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Sep 09, 2018

Love in the Trials

Passage: James 1:1-8

Speaker: Brian Land

Series: James

Category: Grace Brevard

Keywords: faith, hardship, hope, pain, trials, trust

James is the half brother of Jesus and is writing to one of the very earliest churches. In this book James combines the wisdom of Proverbs 1-9 with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), practically spelling out what it looks like to live out Love: love for God, for each other and the world around them. In this week’s passage we find James kicking off his book with a bold and honest view and filter for real-life: pain, conflict, trials and temptations. The Gospel doesn’t deny the reality of a broken creation but rather gives us the only True filter through which to see and move through it. And this coming from a man that would soon be murdered for his faith. We are taught to see the “joy” of life’s struggles because the greatest trial in history (Jesus’ crucifixion) resulted in the greatest gift for all who believe; a gift that gives us proof that God’s power and plans overcome all brokenness as well as the Spirit that promises to carry us through the dark and stormy nights and into his glorious light.

Order of Worship

Call To Worship: 1 Peter 1:3-4,6-7 ESV

Songs:

Reading: Romans 5:2-5 ESV

Colossians 1:11-12 ESV & Refuge (adapted from The Valley of Vision)

Sermon Title: Love In The Trials

Central Text:  James 1:1-8, 12 ESV

1: 1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: 2 Count it all joy, my brothers and sisters, 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. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

1:12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

Response: From the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 9

ALL: We believe that the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth and everything in them, who still upholds and rules them by his eternal counsel and providence, is our God and Father because of Christ his Son. We trust him so much that we do not doubt he will provide whatever we need for body and soul, and he will turn to our good whatever adversity he sends us in this sad world. He is able to do this because he is almighty God; he desires to do this because he is a faithful Father. Nothing will separate us from his love.

Benediction: 2 Corinthians 4:8-10,15 ESV

Related Scriptures:

  • Mark 9:22-24
  • Matthew 26:39
  • Luke 4:13
  • Luke 11:4
  • 2 Corinthians 1:8-10
  • 1 Peter 4:12-13
  • Jude 1:20-21
  • Revelation 4:10-11 ESV

Media

9.09.18 Album

Discussion Questions & Applications:

1) What does the word “trials” bring up in your heart and mind?

   What are some of the “everyday” trials in your life?

2) Describe how you typically respond to trials?

   We’ve often heard that, when confronted, people tend toward either “fight or flight”. Which one describes you?

3) ) How is it that trials are more than just “hard things in life” but a “testing of your faith”?

   Faith in what?

   What are things you have faith in when trials hit?

   Do you sometimes have “faith” that God has forgotten you, or isn’t powerful or loving enough to help?

4) James (Jesus’ half-brother) isn’t saying to count the trial itself joy, but what the trial is (or can) accomplish. How have trials led to growth in your life?

5) To “consider” means to (miraculously) logically and faithfully see all of life, even the really hard and painful times, in light of the whole story and in light of a beautiful, powerful, loving God.

   What would it mean to see your deeply difficult trial within the context of your entire life?

   ...in context of all of creation, all the way to glory?

   What would it mean to see your painful trial in light of Jesus’ trial the ended in his crucifixion? (not to minimize your pain, as if to say “don’t whine because Jesus had it harder” but to say that God cares so deeply about your pain that he came to put “death to death” and restore ALL of creation back to wholeness.)

Quotes:

“The most reliable thing on earth is sorrow / And the most enduring—the Almighty Word.” - Anna Akhmatova

“I believe that the question of faith—which is ultimately separable from the question of “religion”—is the single most important question that any person asks in and of her life, and that every life is an answer to this question, whether she has addressed it consciously or not.” - Christian Wiman

“Be careful. Be certain that your expressions of regret about your inability to rest in God do not have a tinge of self-satisfaction, even self-exaltation to them, that your complaints about your anxieties are not merely a manifestation of your dependence on them. There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us, whether as explanations for a life that never quite finds its true force or direction, or as fuel for ambition, or as a kind of reflexive secular religion that, paradoxically, unites us with others in a shared sense of complete isolation: you feel at home in the world only by never feeling at home in the world.” - Christian Wiman

. . . Whole years I lost in the kingdom. Of mine own skull. With my scepter the remote. I sat enthroned in a La-Z-Boy. Watching dramas I controlled. Only the volume on. I was a poor death’s head then. In my hook-rug empire. With snowflakes of paper. My favorite button is power  - “Lord, I Was Faithless” – Mary Karr

“ Everything difficult indicates something more than our theory of life yet embraces. . . . But there is a reality of being in which all things are easy and plain—oneness, that is, with the Lord of Life; to pray for this is the first thing.” - George MacDonald,

“Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of. . . . I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust.  So I will pray that you trust God.” - Mother Teresa

“Would you agree that we must be willing to thank God for every trial of our faith, no matter how severe, for the greater strength it produces?” “I’m perfectly willing to say it, but I’m continually unable to do it.” “There’s the Rub.” - At Home in Mitford

“It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a small branch.” - Timothy J. Keller

“Faith … is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” - C.S. Lewis

Books / Articles

In Two Minds by Os Guinness

C.S. Lewis on the difference between faith and emotion by Dr Andrew Swafford

Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering by Timothy J. Keller

Sermons / Talks:

An Introduction to James by The Bible Project

Happiness in Heaven by John Piper (a reading of an excerpt from a sermon by Jonathan Edwards

Suffering: If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world by Timothy Keller

1 Peter 1:3-12

Suffering That Strengthens Faith by John Piper