Week 49 James
James says that: God blesses people who patiently endure testing.
So it looks like I won’t be blessed (whatever-all benefits that includes) if I don’t apply Endurance Management Principles when I’m confronted with a personal trial.
Even though it’s a pretty counterintuitive-sounding rule that’s not my concern right now. My question is: assuming it is true…how do I exercise patience under pressure? I look at the text for clues. James has a couple.
First he says don’t blame God for the problem.
He follows that up by saying that if I’m looking to blame I’d best look at myself. I don’t know what-all is included in this look-at-myself inventory but one example James uses is lust. He says the problem is that I can fall in love with lust. I can let lust – James uses a kind of psycho-sexual analogy – impregnate me. Once the intercourse is done lust perpetuates itself with its own life cycle of conception-birth-life-death. I think James’ point is that I’m so intimate with my lust that I’d never think to blame it for my troubles.
Finally James circles back to point one and says don’t be misled into thinking that I can blame God. That won’t fly.
It looks like James’ three pieces of advice for managing trials merge into one pretty big caution about who I start pointing fingers at when things are going badly.
Note: quote from James 1:12 (NLT); and see 1:13-18.