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Oozing with practicality, James is a short but challenging read. In fact, it’s more like stepping onto the porch in your summer pajamas when it’s freezing outside!
James affectionately points believers toward embracing unnatural responses with one purpose in mind: immovable faith. This is faith that’s unflappable in the face of difficulty or temptation and unwavering under all sorts of trials.
That, my dear, requires bravery. It’s a daring you and I cannot possess naturally. Knowing this, James also communicates how this bravery can be developed and unleashed.
He opens with a zinger, calling us to be joyful when we meet various kinds of trouble.
Joy in badness?
Why can’t I just grit my teeth and take my licks? Stay depressed for long periods of time? Hold onto my anger, letting it ooze into my relationships? Carry the torch of injustice? Remain the victim? What’s wrong with all that? Especially if the trouble was devastating. People do it all the time.
Why can’t we just walk out the badness as really bad and keep moving until it’s just a dull throb?
“It was terribly crushing, actually, but I made it through.”
What is it to experience joy when we meet trials of various kinds?
It’s not joy in spite of badness. We’re not commanded to put on a happy face when bad things happen or that there is something deeply wrong with us when we can’t.
Rather, it’s a joy by reason of the badness. This is a joy that arises within us BECAUSE OF the difficulty. This is joy worked though the sorrow, like strength out of weakness, or when we see God bringing life out of death. It’s a tremendous paradox at best, but purely impossible.
Is James completely mad? No. He’s not Lone Rangering it here. We find this call to joy out of difficulty with Paul in Romans, and Peter echoes the same sentiment. These guys recognized the Christian life as more than unicorns and candy corn.
I’m sorry. You and I will not become Christ-like without the badness. I don’t like it--not one emphatic bit! Give me a unicorn, please! That’s what my natural self screams.
But Jesus wants more for us. He wants us to lack nothing. We don’t need unicorns. Just joy.
Today, trade in your requests for a unicorn and begin begging Jesus to help infuse joy into your badness.
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About this Plan
Have you ever felt stuck, timid, or even a little wimpy when it comes to trusting God when life gets difficult? Well, that’s natural, my friend. But it’s not for you. Instead, God beckons us to live courageously for Him, filled with His joy. We need bravery to possess immovable faith for experiencing joy in badness. The how and what it looks like are what this plan is all about.
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