“Consider it pure joy” in biblical James ... whatever does it mean?

James who wrote the New Testament letter of James sure hits the ground running from the second verse of chapter 1.

“Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds...” he says.

Now it’s true that all of what James is saying is unpacked in the verses that follow but think for a moment about this concept.

Stay in this place and be still.  Ponder these words:

“Consider it pure joy
– whenever – you –
face trials of many kinds...”

The first part of the sentence and the last part of the sentence are separated by two single words of context.  The first part of the sentence and the last part of the sentence don’t at all seem to fit with one another — like a square peg trying to fit a round hole.

C’mon!  Consider it pure joy... face trials of many kinds!  It doesn’t make sense to a worldly mind.

Whenever.  Not if.  When.

You.  Nobody else is in the frame.  You.

What?  Consider it pure joy?  When you face trials of many kinds?  When.  Not if?

Yes, it is meant to befuddle us.  It is meant to undo us.  It is meant to stun us and leave us shocked for an answer.  Yes, it’s in the Bible.  Yes, there is no pat answer.  And no, this isn’t going to end in a “the blood of Jesus cures everything” kind of destination.

It will surely leave us in a state of self whereby we can only say in our grief, “But God...”  And ever so strangely, it is then that the true God comes and makes a home in us.

The work of faith isn’t a snake-oil treatment of waving a magic wand of invoking the name of Jesus and all will be fixed as if everything ends in a miracle.  That might make us feel good, by pleading the blood of Jesus, or “declaring” in his name what we command by his authority, but these evocations aren’t a faith of God’s purposes in character refinement.

What James is commending to the Christians of his time, and for us in our time, is a faith that is deeply practical by the power of God in us to be able to bear suffering well.  Anyone can bark names in prayer, anyone can shout “by the power and blood of Jesus, I command you,” but not everyone has the spiritual fortitude to bear suffering well unless they’ve actually done it.

It is not God’s will that we enter into what is termed spiritual bypassing because suffering is uncomfortable.  The point is that transformation is uncomfortable, yet once we’ve tasted what God can do, everything else is secondary, and the cost for growth is worth it.

This is not to decry prayers of deliverance by any means, but it is an admonition that before all that is the power of God to change our lives because of the trials set against us — for God’s indefinite and inexplicable purposes.

Through trials comes the impetus to become complete, and without trials we do not beg God for wisdom.

Now is the time of our opportunity.  We all stand on the cusp of growth.

Fear has no grip over us when we face the inconvenient truth of dire circumstances knowing by faith that God’s purposes are perfect.