As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these
verses:
2My
brothers, reckon all joy when you fall into various testings, 3knowing
that the testing of your faith is producing endurance, 4but let that
endurance be having a fully realized work in order that you might be being
fully developed and complete ones, ones who are lacking in nothing.
The Lord is so amazing to me. I have known these verses for over
thirty years and they have encouraged me along the path at many different times
and in many different ways. When I took up this study, I had that feeling, “I
already know these verses. In a sense I’ve been nursing on them, living on them
all these years. What else could I gain from them?” But I’ve known Him long
enough to know He never runs out of aces. And sure enough He drew another one
on me and rocked my world … again. I almost want to ask, “How can one God rock
a man’s world this many times, this often?” He just never lets up. He is so
amazing. Every passage I study, He blows my mind. I sit here at my keyboard
literally at a loss for words. The words of the old hymn come to my mind, “O
for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise!” Years ago I
memorized Jer 33:3, “Call unto Me and I will answer thee, and show thee great
and mighty things thou knowest not.” Wow did He mean it.
One of the things I have been struggling with is the fact
that life is so endlessly difficult. I am a man blessed beyond my wildest
dreams. I really am. Words again would fail me to tell of my wife and children,
my family, our home, my job, our community, our church, memories of my happy childhood,
so many good friends I’ve known, and on and on. The Lord is and has been good
to me far, far beyond reason. But even as I acknowledge that, it is also true
that to me life seems unbearably painful. Even as a blessed man, I pretty much
always feel under enormous pressure, aware of a thousand things that “could go
wrong,” threatened in so many ways, naturally fearful of the future, feeling
confused about so many things, being misunderstood, having to “keep going” even
though sometimes I feel even my bones are tired.
Then add to this that I am aware one of the fruits of the
Spirit is joy. I learned some time ago and the Lord really showed me how that
joy is something I have regardless of my circumstances, that it is a joy
actually in Him, in seeing His beautiful
face even as the storm howls around me. For some reason, of late I just haven’t
been able to grasp onto that. From some reason I couldn’t get it to “work.” I
know all of those things but the joy seemed a very faint faraway thing. It just
all hurts so much. As I have before, I found myself struggling to be joyful.
The pain just seemed too much, too constant, too endless. Chinese water
torture.
And so I wade into James 1:2, “Count it all joy, my brethren, when you fall into various temptations …”
There you go. That’s my problem – I know somehow I should see joy in it all … I
just don’t seem to be able to make it happen. I honestly just don’t see how to “do
it.” So I keep reading and He goes on “…knowing
that the trying of your faith develops endurance. Let endurance have its
perfecting work that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
The floodlights kick on! Oh, wow. Something I’ve “known” but
I think never really, really grasped before. To explain what I mean, I have to
tell a story. The Lord planned back in about 1973 to teach me this very point.
As I studied this verse, here is the memory He brought back
to my mind: “Go!” shouted my track coach Louie Baker. On this particular day, he
wanted us to run ten quarter-miles, each in 75 seconds, with only 30 seconds
rest between each one. “I’m going to say ‘Go,’ he told us, then start my clock.
You have 75 seconds to get back around here to the starting line, then you will
have 30 seconds to rest before I say, ‘Go’ again. If you get here late, you’ll
just have less time to rest, because I will be saying go after my 30 seconds
regardless of when you got here.” Let me say, for a high school runner to run a
75 second quarter-mile (one lap around) is a piece of cake. I wasn’t a sprinter
but I could run a 57 second quarter. The first one would be no problem. With 30
seconds rest, even the second one wouldn’t be bad. But ten? In a row?
Before he started, he explained what he was up to. For world
class runners, the holy grail is to break a 4:00 minute mile. But for farm boys
in high school in 1973, it was a 5:00 minute mile. For us it was breaking a
5:00 minute mile and even being able to say we’d run a mile in 4-anything. Coach
Baker explained that if we ran a one-mile race and ran four 75-second quarters,
that would equal exactly 5:00. If we could, in training, run ten quarters in 75
seconds with the 30 seconds rest in-between, we should, he reasoned, be able to
run four back to back in a race and be in sight of actually breaking that 5:00
minute mile.
Made perfect sense to me. “Bring it on,” said my heart. And
off we went. Sure enough the first one was easy. I loped across the finish line
in something very close to the 75, got my 30 seconds rest, and when he shouted,
“Go!” I was off again. By the third or fourth, it was getting rough, but I
still did it. I understood where he was going and loved it. Wow – to actually
be able to run a mile in the 4’s! “Go!” By the seventh or eighth, my lungs were
literally on fire! But I understood where he was going and loved it. “Go!” By
the tenth one, I think I was having out-of-body experiences. I honestly don’t
think, up to that day, that I had ever done anything that hard, that painful.
But I did it. And I understood why I was doing it. And I wanted that goal.
As Louie Baker had surmised, I did in fact, go on to break
that 5:00 minute mile. I ended up running several 4-something miles, a memory
that I add to my long, long list of blessings I’ve enjoyed in this life. For
me, it is a trophy in itself just to know that I ran a mile in the 4’s!
“…knowing that the
trying of your faith develops endurance…that you may be mature and complete,
not lacking anything.”
Oh, yeah. I’m in training. That’s what’s going on. The Lord
wants to make something out of me. I want Him to make something out of me. He
wants me to really learn to walk with Him, to love God and love people, to live
above fear, to be brave, to be kind, to do good, to build relationships, not
wreck them. That’s what He wants for me and that’s what I want too. I want what
He wants. I see where He’s going with His training plan.
I’m in training. That’s why it’s hard. The Lord is burning
out the old me. That’s why the Chinese water torture. Every morning, every day,
He shouts, “Go!” and I’m off. My head spins, my lungs burn, I face one
unpleasant situation after another after another. They never seem to end. I’m
in training. As I face each one praying for the Lord’s help, sincerely trying
to live love, to be faithful, one by one, He gives me the grace and one day
turns into another turns into another – and I hope it’s true I’m becoming a
different man. I love it. I want to
be different. I don’t want to be who I was. And every one of these challenges
all day every day is one more quarter in the training camp of my Redeemer.
Hopefully even my failures only make me more determined to keep at it, to cross
that line in 75 seconds, to be a man who can run that 4-something mile of life.
I’m so excited. This week has been a whole new experience. I’ve
found the challenges actually exciting. I know where He’s going. And I want to
go there too! I don’t have to worry so much about the outcome. In a way, that
is irrelevant. It is the process He’s designed. It’s the process He wants me to
embrace. He’ll work out the results. I just need to work through it, be
exercised by it, to “let endurance have its perfecting work.”
I loved my coach Louie Baker. He was my favorite coach of
all time. He really believed in me. He made me what I was. When I ran those
4-something miles, it was his win as much as mine. But now I’ve got a better
Coach, in a bigger game, with bigger trophies to win. I’m in training. And I
love it. Not the pain so much, but where He’s taking me, what He’s doing.
He is so good. He gave me Louie Baker. He gave me that day
of running quarters. He stored that memory in my head for all these years, then,
as I was studying James 1:2-4, struggling to understand it and really grasp it,
He brought that memory back. “Oh, yeah. I get it. I remember.”
Wow. I’m just four verses into this book and already He’s
blessing me and rocking my world. I’m excited to keep studying. What a treasure
chest. What a Savior! What a Friend! What a Father! What an awesome Coach!
Erkahm ka, Yahveh.
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