:2-4, CEB

There’s a certain logic to this that we must walk through slowly and carefully in order to fully understand what is going on here. It is not saying that we should be happy about life’s difficulties. It’s suggesting that people of faith take on a bold, long-term perspective. That perspective reminds us that God is not yet done working. Because he’s not yet done working, there are going to be hardships. These hardships are reminders, ultimately, that God is not yet done working. Let’s phrase it positively: God is working to remove hardships, so that there will be no more tears. That may not make us happy, and it may not completely relieve our pain, but it is a reminder we hold onto that limits the damage.

Joy isn’t about masochistically enjoying hardship, it’s about damage limitation. It is about the long game. It’s about using our perspective, as people of faith, to remind ourselves that God is still at work, even amidst our trials, and part of his work is to create people who can endure such that we become whole, or complete. Joy is not about feeling happy about suffering. It’s about reminding ourselves that suffering does not get the final say.

More to come.

God was there before I knew I needed Him

Once I worked with a couple who had enjoyed a life of mutual pleasure in participating in the porn industry.  Then they both had a spiritual awakening, which is good news except for this one little problem:  they woke up with different dreams.

The guy thought that he could love Jesus and prostitutes; the wife thought that if she loved Jesus her husband had to stop loving on the prostitutes.  Eventually the marriage collapsed.  But I kind of understood the both perspectives.

“Hey, she used to be a willing participant!  Now she acts like I am a sinner of all sinners but she never mentions that this is a major shift in her perspective!  I feel duped. The bible says she should submit to me.  I feel like she is ridiculing me with this sanctimonious BS and demanding a divorce - which I personally think is a sin.  What’s up with THAT?”

Ok, he has a point.  His wife had made some shifts in her core values; he had made some shifts in his - but they were at odds. Should they or should they not get a divorce?  Is this an issue of a wife not submitting to her husband?  Or is this a husband committing adultery and thereby voiding the covenant of marriage?  

I do not know how to parse all this out on most days, but I know this, and it is a pretty important truth:

But anyone who needs wisdom should ask God, whose very nature is to give to everyone without a second thought, without keeping score. Wisdom will certainly be given to those who ask.  

James 1:5

All of us have issues; and sometimes these issues compete for our attention.  Many days they feel insurmountable.  But through it all, we need to take into account that God is not keeping score and he is willing to give us wisdom.  This is a huge promise.  No matter where we come from, not matter our past, God gives wisdom to all people without a second thought.  I think this encouragement speaks to us about the promise of a future hope if we allow our heavenly father to do for us what perhaps we haven’t received from other mortals.