Choose Joy by Kay WarrenSample

Day Four

True Colors

Choosing to believe that God is always working, knitting together the fragments of our lives, always in control of it all, means that life will work together for our good and his glory. 

Of course, we want all the answers now, today, this moment. And we want more than simple answers. We want explanations in triplicate with a certification that God is qualified to make those decisions, thank you very much. That’s why the word ultimately is in our definition of joy. God doesn’t promise answers or explanations on demand, as he reminded Job. He promises joy. 

James, the half-brother of Jesus, who wrote the Epistle of James, did not accept that Jesus was the Messiah during Jesus’s lifetime, but later he became a pastor and a pillar of the early church. Tradition tells us that he was martyred for his faith, so I’m eager to listen to what this man, who penned these famous words in James 1:2–4, has to say about joy: 

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. 

James says that in tough times our “faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors.” That’s a rather daunting thought: No matter what you say you believe, or what others think you believe, there’s no hiding or pretending when the bottom falls out.

The faith-life I claim to have is revealed in those difficult moments—not to God, because he already knows the true state of my heart, but to me and to others. As painful as it is to become aware of the holes in our faith, we can be grateful that tough times give us an accurate report of where we need to change and grow. It’s in those hardest moments that we come again to the realization that God is God and we are not.

Father, I am struggling with the realization that troubles expose my faith-life. Help me to draw closer to you so that I can build a stronger faith-life that includes joy in all things. In Jesus’s name, amen.