Befriending Our Trials

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. – James 1:2-4

Think of a long-time friend of yours. A dear friend. Maybe a lifelong friend you’ve had. Think of how you greet that friend when you finally meet again. Do you start with a warm handshake and then move in for a full mutual hug? Or do you go straight to a full arms-wide-open advance, arms locking around them in happy reunion?

Now think of doing that to your trials.

Strange, huh? Who of us would really want to do that? We naturally think of our trials as our enemies. Cruel opposers of our good and thieves of our daily happinesses. Rather than embrace them we want them gone, never to return.

But when we think that way, are we really thinking biblically about our trials and our God? Are we letting the mind of Christ dwell in us richly (Phil 2:5)? James urges us to have a radically new and different perspective.

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES: YOUR TRIALS

James says to count it all joy when we meet with trials. We are not to hate them. We are not to run the other direction. (Though we should certainly be careful not to create our trials, if possible.) To fully understand how strange this is to our natural mindset, let’s think of examples:

  • What if you praised God for your migraine while you are on your bed with the curtains drawn and your head is pounding?
  • What if you acknowledge that you’d rather not have that constant, never ending high-pitched ringing in your ears (as I have for three years now), but tell the Lord that you love him no less?
  • What if you turned your unemployment and job search from a prayer request to praise, acknowledging that God has not once allowed it to cause you to go without a meal or miss a mortgage payment? Giving him praise for the trial because it has built your faith to see how he has constantly provided somehow every day, week, and month?

TRIALS ARE ORDAINED BY GOD

The fact is, nothing in this world happens apart from God’s decrees. That’s part of God’s sovereignty. Either he causes things to happen, or he allowsthem to happen and then uses them to fulfill his greater, overarching purposes.

Nothing in this world happens apart from God’s decrees.

Think of Joseph’s brothers’ mistreatment and selling him into slavery, and all that followed after in his life, and how God used it. Pharaoh’s hardness of heart and refusal to allow the Israelites to go free, and how God used that. Think back on previous trials in your own life, and how you would not be the person you are today if it wasn’t for how they forged qualities or helped remove sin in your life.

TRIALS ARE THE PURPOSEFUL WISDOM OF GOD

James is not preaching an empty grin-and-bear-it, mind-over-matter attitude towards our trials and afflictions. We should embrace them joyfully, like reuniting with long-awaited friends. And the reason we can is because they are all there ultimately because it is in the good wisdom of our God to providentially have them there. Why? There are several other places in Scripture which answer that, but James does it right here.

…for you know that the testing of your faith

…produces steadfastness

…And let steadfastness have its full effect, [so] that…

…you may be perfect and complete,

…lacking in nothing.

Which brings us to Providence.

THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING IS “PROVIDENCE”

Providence is another important aspect to all of this. Our trials are ordained by God (as are our blessings). Remember Job’s words in Job 2:10, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” They are the purposeful wisdom of God, as we have already seen. Everything in our lives has its direct lineage back to God’s Providence.

Everything in our lives has its direct lineage back to God’s Providence.

Somebody cut you off in line at the store or in the school pickup line? Providence.

Didn’t get that sale that would’ve gotten you a year’s salary in one commission? Providence.

Rain on your wedding day? Providence.

Migraine? Tinnitus? Stroke? Cancer? Or maybe only stubbed your toe? All of them Providence.

Personally, I have been deeply challenged by this truth for the last couple of months. The truth is, everything we grumble and complain about–even down to the weather the Lord has provided for the day–all of it is sin against God’s goodness and wisdom in his Providence.

The truth is, everything we grumble and complain about–even down to the weather the Lord has provided for the day–all of it is sin against God’s goodness and wisdom in his Providence.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Trials are in our lives by the sovereign, good, wisdom of God in his providence to test our faith so that it forges in us a steadfastness in spirit, bringing us into further and further maturity as a believer, to the glory of God.

One last question: What trials do you have right now? Make a quick list in your head; I bet it won’t take you but a second to list three, four, or five of them right off the bat. Now think of them with joy. Imagine a warm Christian embrace with each one. In faith, give Jesus glory and praise for his wisdom for each specific trial in your life right now, by name, because he loves you enough to have put them there for your ongoing growth and maturity.

Lord, how often we all forget these truths. How often we sin, grumbling and complaining about what is happening in our lives right now, and forgetting that it was your good and kind providence that ordained for them to be there.

Please send the Spirit to stir our hearts again, reinvigorate us to “press on,” like Paul who himself was constantly suffering under trials and tribulations, “toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Bring these truths to mind when we least think of them, in the ordinary trials of everyday life and the sudden calamities that come our way, knowing that you are mighty enough to handle them all, and we can cast our anxieties on you, because you care for us. (1 Pe 5:7).

An Open Letter to a Prosperity Gospel Follower

Reaching Out

I don’t know you but I love you. And because I love you, I’m going to be 100% straight with you. I’ve looked up a couple of those teachers you follow and some of the teachers they hang around with. You’re being deceived by the false prosperity health & wealth gospel. It’s not the true gospel of the Bible.

You’re being deceived by the false prosperity health & wealth gospel. It’s not the true gospel of the Bible.

I beg you…do some research. I’d be happy to help point to some sound biblical resources to help you grow in your Christian discernment. For starters, if nothing else, look up the movie American Gospel on Vimeo and soon on Amazon. It talks about it guys like Todd White (whom your man affirms) and the dangers of prosperity gospel. Also, look up the testimony of Benny Hinn’s own nephew, Costi Hinn.

[vimeo 153172697 w=640 h=360]

American Gospel – Trailer 1 from Transition Studios on Vimeo.

I have nothing to gain by telling you all this. Please, please…pray and ask God to show you if I am a total crackpot or if what I am telling you is true. If I am wrong, the Holy Spirit will guide you, right? But if what I am telling you is true, the Holy Spirit will show you that too.

The Rejection

Tragically, I have never once gotten someone who was open minded enough to want to even take the time to consider that what I saying might even have a .00001% of being true. Either they get immediately offended and end the conversation, or they reply with a polite-but-short reply that they do not want to hear anymore about it, like,

I really appreciate your concern, Anthony, but I have seen the Spirit’s work and know it to be true because it has changed my life. Blessings…

The Open Letter Reply

And so, because they shut down the conversation rather than be like the Bereans to search whether things things were so (Acts 17:11). All I can do is use the opportunity to post my reply a public blog post, to openly warn them and anyone else the Lord might, in his kindness, direct to this obscure corner of the Internet…

That’s exactly my point—you are putting what you experience over what is sound doctrine. You are giving precedence and weight to signs and wonders and inner tinglings, wrongly concluding that they are evidence of truth. As a believer, you should know better than that because not one group of believers in the New Testament did that. The Bereans were credited with going back and verifying everything with Scripture (Acts 17:11).

Angel of Light

You also know that Satan masks himself as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14), and can give power to men to do great signs. Remember Pharaoh’s magicians in Genesis, Simon the Magician in Acts 8, Elymas the Magician in Acts 13, the girl with the spirit of divination in Acts 16:16, village witch doctors and shaman around the world even today? Just because you see or experience these things does not prove they are the Holy Spirit at work.

Don’t Take My Word for It

And just by a plain reading of the entire New Testament (which I assume, if you profess to be a Christian, you have done at least one time through), we see that after the early church in Acts where signs and wonders were given by God to some to give early credibility to the message they preached. Reread Acts—the signs and wonders and experiences are never the main focus of any passage, but the preaching of Christ crucified and risen, and the need for all men to repent and believe the gospel is.

signs and wonders and experiences are never the main focus of any passage, but the preaching of Christ crucified and risen, and the need for all men to repent and believe the gospel is.

The Mutual Testimony of Scripture & Church History

Also, haven’t you ever wondered why there is no mention of signs and wonders emphasized in the rest of the New Testament writings? Or even over the last 2,000 years of Church history? No one who simply reads the NT would ever arrive at the conclusion that signs and wonders were as important as you and your teachers are claiming. Even when Paul talks about tongues, he only talks about it to the Corinthian church, very briefly, gives very clear rules about them and how they are to be done in an “orderly manner”—rules which all pentecostal/charismatic/prosperity churches today ignore, a clear indicator that they are not real.

Use Your Bible and Your Brain

I’m not trying to be some weird internet guy who harasses you. I’m pleading with you: Use your Bible and use your brain.

Be discerning…

  • …like Jesus said (Matt 24:4, “See that no one leads you astray…”)
  • …like Paul said, (Col 2:6—“See to it”)
  • …like James said (James 1:16, “Do not be deceived”)

Be discerning so that you can instead give priority to the One who is to have it: Jesus.

I’m not trying to be some weird internet guy who harasses you. I’m pleading with you: Use your Bible and use your brain.

Evidence Outside of Scripture

If signs and wonders and healings and all this stuff you believe were really of God, why doesn’t God raise up men to pastor churches on every corner, in every city? Why do the guys you follow hold their events in arenas and churches and make the sick and the lame come to them instead of doing what Jesus did and those guys go to where the sick and the lame are? Why are they not spending every ounce of energy they have visiting every hospital and nursing home in the world 24/7/365? Where are the scientific credible reports of healings? Why are the healings only ever of diseases no one can see? Isn’t anything I’m saying causing reasonable doubt in your mind?

Isn’t anything I’m saying causing reasonable doubt in your mind?

My “Hidden” Agenda

I don’t want you to go to my church. I don’t want you to follow “my guys.” My only agenda is to see Jesus given his rightful place at the center of your theology and your ministry. To see him exalted and glorified in your life and your influence over others.

You seem like a decent guy and you obviously want to help other people in their spiritual lives. Well, then you owe it to God and to yourself to investigate what I’m saying. If nothing else, you are setting yourself up as a teacher, which means you will face stricter judgment before God for your doctrine and what you preach to others as truth (James 3:1). Don’t you fear God enough that that thought makes you tremble and make you want to have your doctrinal ducks in a row as much as you can?

Like I said at the beginning, I don’t know you but I love you, and I plead with you again…If you love Jesus as much as you say you do, and you trust the Holy Spirit to speak to you and lead you into truth, then you owe it to God and to yourself to lay these things before him and ask him to show if they are true or not.

Search the Scriptures.

Do your research.

Get free.

Thanks to Justin Peters and the folks at American Gospel for the point about “healings” always being unverifiable inside the body ailments. Excellent point!

New Year’s Reflections

I won’t lie, 2018 was a hard year. I know everything is in the providence of my God, who himself is good and kind and sovereign. But it was still a hard year.

Death

The year began with my father-in-law finally succumbing to Parkinson’s after battle that was so long that I didn’t even know my now-wife when he was first diagnosed–and we’ve known each other since September 2005. In a way, it was a double-loss because he was the epitome of the “strong, silent type.” Even before Parkinson’s took his speech away, he didn’t talk much. It wasn’t until his services which were attended by hundreds and hundreds of people, and police and firefighters from three towns, that I had any clue what kind of towering legend in his community my father-in-law was. I was sad to lose a man I knew for 13 years and yet hardly knew at all.

Not a month later my “son” was gone. Amy and I don’t have children, but we had Cooper. Cooper was a Jack Russell/Beagle mix. Or, as I liked to say, he was my “pure-bred rescue.” I found him on the side of the road in 2014 on a day when I quit a job, of all things. I was so thankful when the day came two weeks later that we were no longer legally obligated to find his owner and were now free to keep him ourselves. Had I not left that job that day, at that time, Amy and I would never have had some of the greatest joys of our lives he was to give us. What we thought was a routine vet appointment turned out to be the worst news a pet owner wants to hear, and it required immediate action if we were to spare him a long suffering. “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21)

A few months later there was another death…our church. Unwilling to destroy its twin idols of tradition and worship music styles, or be willing to be change for the sake of Christ and his gospel, after a long membership decline, the members voted to fold. A tragic and cautionary legacy that stubbornly said to the world, “We’d rather die than change.”

Life

God has been so kind to me since he first rescued me out of my nominal Christianity in 2005. I’ve learned so much about him, me, and life.

As sad as those deaths were, is it any surprise that I am testifying to you now that the Lord brought Amy and I through them?

Besides deaths, there was testing of mine and Amy’s faith of me not earning any commission in my real estate business for six straight months. Did we miss a meal or a mortgage payment even once? Nope.

In the faithfulness of the God I serve, 2018 was also filled with blessings. Even with the mid-year late start, I sold more real estate than I did the year before. He answered our prayers and led us to a healthy new (to us) church. He breathed life into a dream of ministry I thought had died years ago. We were able to do needed remodeling/renovations in our home. It looks like a brand new home and we’re eager to use it for his glory. And Amy’s mother has spent over a month with us in summer and again now over the holidays…precious memories in the making.

Faithfulness

I don’t think it’s good practice for Christians to rate one year as better or worse than another. I don’t think it’s a good habit for us to do as the world does, and be glad to get rid of an old year and hope the next will be better.

Yes, 2018 was hard, but you know what? It was a walk in the park compared to someone else’s–maybe even yours. An there will be greater trials in the years to come. But I know this: The same Lord who saved me also promised to sanctify me, and he will do all that he says he will accomplish. I know it. Not only has he said so, I’ve walked with him long enough now that I’ve seen him do it over and over again.