June 15, 2025
Jesus promised us many wonderful things. He promised us friendship! He said in John 15:14 “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
In John 10:10 Jesus promised life to the full. In Matthew ch. 11, Jesus said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest!” “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Rest and an easy life sound great! I would like an easy life. Wouldn’t you? To have so much money you never have to worry about if you have enough. To have great health, no matter if you eat fried Oreos for breakfast everyday and skip exercise. To have great relationships with family and friends with no arguments ever. Everybody loves you. Nobody hates you. If when Jesus says, “My yoke is easy” means an easy life, that sounds pretty good!
Today we are talking about a promise of Jesus that doesn’t sound easy and wonderful. Jesus promised, “In this world you will have trouble! He promised hardship! Challenges! What kind of promise is this?
A challenge can be a good thing. When I was a kid, there was a high dive at the pool. I would go off the low dive, but the high dive was scary! It took time. The day came I decided to do it. I told my mom. She was standing in the middle of the pool, watching me. I climbed the ladder, but it seemed really high up there! Then, I jumped! My mom said I looked like the statue of liberty because I held my nose with one hand, and the other hand was up above my head! Has anybody else had a high dive moment?
Pastor, Charles Stanley once said, “Every challenge we go through in life is eventually a story we tell. Live a story worth telling.”
That high dive story I just told you? It’s a story, only because I accepted the challenge. We may not like difficulties, trials, conflict, or illness. But persevering through challenges gives us a story worth telling. It also gives us a chance to lean on God and see what only God can do!
The book of James in our New Testament is written to Christians gathering and worshipping in synagogues in what’s now Turkey and Greece. James, who writes this book, is different from Paul. Paul often starts a letter with greetings to the church he is writing to. But James introduces himself, then just says, “Greetings.” Doesn’t say who is greeting, he just jumps right into a difficult teaching. James 1:2 says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds…” It makes you wonder, why should I be joyful when I have trials? He sounds a little like Jesus and His promise, “In this world you will have trouble!”
Here’s why James says it’s a joy to have difficulties! Verse. 3 says, “because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” James says it’s great to have difficulties, because it builds a persevering faith! A persevering faith believes that God is good, and God wants the best for you. It’s faith that trusts that God will make things work out, or else that God has a reason not to provide a happy ending. The good news is, we don’t have to have perfect faith. No one has perfect faith. But we can have persevering faith. When difficulties come your way, but still you trust God, that’s what James is talking about. If you hang in there, you will grow spiritually!
When you have faith in God in good times, you have no problems in your life, you’re doing great, and you trust God, your faith is not very impressive. But when you are sick, or you’re not getting along with your spouse, or you have a family member with a substance use disorder, or you lose your job, but still you trust God, that’s impressive! You have persevering faith! You’ve matured to where you trust God, not knowing if the story will have a happy ending or not. Persevering faith honors God! It’s also good for you!
James says in verse 4, “Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James is saying, trust God in the face of difficulties, don’t give up! It’s really hard, but keep on trusting, keep on believing. Because when you hang in there, you become mature, you come out of this trying time with greater faith. You fulfill the purpose God has for you. We grow best in times of challenge and perseverance, when we face difficulty but lean into God. The easy path is tempting, but we grow most in faith and obedience when we do what is difficult, trusting God. We live a relatively comfortable life. Things are more comfortable today than 150 years ago. We live twice as long as people used to live! We have good medical care. We don’t need to walk as much, we have cars. We don’t have to haul buckets of water into the house for drinking and washing. We don’t have to walk out to the outhouse. We have electricity, refrigerators, washer/dryers, cars, and indoor plumbing.
But there’s a cost to all that comfort! Comfort doesn’t fulfill you the way struggle does. We know that it makes a better story when you can say, “I used to walk three miles to school, through deep snow!” Did anybody walk 3 miles to school? Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Sometimes we exaggerate to make our stories more interesting.
The more trials and challenges you go through, it’s not just a better story, but you get the stroger. We kind of know this. If you lose a loved one, it’s often helpful to talk about it with somebody who has been through the same thing. They can be an inspiration to you. They got through this, so can I! You know they persevered, and you can to. That’s why a support group can be so great! If you’re struggling with a relative who is abusing drugs or alcohol, you really want to talk to someone else who has navigated the same thing. You want to learn from their strength.
We grow from trials! The easy path is tempting, but we grow most in faith and obedience when we do what is difficult. God doesn’t send us trials. But He can use them to help us grow stronger, and and put our trust in him.
So many of us, when we tell our faith story, it’s about trials we went through, and how God helped us through. A part of my faith story is when I was working in two homeless shelters in Seattle. There were challenging things the homeless residents went through: domestic violence, kidnapping, one 23-year-old we all thought was a nice guy set fire to a building and went to prison. A firefighter died in that fire. I remember one incident. In the shelter for street people, the staff took an elevator up to the shelter. The clients had to take the stairway. Once I was about to get on the elevator. I saw a guy with a piece of wood with a big nail sticking out of it. I could tell he was mad and wanted to hurt someone. He was going up the stairs. I got in the elevator and got in the shelter before he did. I tried to tell another staff person about the guy, but words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I was too scared. I could only point at the door. The guy came up the stairs into the shelter, tried to hit someone with his board and nail, and missed. The staff got the situation under control. God got me through that, a day at a time. It sometimes felt like God was hammering me with a front row seat for homeless people’s troubles. But God was forming me. He taught me I am not going to save the world from their problems or fix people. I can’t do that. I can listen and show compassion. I can make a little difference, help someone in a small way, and that’s enough.
It may be that, when you tell your faith story, it’s that God helped you in a difficult time. He did something in you in that time, that he just doesn’t do any other way. Jesus promised “In this world you will have trouble.” He finishes that with, “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” James told the Christians to persevere in faith. The great faith of those early Christians led to Christians around the world embracing faith. And that’s how we have faith today! The easy path is tempting, but we grow most in faith and obedience when we do what is difficult, trusting God.
For our challenge this week, let’s pray together. God, everyone here is going through something. And some of us are going through really difficult things. I pray that you would encourage us, let us know we can get through this. You’ve got this, and you have overcome the world! Help each of us persevere in hard times, trusting in you. Amen.
Maureen Duffy-Guy's blog 