“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

James 1: 2-4

Perseverance is something that everyone wants to gain, but many people do not want to work for it. After all, wouldn’t it be great if we could all be strong and fearless in the face of adversity? Wouldn’t it be perfect if enduring hardship came naturally to us? But this is not how life works. Perseverance has to be earned and built through many trials and tough decisions. The testing of our faith may not be pleasant, but it produces an important fruit, the ability to stand stronger the next time we are tested. So how can this be?

First of all, when our faith is tested, we realize just how dependent we are upon God. When we are at the end of our rope, we come to accept that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, we are completely in the hands of God alone. Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” If life was always perfect and painless, then we would never know how powerful the grace of God is. It is by trials that we come to understand that we are weak, and our strength comes from Christ, who will never fail us and so, as we face more trials in the future.  We can be confident that just as God helped us before, He will help us again.

The testing of our faith also gives us wisdom. The first time we encounter difficulty, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. Everything is uncertain, and we aren’t sure which choices to make or how to react in the best way. As it turns out, much of life is trial and error. But the lessons we learn along the way aren’t just a coincidence. On the contrary, God’s plan for our lives is divinely orchestrated. He knows exactly what we need to learn and how we need to learn it, often through discipline. So, when we find ourselves struggling with faith in a situation, we can draw upon the experiences we’ve already faced and what God has taught us in the past.

Romans 5:3-4: says, “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Rejoicing in suffering sounds nearly impossible, but it is what we are called to do as followers of Christ. We can persevere with even greater strength than the rest of the world, because we have advantage that they don’t, faith in Jesus Christ. Even when this faith is tested, and we find ourselves wrestling with doubt, we know that all of our suffering creates perseverance as we go through life.

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