Scripture Notes: Count It All Joy (James 1)

“Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet with various trials” (James 1:2). Joy? In the midst of trials? In the midst of suffering? When things aren’t going well? When everything is falling apart? When we can’t see a way out? We’re supposed to count it all joy? 

James responds with a rousing “Yes!” These trials have a purpose, he explains. They test our faith, and it is only in this testing, this challenge, that faith grows and becomes strong and steadfast. When our faith is tested, we have to examine it more carefully. We have to reflect on what we believe and why we believe it. We have to turn to God and pray for an increase in faith. When we do this, our faith can grow in ways that it may not have but for the trials. 

Further, James continues, that testing produces steadfastness, patience, endurance, perseverance. We learn how to keep going even when we think we can’t. And that steadfastness, that holding on in the midst of trials, leads us to a sort of perfection. The Greek word is telios, and here it likely means a kind of maturity, a full development. We reach our proper end. We become complete, whole, intact. We grow into the people God wants us to be, lacking in nothing that He wants us to have.

All of this comes through trial, through testing, through suffering, for God brings great good out of things that seem to us to be not good at all. God is working in a way we can’t see. No wonder, then, that James invites us to joy even in the middle of of trials, testing, and suffering because we can trust that God will use them to our greatest and best effect to shape us into the people He wants us to be.