Here Comes Trouble

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Thanks for joining us today on Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Bittovitch, and I'm very excited because today we're diving into another brand new teaching series through the book of James. That's right, first time on the air, so you're joining us today on the ground floor. You know, no other New Testament book is quite like James.

It's catchy, practical, and quite frankly, in your face. James jumps straight into the nitty gritty of daily life. In other words, James doesn't mess around. Whether you've read through the book of James dozens of times or you've never read it at all, you're in for a treat. Now, this part is important. If you have to miss any of the live teaching through this series, you can always catch up at J.D. Greer dot com. Let me encourage you.

This is a series you won't want to miss a minute of. So let's get you started at, you guessed it, James Chapter one. Here's Pastor J.D. in the book of James. Listen, before we dive in, let's just talk for a minute about James the person, because that might help you appreciate the approach that this book is going to take. James was the half brother of Jesus. I say half brother because they shared Mary as a mother, but Jesus's father, of course, was God since he was immaculately conceived, and for Mary's other children, Joseph would have been the father. John Chapter seven, verse five tells us that when Jesus began his ministry, James, along with Jesus's other brothers, didn't really believe that he was the Messiah.

That was probably the result of jealousy mixed with a little skepticism. I mean, how could the guy who snored next to me in the bunk and smelled weird in the morning, just like the other boys did, how could that be the God who created the universe? But then Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that James met the resurrected Jesus. So that Jesus specifically sought out after the resurrection to appear to him, and James, the younger brother of Jesus, came to not only believe in Jesus and worship him as God, he also became the leader of the early church in Jerusalem, and one of the early church's first martyrs. By the way, James's conversion is one of the reasons I find the evidence for Jesus's claim so compelling.

I mean, think about it. How many of you listening to me right now, how many of you had an older brother raise your hand? All right, what would it take for you to start regarding your older brother as God and to worship him?

You're like Satan incarnate, maybe I could get that, but not God. Y'all, James had every reason not to believe in Jesus, but the resurrection changed his mind. You're like the New Testament's Book of Proverbs.

Here's how it begins. Verse one, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is not referring to himself as the half-brother of Jesus because that's not relevant.

He's a servant just like you are. To the 12 tribes in the dispersion, greetings. They're living in unfamiliar and often hostile territory, but James intends that as a double entendre. Christians, the true Israel, we also have been separated from our homeland, heaven, and now we live in hostile territory.

So James is not just thinking about Jewish Christians, he's thinking about all Christians when he writes this. And so his first admonition, verse two, is he says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. Count it all joy when you go through trials, trials like being separated from your homeland, or for that matter, any kind of trial. He says various trials. He means, I'm not talking about just spiritual trials or persecution.

I mean pain or relational frustration or marriage tension or a friend turning their back on you or career disappointment or wayward kids or whatever. Count it all joy because these trials are tests, and these tests are actually producing good things in you. How many of you like tests? Raise your hand.

You were the kind of person in high school, college, that you just loved exam day. Why don't you put your hand up? Not a whole lot of hands. There's always one or two. I see you out there. There are a few weirdos, okay?

You were the ones that threw off the curve for the rest of us, and we all kind of secretly hated you for it. I heard about one of our college sophomores at UNC Chapel Hill who was in an ornithology class over there. You know what ornithology is? Study of birds.

That's right. This guy sweated all semester long, he said, in anticipation of the notoriously difficult final exam. Well, having made what he regarded to be the ultimate effort in preparation for this exam, he'd stayed up all night memorizing bird facts and listening to bird calls and trying to be able to identify birds. This young man said he was stunned when he walked into the classroom the next day to take the test because there's no test paper. There's no multiple choice questions.

There were no essay prompts. Just a single PowerPoint on the screen of 25 different pairs of bird legs with the instruction, identify these birds by their feet. This is insane, the student protested. I didn't prepare for this. It's not fair.

This is your final exam, and it's going to count for half of your grade. This is not fair, he said. I'm not going to do it. This frustrated student said, I'm walking out. Professor said, if you walk out, then you will fail the final and fail the class. You go ahead and fail me, the boy said, headed for the door. Fine, the professor said. You have failed. Tell me your name, young man. At which point the bull pulled up his pant legs. He's like, you tell me, professor.

You tell me what my name is. Parts of that story are not true. They reveal weak spots in our knowledge. The test can also be opportunities to deepen our knowledge and to fill in the gaps of our understanding. And that's what trials and difficulties do for us, James says. They reveal the weak spots in our faith and give us opportunities to grow in them. Affliction, Tim Keller says, affliction is how we move from abstract knowledge of God to a personal encounter with God.

I would dare say that there are many of you in here who are not aware of the challenges that we face. Who have a great deal of facts in your head about God. And yet many of these have never become personal relational encounters. They don't move you to worship when we're in here together. They don't well up your heart with emotion. You don't ponder these things in the night hours. They're not where you turn to in a time of emotional distress. And the reason for that is you have never brought God with you into suffering.

You're preparing us for trials. Most of us assume that life is supposed to be good. A lot of times the church just reinforces that life is good.

Life is beautiful. And if life's not good, something's wrong. But you got to understand that's not been the assumption for most of human history. In previous generations, people expected life to be short and painful and unfair and brutish. Previous generations had no problem believing in an afterlife because this life was so hard.

Conveniences and prosperity and technology. It tells us that life should be easy and filled with happiness and zen and fulfillment. And so we are shocked when life goes wrong, which it always does. Despite all of our technology and all our best practices, life is still filled with heartache and disappointment and broken relationships. I don't care how right you do it.

And that's going to happen to the richest and poorest of you alike. In fact, I would dare say some of you are there right now. Bottom line, y'all, we probably need this instruction by James even more than that original audience did. In the next six verses, James is gonna give you three commands that you are to heed when you go through a trial. Those commands are about perspective, patience, and prayer.

Here's number one, perspective. Verse two, he tells us, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. Count it all joy when you go through a trial. Joy is not what I typically feel in a trial.

Typically, I feel what? Anger, especially if my suffering feels unjust, which it usually does. What did I do to deserve this? Why was that person able to get away with that? Why did they get the reward and I didn't?

Why did I get passed over? God, where are you? Or I feel despair. You ever feel that? Are things ever gonna change? When is this pain ever gonna go away?

Is this relationship ever going to heal? Maybe this weekend, you're sitting right there asking, when's my big day? When's my break gonna come? It's come for all my friends. I did better than they did in school, but their big break has come. Mine hadn't come.

Are these fertility treatments ever gonna work? When am I gonna find my soulmate? And what feels the hardest in these trials is when heaven seems silent. When you pray, it's like nothing changes.

Not in you, not in the situation. Am I talking to somebody out there, right? Am I talking to somebody up there? One thing, if I got a no to my request, but one thing if I prayed and God said, hey, no, not right now, that might be disappointing for me, but at least I would know that somebody was up there listening. But silence feels like God is unmoved and unconcerned. Feels like God's ignoring me.

He's ignoring me if he's even there. To quote Pastor Tyler Stadden, who's both praying like monks and living like fools, has a great little chapter on the silence of God. He says, and I quote, silence makes me feel like the only one with the power to stop the disease that is ravaging me. My mother from the inside out cannot be bothered. Or the only one with the power to open my stubborn womb is too distracted to care.

Or the one that I've held my desire for companionship in front of for decades yawns in the face of my loneliness. Whether or not you'll lean on God's character, even when you're surrounded by chaos and confusion or silence, whether or not you can feast on God's presence, the greatest joy in the universe, even when everything else in the round you in the world is leaving you starving. I will tell you from experience that this is one of the hardest things to do in the Christian life. It's what I've called sometimes trusting God in the blank spaces of your life. You're listening to the first message in our new teaching series in the book of James here on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. We'll rejoin Pastor J.D. in just a moment, but I wanted to remind you about a daily email devotional from Summit Life that you can sign up for today. I know the busyness of life can quickly choke out any joy we feel in our walk with God, so why not cut those weeds away each morning with a word from the Lord? The devotionals even follow along with our current teaching here on the program, so you can stay plugged into this new teaching regardless of your schedule. What better way to not only remember, but to act on all we're learning here on the program?

It kind of sounds like James, doesn't it? Sign up for this free resource at jdgreer.com slash resources. That's J-D-G-R-E-E-A-R dot com slash resources. And while you're there, you can also browse past programs, view transcripts, and join our mailing list.

These are all great ways to stay connected with Summit Life. Now let's return for the final moments in our teaching today. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. The blank spaces in your life are those spaces in your life when it feels like God's absent, like he's not doing anything. I actually take the term from the life of David. First Samuel 16, 13. Samuel has anointed David to be the king of Israel, and as the oil of anointing is still wet on David's head, Samuel gets up and leaves. And then the narrative on David's life just stops. And then there's this blank space between verses 13 and 14. Scholars say the narrative on David's life will not pick up again for about seven years.

All that is represented by that little blank space in your Bible. And I gotta ask, what were those seven years like? What's it like to be anointed king of Israel and then go back to the pasture for seven years? I mean, David didn't run down to the palace, start trying on robes.

He didn't go on a speaking tour to explain his vision for Israel, then do an interview with Israel's GQ magazine or whatever it was back then. He went back to the pasture where he followed sheep around for seven years. Not like a week, not an afternoon, but seven years. Imagine the boredom, the tedium, the confusion.

God, I thought you wanted me to be king. Those seven years were a blank space where God's writing in David's life seemed to stop. And yet we learn later that during that season was when God was actually doing some of his best writing in David. It was there in the pasture that David developed the courage and the skill with the slingshot to fight Goliath. It was there in the pasture that he learned the themes that would one day emerge as Psalm 23. This was David's time of trial, and it was where God produced steadfastness in David, which David could not have learned any other way.

David, as you and I know him, became David in that little blank space in your Bible between 1 Samuel 16, verses 13 and 14. Change your perspective, count it joy. Because there is a good and sovereign God, James says, that is at work at you in the trial.

Y'all, this is important, listen to this. Joy is not a feeling that overcomes you. Many people are waiting on a feeling of God giddiness and Holy Ghost hallelujahs to just take them over.

That ain't ever gonna happen. Joy is a byproduct of believing the promises of God in the midst of great pain. You may feel the same, but in the promises of God, listen to this, your heart and your mind elevate to a peace and joy above your feelings because you are overcoming the world.

God has not called you to a joy in the world, but to a joy that overcomes the world, which leads to the second command. Number two, patience. In patience, James says, let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Y'all listen to this really clearly. Trials do not automatically produce good in you. I think it was Friedrich Nietzsche who said, whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

Nietzsche was not a Christian and that statement is not true. There are a lot of things that do not kill you that make you weaker and much worse as a person. Trials do not automatically produce good in you.

For many, unexplained pain produces bitterness and doubt and despair. You gotta choose whether you're gonna trust and hold onto God's good character and let him work his good in you, but that transformation is not automatic. Y'all listen, it's like Charles Spurgeon, the 19th century British pastor used to say, times of doubt and trial, they're like a foot poised to go forwards or backwards in faith.

This trial, he said, can indeed take you forward with God, further in with God, but that trial can also drive you backwards into unbelief. Reminds me of the story of the little bird that was flying south for the winter, but the bird got a late start, overslept his alarm or whatever, and all his friends were gone. So because he got a late start, he got caught in a snowstorm. The storm was so bad that ice formed on his little wings and he couldn't even fly, so he came down for a crash landing. He couldn't get back up because his wings are frozen and he thought, great, now I'm gonna freeze to death out here by myself. But then suddenly a cow came along and, how do I say this politely?

Took a dump on him, can I say that? Okay, just dropped manure on him. First, the little bird thinks that things have gone from bad to worse, but then he realizes that the manure is warming his wings and is thawing them.

He's gonna be able to fly again. And so he got so excited that he began to chirp and to sing, but that attracted a cat who comes along and eats him. And the lessons from this great little parable are three. Lesson number one, not everyone who drops manure on you is your enemy. Lesson number two, not everyone who digs you out is your friend. And the most important lesson, number three, when you're in manure, sometimes it's helpful just to keep your little chirper shut and see what God is up to, which is why we have this command.

It's what James is saying. Let steadfastness have its full effect. Let God do his work. There's times you just gotta be still. You don't need an answer. You're not gonna get an answer.

You just gotta rest in the character of your heavenly father. I think about Paul and Silas in Acts 16, unjustly in prison, publicly whipped and humiliated, sitting in the darkness of a prison cell, their lacerated backs leading up against that cold, filthy dungeon wall at midnight. And what are they doing? What are they doing?

You know the story? They start singing out their worship. What were they singing?

We don't know exactly, but I'm sure it was something about God's character and his faithfulness. There they are, open wounds, unjustly in prison, in pain, alone. And they're singing, God is so good. God is so good. He's so good. He's so good to me. And the jailer listening to them cannot believe it. He's like, what's wrong with you guys?

How is this happening? And then God sends an earthquake and the prison walls fall down and their chains fall off and the jailer falls on his knees before them. And he says, what must I do to be saved?

In other words, what do I have to do to have this kind of joy in a moment like this one? That earthquake was just a physical manifestation of the soul quake that Paul and Silas had gone through in trusting in the good character of God, even in the midst of their darkness. Their prison walls falling were one thing. More important were the walls that kept them from leaning into the good character of God in the midst of pain and darkness. Listen to me, every great Bible hero, all of them had a moment where they had to choose. Am I going to trust in the good character of God, the character that I see demonstrated in the cross and the resurrection?

Or am I going to let this chaos push me into disbelief and despair? Are you going to anchor your soul in God's character and let God do his work and let steadfastness have its full effect? Because only then, he says, only then can you be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Did you get that? You want to be perfect and complete? It's only through perseverance in suffering that you can be perfect and complete. There are things about God you can only learn in suffering. I would dare say we got a lot of people here who, they love signing up for Bible studies because they want to know God better.

And that's awesome. But I would bet that if we had a way for you to sign up for suffering, I'm guessing nobody would sign up for that. James says, yeah, but there are dimensions of God that you will only know from the heart when you suffer. There is a part of Christian maturity that can only come through pain, through darkness and through unanswered questions.

It's like Martin Luther, the reformer always said, three things make for a great Christian, three are necessary. Prayer, Bible study and suffering. None of us want pain, me included. The question is, do you want to know God more than you want to avoid pain? If so, then you will count it joy when you go through trials and you will patiently let steadfastness have its full effect.

I don't mean you're seeking out pain. I just mean that when life brings it to you, instead of getting bitter, you're going to turn to God and say, God, this is joy because this is how you can produce Christ in me. Which leads me to the third command and that command is prayer. If any of you lacks wisdom, James says, let him ask God, ask God who gives generously to all without reproach. We'll come back to that and it's going to be given to him.

Hey, I got good news for you brothers and sisters. God will help you. God will give you the wisdom, the direction, the insight and whatever other resources your soul needs for this to make you better and not better.

But there is a condition and it is a very important condition. And it is the reason that many of you are not receiving help from the Lord right now in your trial. Verse six, 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. That person should not suppose that he or she will receive anything from the Lord. Because that's a double-minded man and they are unstable in all their ways.

Now, let me just be very, very clear with you. When James says do this with no doubting, he does not mean you never have questions and that you live at all times with absolute certainty about what God is doing and feelings of peace that overwhelm you. That is not what he is saying. Every Christian I know struggles at times with doubts and confusion. It's not what James is talking about.

What James is saying is that when you go through trials, you can't hedge your bets. The word doubt is literally in Greek. If you have your Greek New Testament open, you'll see it. It says, die psychos, die to psycho's minds. It means your loyalties are divided.

You're of two minds. That means on Sunday, you're praying to God, asking him to fix your problems. But then on Monday, you take matters into your own hands and do it your way. On Sunday, you're like, God, I need you to work in my marriage.

God, I need you to work in my marriage. But on Monday, you're punishing your spouse or you're trying to manipulate them or you're feeling justified and being unfaithful to them. On Sunday, you're like, God, I need you to work in my finances. But on Monday, you switch to plan B, which is to, what, cheat on your taxes or overcharge your customers or stop giving your tithe.

What you're doing is you're hedging your bets. You're asking God to work, but you're not really leaning all of your confidence on him. We're learning God's way to work our way through difficult times here on Summit Life. Our listeners, I hope, know that one of our primary goals here at Summit Life is to empower every single one of our listeners to become disciple-making disciples.

And that is precisely why we've gone ahead and put together something special designed just for you. And that is a pack of 52 memory verse cards. It allows you to memorize one a week and really see your life and your relationships, your thinking changed. Memorizing scripture is more than just an academic exercise. It's more than getting yourself ready for a Bible quiz. It's a way of saturating your thinking with the gospel. It's a way that will affect your speech, what you say to others. You become a vessel of faith that is speaking God's Word to others.

So don't wait another minute. Go right now to jdgril.com and you'll find a way that you can reserve your set of these memory cards right there. So head on over there and let's impact our world with the timeless wisdom and truth and the explosive power of God's Word. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.