Living Wisely Through Trials

How do God’s people regard life’s pressures? What response best brings God glory? Is it possible that God would be much more glorified if He insured that we never faced any of life’s difficulty and pressures?
According to James God’s people should regard our trials with joy and delight. But how can we do so? While walking through trouble with joy may seem to be an oxymoron the scriptures teach and so we believe that the people of God can live wisely through life's troubles so that our reaction to stress and pressure reflects well on our savior and our salvation. With that in mind just how can we have joy in the face of pressure, stress and trouble?

We can live wisely through trials by remembering that we are at war.

Satan is God's enemy and seeks to ruin God's glory by separating God from His people. Since this is spiritual warfare then we should expect a measure of difficulty and pain keeping in mind that our enemy desires to distract us from worshiping, delighting in, serving and loving our Lord. God has graciously given us His word however so that we'll have His insight and perspective on our trials. Regarding pressure, struggle and pain the scriptures teach a number of things. Among them are the following:

Troubles aren’t an automatic signal that God is displeased with us. The gospel assures us that God is as pleased with us as possible since we’re in Christ.
Troubles are a regular and normal aspect of our walk with the Lord. Therefore trouble while unwanted and unwelcome doesn’t surprise us.

As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, 21 yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.[ Mt. 13:20-21.

Jesus said that tribulation (that is pressure and trouble) or persecution will confront those who’ve believed the gospel.

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."

Here our Lord said plainly that the disciples would experience trouble and pressure in this world.

Troubles are one of the ways God works through our lives. This gives us assurance that these aren’t some random events happening because of some secret sin or because we haven’t grabbed hold of real biblical faith.

God will use the trouble in our lives to help us to identify with others who face similar situations.

We live wisely through our trials knowing that God is at work in our lives. James declares that He is building endurance within us. Endurance is that biblical quality of sticking with the Lord even when things aren’t going well at all.

We’re familiar with the term endurance in terms of an endurance race. That’s a race where the participants must set their minds to run a long race and not a short sprint. Upon first training for an endurance race the body feels a measure of pain as it adjusts to the new exercise routine but eventually responds so that you can continue to run and gain the benefit of good physical exercise.

In the same way God has chosen to build endurance within us by allowing us to pass through periods of struggle and difficulty so that we might learn of goodness, lean on His strength and be encouraged by His joy in our lifetime relationship with Him. It's important for us to grasp the truth that God hasn't called us to Himself for just a moment or only to experience a life of ease.


We live wisely through our trials by asking for God's wisdom. And that brings us to the main theme of James’ letter which is the practice of godly wisdom for the purpose of living and enjoying an effective, fruitful walk with our Lord. Generally scripture defines and describes wisdom as the knowledge and practice of the fundamentals for godly and upright living. Wise living is living that takes a long view of life recognizing that investing in good, godly choices now will yield dividends of abundant peace, order, and well being.

Many of you already know that wisdom differs from knowledge in that knowledge refers to being aware of and familiar with certain concepts and facts. Wisdom is the ability to put such knowledge to good, effective use.
For example most of us have knowledge of the kind of diet necessary to avoid many of the diseases we as a community struggle against. Wisdom however is the ability to take that knowledge, make the needed changes and actually live on a healthy diet.

In this passage we need to ask God for wisdom so that we might not only endure our trials but do so with joy.
Applying biblical wisdom while we’re under the pressure of trials can move us into living lives of joy and thus find richness in the Lord and in life that we would not have known otherwise.
The challenge before us is this: we will either be ruled by our circumstances and allow them to dictate how we feel, how we think and how we view our lives or we will seek and apply God’s wisdom so that the truths of the gospel will rule our hearts and minds resulting in a life of joy regardless of our circumstances.

Finally, we live wisely through our trials knowing that Jesus weathers the storm with us. We never, ever walk alone through our trouble and pain. Our Lord always walks with us and at times even carries us through them. We can always depend on His loving strength, compassion and grace no matter how hard and difficult the place He's called us into. And when He is ready our Lord will calm the storms and circumstances of our lives for His glory and our good.

To Him Who Loves Us...
pastor lance