“Yes, Mother, I’ve had a hard day. Jennifer has been most difficult. I know I ought to be more firm, but it is hard. Well, you know how she is. Yes, I remember you warned me. I remember you told me that she was a vile creature who would make my life miserable and you begged me not to marry her. You were perfectly right. You want to speak with her? All right.
The man looks up from the telephone and calls to his wife in the next room, “Jennifer, your mother wants to talk to you!”
Yes, some things in life are hard. Some people make life hard!!
James 1:2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Endurance has a reward. It can bring a great result. Your character can be changed. You will become a mature Christian, AND you would “lack nothing.” This thing called endurance brings something with it. What we say we need, what we say we would like to become, is the fruit of Endurance. People think if they win the lottery, they get everything. Not so. The Bible says if you get endurance, you will lack nothing. Most Christians, I think, do not really believe this. They think, “I don’t really want to be a super Christian. I don’t need to glow in the dark! Just give me the ‘lack nothing’ part and I’m good.”
Yet God says the way endurance comes, and its fruit of “lacking nothing”, is through your faith being tested. The testing of your faith happens when the things you know the Bible says are true seem like they are NOT true. This testing time is normal and good, even though it feels bad and destructive.
I do not know anyone who has been a Christian for any length of time, who has not experienced a great testing of faith that could have ruined them. One couple that my wife and I knew and loved, had tried and tried to have a child. They had taken fertility drugs for years, and done all the procedures the doctors prescribed, and after much effort and expense, the wife finally got pregnant. They were overjoyed. In fact, the whole church was ecstatic. And then just before birth, the baby had trouble, lived for a few days in the NICU, and died. We all cried our way through the funeral, but the mom and dad just stayed in faith. There they stood, not understanding, but trusting God. While their baby boy had been in Neonatal ICU, the mom noticed other parents grieving over their babies. After the funeral, she began to go back to that NICU and pray for those other babies and their parents. One of those babies had been abandoned. The baby girl had a physical handicap and the mother had just left her there. Our friends decided to adopt the girl. Instead of being bitter and resentful, they decided help others. The rest of us just watched in awe what this couple was doing.
Then the God thing happened. She became pregnant. Incredible! In less than two years, that couple whose faith was sorely tested, had two children. They had endured, believing God when things don’t make sense, and they saw the good fruit of their endurance. Dios es fiel!