Sunday, September 27, 2009

How We Should View Trouble (James 1:2)

I’ve never liked riding roll-coasters. For me it was always an experience, even in my youth and adolescence, I hated. I would often take rides because of female friends that were thrilled by the coaster rides at the Mid-South Fair. While they would be screaming with excitement, having held hands in the air as the dips and turn took place, I would be holding on for dear life. I am thankful that I had enough tolerance to not get sick on the ventures. What a greater embarrassment that would have been!

Getting through a season of trouble is a lot like surviving a roller-coaster ride – except we do not volunteer for trouble; and trouble was never intended to be fun. Trouble is filled with stomach-wrenching drops, dips, and sudden curves. And just when we think we’ve caught out breath, we’re dropped again. If we didn’t know better, we might think that this roller-coaster ride is a random experience – that somehow the forces that lift us up and push us down are acts of fate. It is not a random ride at all. Those who understand the work of God, in and through our troubles, know that He does not abandon us to disaster. Rather, with all the strength of His character, He provides a well-engineered superstructure that supports the process along with a carefully planned set of tracks and guardrails. Even when the ride is hectic, unsettling, and too twisted for us to sense the presence of His support and guidance, He is still there. Our only hope is to stay in the car and find something solid to hold on to through every turn of the experience.

When trouble invades our comfort zone, two needs rise to the top: (1) The need for understanding (to find answers to the probing and disturbing questions that crowd our mind and souls) and (2) the need for healing (to feel better and to finish the problem). Of the two, understanding is the key to managing the problem effectively to its ultimate outcome. Without the understanding that produces the right answers, there is no sense of direction.

When James wrote, Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials (Jas. 1:2 NASB), his choice of words was strategic. The Apostle James uses a specific word for trouble (trials) that leads to a helpful understanding of what trouble is. Barnes, in his notes, paraphrases James 1:2 by saying that when troubles come, “Don’t resist them as intruders, but welcome them as friends!”

The Greek word for trials is a word that means, “To examine or test for the purpose of providing or revealing something about the thing tested.”Trials, then, is “a test that reveals something for a specific purpose. Of all the things we could say about trials – that they are disappointing, discouraging, humiliating, uncomfortable, painful, and disheartening – God sees them, among other reasons, as tests that reveal our true selves. In times of trouble the “real me” becomes apparent. So trouble is revelatory.

Trouble is one of God’s ways of examining our lives. When we are on “Easy Street” – and thank the Lord He lets us come up for air periodically – it is hard to know what we are really like. We can carry on a cosmetic existence, fooling ourselves and most people, about our true nature. But when troubles hit our lives, what we are really like is quickly revealed. Trouble shows our friends, our spouses, our children, and our acquaintances what we are like. Even more unsettling, it forces us to start seeing ourselves for who and what we really are.

So what good is trouble? Well, among other things, trouble reveals where I am in the growth process in terms of my conformity to the image and character of Christ. It gets me beyond assumptions to reality. Am I a forgiving person? Am I kind? Understanding? Just? Loving? Helpful? Patient? Or am I angry, slanderous, self-centered, inflexible, manipulative, weak and not equipped to respond to trials correctly.

No, I don’t like riding roller-coasters. And I don’t like the “various trials” which often enter my life. But because I know they have a unique purpose; and because I know Romans 8:28 says, And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. I’m willing to catch hold of the Master’s hand, hold tight, and ride out my troubles!

What about you?