Mature Faith--Lesson

Mature Faith

James 2:1-8

Theme: Authentic Christian faith both forces us and equips us to make difficult choices.

Introduction

My friend Mark is in his early 50’s.  He has recently experienced a spiritual awakening.  He describes it this way.  “Before, I was a depressed, cynical person.  Now I am as happy as I have ever been.  I don’t take anything for granted.  I treasure every moment as a gift from God.”

What caused this new found joy?  What made such a 180 degree turn in his life occur?  His terminal cancer diagnosis.

I don’t know how I would respond to that kind of news.  What would I do if a doctor came and told me that lung cancer was rapidly and aggressively stealing my life, and I might not see my children graduate?  How would you respond?  In the easy world of the hypothetical, I can claim that I would take the news as Mark has.  In the harder real world of unexpected and unexplainable trial, I can’t be sure until I face it.

In a church I pastored, there were two older couples both of whom had lost a child in tragic circumstances.  For one couple, it was the beginning of a life of bitterness, anger and outrage.  For the other, they became more compassionate, empathetic and caring.  What was the difference?  Why did they react so differently to similar difficulty?

A married couple I know had a revealing conversation.  The wife told the husband that she really admired an elderly lady they both knew.  “I hope that I will be like her when I get to be her age,” she told him. Her husband jokingly told her, “I’m pretty sure you won’t be.”  She asked him, “Why not?”  His answer revealed equal parts deep wisdom and the total absence of a desire for self-preservation.  “You won’t be like her when you get older unless you start to be more like her now.”

It is common wisdom that trials develop character.  But equally important and less articulated is that trials reveal character that is already present.  When life is easy, it is not very difficult to proclaim faith.  Far from the fray of real life, it is easy to be brave and to make proud declaration.  Within the protective walls of the church at 11 AM on Sunday, pietistic displays of faith are simple.  Shallow trust is all we need when everything is going our way.  Faith that supports us in the hospital waiting room, the unemployment line, the valley of the shadow is a more valuable commodity.  When troubles come and dig at the foundation of life, the true root of mature, complete faith or lack of it is evident.

A mature faith has an integrated voice that sounds the same notes of confidence in good times and in bad.  How does one nurture this sort of constant and perfected faith?

The Biblical Witness

James 1:2

Joy in Trials

²My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy,

Some years ago now, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote the book When Bad Things Happen To Good People.  The bestseller addressed the simple question, “Why do trials come to people who are doing their best to live the right way?”  It is a question that has troubled people of faith throughout the centuries.  Are trials the result of secret sin?  Does God create the trials for growth?  Are trials the unavoidable consequence of a universe that allows human choice?

James does not address these questions.  His is an imminently practical address to Christians.  Trials and troubles are simply a fact of life.  To debate their reason for existence is an academic question.  The real question is the pragmatic one.  If trials and troubles are part of our existence how should we handle them?

“Consider it nothing but joy.”  These words of exhortation seem cold comfort to one in the middle of trials.  But there is an important distinction that should be made.  James does not advise us to be happy during trials, but to have joy.

The word “happy” has the same English root as the word “happen.”  Happiness is dependent upon what happens to you.  In the trials that come to all Christians, we are not asked to be happy about them.  Rather we are instructed to have joy, a condition that is not situation dependent.  To have joy is to know that no matter what happens, God is present with us.  A mature faith provides joy even in the midst of trials.

James 1:3-4

The Full Effect

³because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; ⁴and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

After exhorting his readers to experience joy in the midst of trials, James explains why this is the reaction of mature faith.  Faith when tested produces endurance.  A runner does not go to a race without training.  Through progressive training, the athlete develops the ability to go faster and longer.  The building up of muscles and the increasing of the ability of the lungs to provide oxygen are augmented through repetition of the skills that ultimately will be used in the race.

Faith uses a similar mechanism to produce endurance.  By responding with faith in a consistent manner throughout one’s life, strength is developed to meet the most difficult struggles with an enduring faith.  Christian character is developed by trials, but equally important, the habits of faith that emerge in trials reveal the foundation that has already been prepared.

The purpose of endurance is to show a complete and mature faith.  Some older translations used the word “perfect”.  All of us would agree that a person’s faith can not be perfect in the sense that it is free from defect, because we are all imperfect humans.  It means rather that the faith that carries us at the beginning will, if it is mature, carry us through to the end.  “Perfect” faith is the one that accomplishes what it sets out to do, carrying a person through to the finish.

James 1:5

Asking God

⁵If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.

This seems a rather abrupt transition.  From a discussion of faith and endurance, James leaps to the question of a lack of wisdom.  With the Jewish tradition from which he draws, James affirms that wisdom is not a human quality to be developed but one that is conferred on those who seek it by God.

Perhaps James here has paused to consider what his words must sound like to those who hear them.  Taking joy in trials because they produce enduring faith may make sense to some but to many it probably sounds foolish.  We spend most of our life avoiding unpleasant experiences at whatever cost.  We want to live a life free of complication and trouble.  Our response to trials is to do whatever is necessary to get away from them, not take joy in them.  We do not pray for trials, we pray for their end.

But James is promoting an entirely different world view.  The greatest good is not a trouble free existence but a faith filled existence.  The world’s wisdom is that pain is to be avoided.  God’s wisdom is that even pain helps us on our journey.

James 1:6-8

Asking In Faith

⁶But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; ⁷for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, ⁸must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

These particular verses have often been ripped from their context and used to promote an ego-centric Christian faith that names and claims blessings from God.  It is quite ironic that the overall context of the passage is about trials and their value, but many remove these verses to argue that God wants us to have an easy life without troubles.

Those who misuse these verses also fail to note that what is being asked for from God is not any material object, but wisdom.  James is not promising that if you ask for a new car without doubt that it will be given to you.  He instructs to ask for wisdom and God will give it to you.  But in that asking, one must be careful not to try to keep one foot in the “real” world.  Often we want to rely on God’s wisdom when it squares with our own and to reject it when it doesn’t make sense to us.  James tells us that it is a stark choice, either God’s way or not, there is no middle path.  Many of us are not comfortable with those terms we want to have faith in God and faith in ourselves and our own judgments.

It is not doubt in general that is condemned here, rather it is a particular doubt that wants to live a life of faith, but is unwilling to do it on God’s terms.  An immature faith requires everything to go on without difficulty.  When trials arise, that faith is abandoned for some other way that promises that pain will be avoided.  This sort of double-mindedness sees faith as useful only when it provides us what we immediately desire. 

The language of the waves that James uses here is very rare for the New Testament.  Talk of the sea is not common in Jewish circles.  They were not a sea-faring people and believed that the land and sea were in constant struggle with each other.  The dry ground represented the forces of order and good, while the sea was destructive chaos.  James draws on these cultural understandings to emphasize that doubt creates destructive chaos in the life of the believer.  By abandoning faith in the midst of trials, the double-minded person jumps from the boat that provides protection directly into the turbulent sea that will destroy them.

Application

I came across a story some years ago now.  It is about a man and a friend who were walking in the market place.  The man was the most wicked person in town. Across the way, they saw a beautiful woman.  “I will marry her!” the man said.  His friend told him, “A person as beautiful as she will never have a wretch like you.”  The conniving evil man decided that the only way he might stand a chance with the woman would be to wear the mask of a good and righteous man.  Wearing the mask he approached the woman, and they fell in love.  They wed and lived a blissful life together.  One day the wicked man’s friend came back to the town and heard what had happened.  He went to the woman and told her that her husband was not what he seemed.  The woman confronted her husband.  The wicked man broke down in tears.  He apologized to her and pulled off the mask to show her who he really was.  He pulled off the mask of the good and righteous face and revealed what was hidden beneath it, a good and righteous face.

Faith is like that mask.  It is a habit of being that we assume when we become Christian.  The daily practice of it causes our very centers to be reshaped.  The enduring, perfect mature faith is revealed when the veneer of our lives is pulled back by the trials of our lives.

How can we develop a more than skin deep faith?  How can the words we use on Sunday become the truth we live everyday?

1.  Faith grows when we recognize that it is not a protection from trials but a support through trials.

2.  Faith grows when we recognize that trials are opportunities to express and strengthen our faith.

3.  Faith grows when we live out of the wisdom of God rather than double-mindedness.

4.  Faith grows to maturity when it becomes the primary reality out of which a believer lives.

One day, we will be asked to pull off the mask of faith and reveal our true identities.  Will it be a thin and immature veneer or will it have changed us to the core of our being?