Produces Patience (James 1:2-3)

   "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience." James 1:2-3

    It has been said that when you pray for patience, God just doesn't give you patience automatically, but rather He gives you opportunities to exercise and grow your patience. Well though questionable, these verses from James seems to teach it.

   So often we, like impatient children, get so hung up with such small and trivial problems and darken our countenances, forgetting that "we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance." (Romans 5:3) And it's this very knowledge that our struggles grow us to be more patient and perseverance is what makes us able to get through the tough times, through those moments where misfortune seems to repeatedly befall us.

  Those times of misfortune, some of which have come today, seem to really frustrate me because I see them as arbitrary things that, in my mind, aren't supposed to happen. They are big stumbling blocks that keep me from being what I want (which I sometimes disguise as God's will). But instead, if I would rather see them as "tests of faith" from God to make me more patient, it changes everything, for it changes my outlook.

   God is more concerned about making me more like Jesus than accomplishing some grand purpose in His will. Actually that is His will, for me to "be conformed to the image of His Son" (Romans 8:29). Instead of wallowing over these various trials that befall me daily, I should see them as tests from God so that I may step up to the challenge of being more like His Son, Jesus. A biblical example is Job, whom God let the most faith-deepening of trials so that He might show, to Satan, how righteous His servant truly was, and so that God might later bless Job.

  "Count it all joy" Why? "For the testing of your faith produces patience." Yet still, why count it all joy? Because a patient Christian is a Christ-like Christian; for he will be bale to train the Peters, bear the crowds, wait on the Lord. Also a patient Christian is a happy Christian. Despite what the devil may throw at him. the patient Christian sees the trials as, not punitive judgment from God, but as a challenge to prove his faith. Also a patient Christian is an edifying Christian. Is it not amazing how the calm of one Christian can bring peace to the most stressful crowd even in the face of massing persecution and most heated of trials, for patience is also contagious. The patient Christian is also the loving Christian; for one of the pillars of love is patience (1 Corinthians 13:4) and is it not the patient Christian that can best endure the most blabbering of sobs and bear the most fieriest bursts of wrath and the most prolonged bouts of depression from other people. Surely a patient Christian makes the best minister.

   And finally, the patient Christina is the most rejoicing Christian for "patience (produces) character, and character, hope; and hope does not disappoint for the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Romans 5:4-5)

   Application: Therefor I will see the trial and moments that usually give me silent frustration, and see them as an opportunity to grow in patience and become more like Christ.