Rhythms of Thanks: Part 3
James 1:2-4
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
We are in our Rhythm of Thanks series and I hope that you have been following along and this is week three. I really appreciate Lauren's sermon last week which was very practical in encouraging us to have some habits and rhythms that we can implement in daily life to exercise that muscle of gratitude. I hope you've been using the gratitude calendars. If you're just joining us, you can take one of those calendars, use it for the next, you know, rest of the month and just write something down that you're grateful for.
Today we're going to be shifting gears a little bit and we're going to be talking about what happens when life gets difficult. What do we do when trials come, when trauma, pain, misfortune arise and what happens to our rhythm of thanks at that point? We know that these are realities of life, suffering, facing trials, challenges and there are different kinds of trials. There are things that maybe what I would say external things that happen to us, outer circumstances like natural disasters or losing a job or some kind of car accident. There's internal things, our own mental health, psychological trauma, emotional unhealth. Maybe there's family hurt, generational sin, trauma, tragedy, also physical health, physical trials like sickness, cancer, diseases and maybe even we're not the ones that are directly affected by those things but we are in close proximity. Maybe a loved one has those and so while we may not be in facing it directly, we still feel the weight of those challenges in people's life. What do we do then?
Well, the Bible tells us that suffering and trials go hand in hand with our faith. Some are surprised by this. They think that once God is a part of our lives, we no longer deal with hardships. As believers, if you've been walking with God, you can kind of chuckle at that. That is not true. Jesus' words are very clear to us in 1 Peter 4:12, it says, "Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you as though something strange was happening to you." Don't be surprised. Thankfully, the Bible doesn't just tell us that it's a part of our life but it also tells us how we are to continue worshiping God. What do we do when we fall on hard moments? Just a quick Google search about suffering in the Bible will lead you to some stories that you're probably familiar with. You can think of Job, who was a famous story in the Old Testament who lost everything. You can think of the life of Paul, who after coming to believe in Jesus was shipwrecked, he was imprisoned. You can even think, obviously, of Jesus, right, who was wrongfully accused, beaten, crucified. And I can summarize all of those in relation to our series in this way, that the Bible says that we don't stop giving thanks. We don't stop giving thanks. In the midst of whatever is happening, we continue to give thanks to God.
Today we're going to be in the New Testament book of James. If you'd like to turn there in your own Bibles, we'll have it on the screen. But we're going to be in James 1:2-4, which read this, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." I don't know how recently all of you have been through something challenging, a trial in your life. For some of you, it may seem like a never-ending slew of just one thing after another, hardship after hardship. For others, maybe you have to think back to the beginning of this year or last year sometime for the last serious difficulty that you faced. But whenever it was, I want you to spend a couple moments reflecting here. I want you to think of your emotions in the midst of that trial. What were some of the most common emotional stages that you were in, feelings that you felt? I want you to think of your mental headspace in that point. What were you feeling most often during that trial, that hardship? I even want you to think of your body's physical reaction. And would you say that there was any joy as one of the most common things that you felt through any of that? Was there any joy in your emotions? Were you feeling good mentally? Was your body feeling great, best it's ever felt? Adventure to say, probably not. No more naturally, we are prone to stress, to anxiety. Our bodies even get tense. Our minds are fraught. We can become short with other people. Just all of us, all of who we are is affected by a trial and a challenge that we go through. Trials and hardships more commonly elicit a negative reaction rather than joy. And if that's the case, then why does the Bible say consider it pure joy? What is God wanting from us in order that we have a response of joy and thanksgiving in the midst of suffering? Is God tone deaf? Is he like, "Hey, I know it sucks, but suck it up and just be happy." No, he's not. If that's what you thought, I'm here to really... That's not what God is saying. But in order to consider it pure joy, we may need to do a couple of things.
And first, if you're taking notes, the first thing is we may need to reframe the trial or the challenge that we are going through. It says, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds." That joy comes through perspective, not denial. We don't just ignore and force ourselves to be happy. That's not healthy. God isn't calling us to white-knuckle our way through hardships. Suffering is a part of our fallen world. And while most everyone can agree with that, the difference lies within our perspective of suffering. Secular modernity would say that suffering is a meaningless disruption. It's an annoyance. It gets in the way. It's something to work through and move past as quickly as possible. Eastern thought would believe in karma. It's deserved for some reason. You must have done something. Or it's an illusion that can be thought away. Christianity says that suffering is real, but it's not ultimate. It's painful, but it's capable of redemption.
Tim Keller, a former pastor, great author, says this, "While other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life's joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of the world's sorrows, tasting the coming joy." We have to reframe the way we understand and experience the trials that we face. Not as a nuisance or a meaningless experience, but to be willing to sit in them with Jesus and be curious about what He might be transforming inside of us through what's happening. And we do that with a foundation of hope that this world isn't where things end, but we have a glorious future with Him in eternity. We have to reframe the trial. Part of reframing the trial is also being okay with not knowing why it's happening. It's easy to reframe a hardship or a pain once we see some redemptive quality to the suffering. Sometimes, not always, we can see what God might be doing and we're thankful. We're like, "Hey, God, I know that this is hard right now, but I see what you're doing and I praise you for that." And maybe elsewhere in life, you see this in working out, and it hurts to work out. You're sore afterwards, but you understand that that is necessary to be fit, to be healthy, so you're like, "Hey, that's worth it. That pain, that suffering, that is worth it.”
Or maybe financially, you have to not buy some things, and that's hard because you're like, "I really want that, but I'm not going to." But you understand it's to be wise financially. It's helping you get out of debt. You understand that suffering that you're in in that moment. Maybe something tougher. Maybe it's the pain of letting a friendship go is better for your soul and your overall well-being because without their negativity, their gossip, whatever it is about that friendship, you understand that you're going to be better able to live the way that God has called you to live. Those are still tough things. Those are still sufferings and trials that we go through, but they're easier when we know why we experience the pain and the suffering. But what if we don't know? What if we don't understand any good in that moment? How are we to reframe the trial then? How are we to consider it, as our passage says, "pure joy" whenever you face these trials? Something that we need to work to understand, maybe one of the biggest reframings that we need to have, is that God doesn't often give explanations, but he always gives himself. He doesn't always give an explanation to us, but he always gives himself to us. We can be so desperate for an explanation, for a reason, for the why, that we miss God giving himself and his presence, which is exactly what we need. He is the source of peace.
Paul writes in Philippians 4:7, "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." And he says in verse 9, "And the God of peace will be with you." God often doesn't give explanations, but he always gives himself. C.S. Lewis wrote, "God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." Yet so often, we find ourselves looking for those things outside of God, in the world around us. This is especially humbling and challenging for me. I'm preaching to myself. I have sought reasons in the midst of trials. I've sought the why. I've asked God why, and I've done it for a long time, and I've done it to the point where I'm bordering becoming bitter at God, because I'm not getting the why. And maybe you've been there too. And I miss at times that he's right there with me, and that is the greater gift.
I was having a conversation with John Thomas, who helps out with youth. He was a former youth student. Now he's helping out with youth, and we were having a conversation recently about the hardest times in our life. We're just going back and forth. What a great conversation, right? Like, what's the hardest thing you've ever gone through? And then he asked me, and I said, probably the year 2020, as it was hard for so many of you. For me, in that time you heard some of the story before, it was the beginning of our church closing, the church that I worked at, that I grew up in, the church that I was a pastor at for eight years. We began the process of closing. And I was a church family, much like this church family, that I had come to love and adore. Most of that church was at my wedding. We brought Kinsley home to that church family. And so I was losing a job, my income. I was losing a church family, and I was entering into the unknown. And I kept asking God why. I did not understand. And most of my prayers were, I was just frustrated. I didn't get it. And in time, in the years that followed, and yes, it took me years to process all that, I began to see that God may be wanting me more than to have an intellectual understanding of why. He wanted me to experience deep relational intimacy and inner transformation, as I learned to trust the person and character of God, even when I couldn't find a trace of his plan in my life. None of the things made sense to me, but I had to learn to trust him. That was a reframing of the entire situation. It didn't give answers, but it reframed my expectations in the midst of my trial. And so maybe more important than us understanding what's happening, God wants us to experience deep relational intimacy with him and wants us to learn to trust him, simply based on who he is, not always just for what he does. Sometimes we don't understand that it's him doing it, and we just think, "God, are you even there?" And he's sitting there saying, "Are you still going to trust me? I'm right here with you. Are you going to trust me?" Tim Keller again says, "When we stop demanding to understand and start trusting the one who does, thanksgiving becomes possible again." That's obviously easier said than done, but it's so true and so good. So that's the first adjustment. We may need to reframe the trials that we go through, may need to reframe our mind and our heart as we enter into those trials and struggles and pains. We'll be one step closer if we do that to considering it pure joy and to keeping a rhythm of thanks in our life.
The second thing is to recognize the process. Verse three says, "Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance." Recognize the process. Testing and trials refine our faith. We often want the process to be deny the pain, move past it as quickly as possible, avoid pain at all costs. Let's just get past this, get back to the good times. We tend to think of trials and pains as opposites of praise and gratitude, that they don't occur at the same time. "God, I want to praise you, but I'm in this hard time, so I can't. If you were to just deliver me from this, then I would praise you for being in a good place again." But the Bible shares and encourages us to hold lament and praise together. The Bible project actually says, "Lament is not the opposite of praise, it's the pathway to it." Sometimes the process of us getting to the place where we can praise God and be in His presence fully is going through the trial and through the pain, not around it, not avoiding it. And really, if you were to look at so many of the biblical characters, they go through different hardships and trials, and oftentimes they are closer to God in the midst of that trial than even after it, when God is right there for them. The truth is, honest grief and deep gratitude can coexist together. Honest grief or sorrow, mourning, whatever you're feeling about the hardship you're going through, and deep gratitude can coexist together. And when they do, when we are holding both of those things before God and just saying, "I'm feeling these things, God, this is who I am right now," the process of our hearts being refined is at maximum efficiency. That's where God is working in our hearts the most, when we're honest with Him about what we're feeling.
In fact, biblical lament is an act of faith and gratitude. To echo the writers of the Psalter, in the midst of pain and suffering, Psalm 13, the author wrote, "How long, O God, this crying out for, how long must I suffer?" Cries out in pain and agony, but also he cries out in faith because crying out, "How long, O God," means it assumes that God is still there. It assumes that God is still listening. It assumes that God can do something about the pain and the trial. So there is faith in crying out. That's why the Psalms of Lament always turn towards praising God and trust. That Psalm 13 that starts with, "How long, O God," ends with, "But I trust in your unfailing love. My heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord's praises for he has been good to me." Psalm 22, which is another lament, which begins with the famous line that Jesus quotes while dying on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That is a Psalm of deep and dark agony. And the Psalm ends with many verses acknowledging God is Lord over all. Verse 29 of that Psalm says, "All will feast and will worship and will kneel before him." Psalm 44, which is a communal lament, ends with a cry for help that calls upon God's unfailing love. They turn from lament in the midst of suffering towards praising God, not because their feelings have changed and they're suddenly happy and they're like, "Oh, just writing this was all I needed. Everything's different now." Their circumstances haven't even changed, but because they are remembering who God is and his faithfulness to them, they rest in that. And they're present in that thought of, "I know God. I know who he is. I know how good he is. I know what he can do. I know what he has done. And he is good.”
We need to recognize that the process of enduring trials, of being tested, is important. It has its place in our life. It's how we are refined. You have to go through fire to be refined. And when you go through fire, you get burned a little bit. So we need to reframe the trial. We need to recognize the process. So then we need to remain through perseverance. Verse four says, "Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." Let God finish his work. As we've said, we tend to be adverse to pain and trials. We don't like it. We want it to end as quickly as possible. But we need to remain with God through the fire and through the trials. This is often the hardest part, to remain in something faithful. This is counter to our natural reaction, right? If you're in the kitchen, you touch a hot pan or pot on the stove, you flinch, you withdraw. You don't go back to it and be like, "Oh, that's probably good for me. Let me just keep my hand there." No. But the Bible says if trials refine us and they help mature our faith, then we need to get that full experience. Let's not stunt our spiritual growth by just begging God the entire time and being fixated on God as soon as this can end. This would be great. Now, I do want to say this. This doesn't mean that we don't pray for hard things to end. God is very much, church hear me in saying this, God is very much in the business of healing, of restoration, of redemption. We can pray those prayers. We should pray those prayers. But it also means that we should strive to have a certain endurance. Understanding that until God relieves whatever it is we're going through, it doesn't mean that he's not listening. It doesn't mean that what we're going through doesn't have a purpose. And so we need to be attentive to what he's doing within us in the midst of that suffering. We continue to pray, God, please heal, please restore, please take this, whatever it is away. But while I'm in it, God, also do your work. As we remain in the process, letting God finish his work in us, we realize that the most important thing is that God is with us. And when we do that, it's only then that we can realize that the most important thing of God being with us is also that he's the only thing that we really need. When we can get to the point that no matter how the trial ends or when it ends, we are thankful for God's presence with us. That is a beautiful place. You can never learn that Christ is all you need until Christ is all you have.
That was Corrie Ten Boom. If you don't know Corrie Ten Boom, she was a Dutch woman, a daughter of a watchmaker in World War II. Her and her family decided to help hide Jews who were trying to escape from the Holocaust. Their family famously put up a false wall in their house and had a system of helping hide Jews who were trying to flee with the Dutch resistance. During this time, food was in short supply and there were ration cards that everyone had to have to get food. And she knew the civil servant who was in charge of the distribution of these ration cards. She had done work with the man's daughter who was mentally disabled. And when she went to him to ask for ration cards that she needed, she writes in her book, The Hiding Place, "I opened my mouth to say five, but the number that unexpectedly and astonishingly came out instead was 100." And he gave them to her. And she provided cards to every Jew that she met, helping them be able to eat during this time. Someone informed the Gestapo about the Ten Booms work and the entire family was arrested. The father died in prison shortly thereafter. Cory was held in solitary confinement for three months before her first hearing. At her trial, Cory Ten Boom spoke about her work with people with mental and physical disabilities and the Nazis who were at the time killing anyone with a mental and physical disability. They scoffed at her. And Ten Boom defended her work by saying that in the eyes of God, a mentally disabled person might have more value than a watchmaker, and then looked at them and said, "Or a lieutenant in the army." Well, Cory and her sister, Betsy, were sent to a political concentration camp, then a women's labor camp in Germany, where they began holding worship services with a Bible that they smuggled in. And many prisoners came to believe in Jesus. Betsy, her sister, however, died on December 16th, 1944. But before she died, she said to her sister, "There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still." Twelve days later, Cory was released. It wasn't until afterwards, sometime later, she found out that she was only released because of a clerical error, and that all the women in her age group one week later were sent to the gas chamber. And she writes, "You can never learn that Christ is all you need until Christ is all you have." There is so much freedom to be found in the place where Christ is all you have. And you know that He is all you need. And I think in our time, in our lives, that's very hard. We're surrounded with a consumerist world that says, "The more you have, the happier you are. The more you don't, you're not happy until you have this. Your life is not complete." But the truth is, Christ is all we need.
Once we realize that Christ is all we need and that He is with us, this is where gratitude can really come to the forefront of our beings. We need to respond with gratitude. We thank God not for the pain, but for His presence and purpose within it. Thank God that you are not alone in whatever you are going through. You can thank God that He is the power to redeem and rescue you. Furthermore, gratitude and suffering happens when we realize that God suffers with us. And that His suffering on the cross through His Son Jesus changes the meaning of our suffering. If we see that God brought the greatest good through the most unjust, the worst suffering and unfair suffering a person has ever endured in Christ, He can surely do the same in ours. Tim Keller again says, "Giving thanks doesn't trivialize our pain. It honors the one who entered it and will one day undo it." We have to understand that without the cross, there would be no thanksgiving and suffering. It would just mean suffering to suffer, pain for pain's sake. And thankfully, praise God, that is not the case for us. Actually, when we give thanks in the midst of trials, a couple things are happening. One, it's a spiritual act of defiance against despair, fighting against the victim mentality. It says, "My pain is real, but my redeemer is greater." Gratitude becomes a form of hope, believing that everything sad will come untrue.
Gratitude is an act of defiance against despair. It also does this, gratitude is a way of joining God's story of restoration before it's fully realized. It anticipates the resurrection and new life that Jesus brings. As believers, we have hope of eternity with Him, where there is no more suffering. Revelation 21:4 says, "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Bible Project says, "Hope is not naive optimism, it is confidence in what is already underway through the power of Jesus." We can appreciate God for giving us that hope and for the promise of the future that we have, and we can respond with gratitude.
As we wrap up our time this morning, we're going to have some table discussions. Hopefully these questions will help you as you figure out your rhythm of things in the midst of whatever trial you're going through. So I just want to walk through these really quickly. Number one is, how can you differently define your trials in light of scripture? Are you defining your trials correctly? Remember God giving thanks in trials is not about denying them, but looking at them from the right perspective. So do you need to reframe your approach to whatever you're experiencing, that struggle, that challenge, the trial? Do you need to reframe your expectations of God? Do you need to reframe how the trial you are in is an opportunity to grow closer to Him? Number two, what would it look like personally to recognize and remain in God's refining process? Do you see that what you are going through can mature you and grow you deeper in your faith? And instead of holding only two options out in front of you and before God saying, "God, it's either this trial or no trial or pain or no pain, suffering or no suffering," and demanding that God answer you in the way that you deem best, can you hold it all before God and simply ask, "How do I glorify you in this season with what I'm going through?" Remain in the process. We can feel and experience various emotions, even seemingly contrasting emotions at the same time, grief and joy, mourning and thanksgiving. Recognizing that you are in a refining process, and while it might be painful, it would be helpful because it helps to see that the Godly work that is happening within us. So don't become so fixated on getting past the hardship and the struggle that you miss what God is trying to do within you. And then number three, how can you increase your gratitude toward God in the midst of your trials? It might start with, are you even giving thanks at all when you are in a hard time? Are you fighting despair with gratitude? Are you thankful for the joy that comes from suffering? Not joy from what suffering takes from us, but what God gives us in the midst of that suffering. Endurance, wisdom, Christ-likeness, intimacy with God. So go ahead right now, whatever question you're feeling, maybe all three of them, but we'll just give you a few minutes and then we'll circle back up in a few minutes here.
All right, I hope those discussions have been good and sorry to interrupt you at this time and feel free to continue afterwards after church ends, but I also want to say this very important thing that I mentioned that you guys, that God is with you in the midst of whatever you're facing. Maybe you feel that, maybe you don't. And I think oftentimes we feel God's presence through other believers that we know that we're not alone through God, through our church community. And so I just want to remind you of that, that you are not alone and that you don't have to face anything that you are going through alone. And I know that maybe being vulnerable is hard, but this church is a place where you can be free and safe and to share whatever you are going through and we are here for you. As pastors too, I want to make sure that you know that you can always call, email, text. Part of our job is to care for our congregation. And so we walk through all of you in whatever you're going through in life, the joys, but also the hardships. So please take advantage of that and never feel alone, but you can always call and there's always someone here at this church that is going to be there for you.
Last, I just want to say this. I was listening to a song this week, "Come Thou Fount," maybe you know it, an old hymn. And I love the line that says, "Tune my heart to sing thy praise." And I think that's our prayer, that in whatever season we find ourselves in, whether a joyful one and we're praising God or in the midst of a turbulent season, and that idea of tuning, it's just a little adjustment. And maybe we were in a season that was good and now we're in a different season, so we just need to be tuned a little bit. And when God tunes us, then we can sing his praises again. It doesn't mean that the circumstance changed, but our heart is in a place where we can worship God. So let's go ahead and pray right now.
God, that is our prayer, that you would tune our hearts to sing your praises. We want to thank you, God, that we do not walk down this road of life alone, but that this journey toward eternity and towards your heart has been from the very beginning ordained by you. And therefore we praise you, even in our sadness, knowing that the sorrows we steward in this life will be redeemed. God, we ask that you would use our pain and suffering in the trials as tools in your hand, shaping our hearts into a truer imitation of Christ. God, we pray that you would help reframe our minds this week. If that's what's needed, that we would just have a different perspective and be seeking to know not necessarily why it's happening, but just how you are with us to be present with you. And God, that you would use whatever we're going through as a process to refine us. And that when it's hard, that we would remain, until you have restored and redeemed and rescued us God, that we would remain with perseverance in that just sitting with you. And God, I pray that you would help us to learn how to give thanks in the midst of trials. And ultimately give thanks because you are with us in them. Help us Lord. And we do pray. We pray right now for all of us are going through different things. We pray that you would be working to relieve us of that. And we know that you can, and we know that you will in your timing and in your perfect way. And so we pray that that would come true as well. And so God, we pray this. We pray that you would illuminate our way, that you would kindle our hope, that you would be our healing, that you would grant us peace, that you would be our righteousness, be our salvation and be our God. Amen.