Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - How to Find Joy in Trials | Biblical Wisdom on Suffering with Pastor Harry

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

Discover how to navigate life's trials through a biblical lens, featuring an in-depth discussion on James 1:2-4. Learn why God allows trials, how to avoid wasting them, and practical ways to find joy in difficult seasons. Pastor Harry unpacks the purpose of suffering in the Christian life, explaining how trials refine faith and produce Christ-likeness. Whether you're going through cancer, loss, chronic illness, or other challenges, this conversation offers biblical encouragement and practical wisdom on trusting God's goodness through hardship. Perfect for Christians seeking to understand the purpose behind their trials and how to respond with faith.Key topics covered:Understanding James 1:2-4God's purpose in trialsFinding joy in sufferingHow to avoid wasting trialsComforting others in trialsTrusting God's goodnessWatch VideosVisit the Website Buy Consider the LiliesFollow on Instagram

To waste a trial means I will not engage. I get passive, not active. I disengage. I can't wait till it's over, as if the goal of the trial is to endure it, like survive it. The goal of the trial is not to survive it, but to mature in it. That's why you celebrate it. You welcome it, because you actually know why God did it. He's told you why he did it. To refine. Yeah. And it's a good God doing a good thing through a hard place.

Harry, thanks for sitting down. Obviously, I'm so grateful for you, your impact example to me, but also just the ability. We have the partner together in ministry together at Stonebridge Bible Church. I wanted to talk to you about trials. There's a keystone passage that you could say on trials in James chapter one, verses two through four. It says, consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its perfect result so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

You know, trial could be relative in many respects. It could be, I broke my arm. I don't like that. It could be, my wife just died of cancer. So there's a range there. But the trials, it says in James, we're to consider those all joy, which sounds extreme and difficult

to maybe someone that's walking through a trial. But Harry, you've preached through James many times. I want to just talk to you about this subject. How do we approach trials? We see the prescription here in James, but how do we actually do that as believers? What's the purpose of a trial in a Christian's life? So the purpose of a trial is told here in this passage. It basically says it's a test, the testing of your faith. Now, the test involves validating I'm true. It's gold or not gold. The alloy is what it's proposed to be, or it shows it to be not valid. So it's a test that validates authenticity, genuineness. So if I'm a Christian, the testing of my faith validates my faith. The other element of testing is it exposes weakness. Weakness is what you want to

know if your faith is vulnerable, if it's not what it should be. So my test exposes categories of my faith that need strengthened. And what trials do is they expose that and give me the opportunity to address that. It is also a trial. It's also a tool that God uses, almost like an exercise, to strengthen my faith. And it's a tool to refine my faith because the end game is whole, complete, lacking, and nothing. What does that mean, just when James says that? Well, what it says is Christ-likeness. Whole is the word for finished, mature, teleos.

You reach your fullest capacity. Well, who's that as a Christian? Yeah. You know, who's that? Christ. Yeah. Complete is unblemished. So you're not defective in any way.

It's used of sacrificial animals. You look at something worthy of worship. So it's unblemished. So you're not defective in any way. It's used of sacrificial animals. You look at something worthy of worship. So it's unblemished. And then finally, complete lacking nothing. Lacking what? Lacking nothing for the mission for which you exist on the planet as commissioned by God as a Christian. So I have all the assets I need. All the strength I need.

All the maturity that is desired by God as a worship offering before God. That's whole, complete, lacking, and nothing. That's the goal of trials. And just from the plain reading of James, without trials, a Christian will never be whole, complete, lacking, and nothing. We'll end up being unblemished, unrefined, and really unable to carry out our mission as a Christian without them. And if you're just going to read it from an inverse perspective, fair? Yeah, no, I think that is fair. And I think what James is plainly saying is life is full of trouble. Like they're a persecuted church. They're in difficult spaces.

And he's saying, I want you to see this for what it is. Okay, because verse three says, because you know. It's a causal participle. Modifying the verb, count it all joy. Why do you count it all joy? Well, the only reason you can count it all joy without being insane, for it to be a rational joy, is if you understand what your trouble is being given by a good God to accomplish, to test you, to validate, and to reveal. Yeah, and then refine, right, to make me whole, complete, lacking, and nothing. And so trials, I like to say, the only way you count it all joy reasonably,

a reasonable joy, is if you understand that this is an exercise by trial of God himself who is good through the difficult, not good circumstances to make you the best you can be. And if you don't see God as good, you don't see him for who he is, verse 18. Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights. No variation. No variation, shadow of turning. So you see God as good. You see yourself as unfinished art.

Yeah. And you see the trial as a necessary means to accomplishing good ends by a good God through a hard thing. Yeah. Otherwise, no joy. Yeah. You're not going to do it. It's crazy. It's insane.

Yeah. Because my cancer, my challenge, I mean, we've had sickness and illness in our home for a lot of years, and I can promise you there's no way, sustainable way, to navigate that with joy if you don't have compelling convictions that come out of this passage. Good God doing a good thing in a very hard space. And it's a necessary thing based on both his wisdom, his providence, his perfect perspective in terms of what I need and what gets me to where he wants me to go. Yeah, I think being rooted in the perspective of God's goodness is so important, obviously, because you can't trust a God who's not good. Talk about maybe why trusting God is a catalyst,

you know, just your active trust, not just your positional faith in God, but this active, ongoing exercise of faith, Oswald Chambers called faith, a concentration of your gaze on God. There's prerequisites to experiencing that joy, which means that it's one thing to affirm God's goodness. Yeah, I believe God's good. But if you're walking through a trial, how are you, and I'm just thinking of a woman or a man who's going through a trial. Well, I want to believe in God's goodness. I can't find joy. I affirm it in the truth, in the scripture. But how do you meditate on God's goodness so that you can rationally find that joy you're mentioning? Well, it's very difficult to separate the goodness of God from the cross, the chief evidence of the love of God.

If God did not withhold his only son, how would he not give us all things freely to enjoy? So if the cross is real, if Jesus is the son of God exchanged the glories of heaven to become a man and substitute for men in the ways that he did, then it's an indisputable conclusion that God is good. I can't trump that. So once I anchor myself in that foundational conviction, then to get to the place where that same God is using in his sovereignty the tools and the means to accomplish his stated intention, which is to make me like his firstborn son. That's his goal. He who began the good work will continue to perform. What is the good work? Christlikeness. Who does that? The master trainer does that. So the good God who's committed to that good goal, that's the conviction that protects your heart because you can't measure. It's like Job. We talked about that some time ago.

Job knew nothing about what was going on. But we know that God's intentions were good, bringing glory to himself. He ultimately rewarded him with double. It's not like it's futile. And even if it's not seen as it was in Job's case in terms of why, the conviction that God is good and doing good in it is rooted in the cross in my view. Yeah. And I'll talk about this more in a future episode.

But even as you mentioned Romans 8, I was just thinking even about sometimes when we're walking through trial, someone will reference Romans 8, 28. God is working everything out for his glory and for your good. And then people kind of walk through a trial thinking this is all going to make sense in eight to 10 years. I'm going to be able to look back. Hindsight's 20-20. But the good that God is working everything out towards is not necessarily going to be understood in 10 years from now.

And you're only going to think that God is working everything out for good if you're subscribed and aligned with his idea of goodness, which is in the next verse, Romans 8, 29, that those whom he foreknew, he'll also predestined to be conformed into the image of his son. So it's just validating what you're saying. The purpose of trials is to refine. And the good God is working everything out in your life

is that you become more like Jesus. Not that this all makes sense on an earthly level. So that's helpful what you're saying here. I think my just final question for you is, how can we waste a trial? You can take two people that go through the same tragedy and one of them, it says here, and let endurance have its perfect result.

So you can have two people walking through a trial. One person is refined, purified. They become more complete, more whole, and more lacking in nothing. And another person maybe wastes a trial. Maybe talk about what that would look like and if that's even a fair way of thinking. No, I think it's precisely the way to think. Because the import of James 1 is appeal to your will. Let this trial have its purpose fulfilled because you stay here.

Here's how you waste it. You don't engage it. You disengage. A lot of people go passive in trials. If this is an active call, let it, engage it, participate actively with God in it. To waste a trial means I will not engage. I get passive, not active. I disengage, don't engage. I can't wait till it's over, as if the goal of the trial is to endure it, like survive it. The goal of the trial is not to survive it, but to mature in it. That's why you celebrate it. You welcome it, because you see it for what it is. The door knocks, there's a box on the front porch,

and it's addressed to you from God. you're going to welcome it. You're going to open it. No matter what's in the box, you're going to receive it, not waste it. You're not going to leave it on the porch. You're going to engage it. You're going to actively participate in this trial. So how do you waste it? You can get bitter with it. You can say, why God did you do this? That's a tough question. It's actually a bad question. You actually know why God did it. He's told you why he did it. To refine it. Yeah. And it's a good God doing a good thing through a hard place. And you waste it when

you don't get it, which causes you to get bitter about it, to try to numb and anesthetize yourself to it, make dumb choices, foolish choices, reject God, don't benefit from it. You can actually become toxic through a trial because you get embittered. It's best illustration. God bragged on Job. And Job, he was wasting his trial until he repented. He did really good famously. Though you slay me, yet will I trust you. That was early. Then he navigated with difficulty the transaction of his reality and his confusion. And it wasn't until he

recognized, you know what? I'm by faith trusting a God who is deserving of my trust because he's qualified to assess what's good and not good. Goes back to Romans 28. Who knows that? God knows that. Job didn't know that. Job repented, submitted, and confessed what God deserved. I trust you. You're God. I'm not God. And he was rewarded and blessed. Maybe just final thought is, let's say you're walking through a trial. You're a pastor, but just as a Christian, how do you come alongside someone who's walking through a trial, knowing God's purpose in the trial. And what are you looking for? I mean, you've walked through difficulty. What are you wanting from someone

else other than, you know, we're praying for you, you know, great, that's valuable. But what do you want from someone when you're in a trial? What are you hoping to provide? You've seen me walk through difficulty. How do you respond? How do you minister to people? That's a great question. I think it's important to know you don't start with James 1. You say you're sorry for the difficulty they're in. Difficulties and trials are relative at some level. My trial's mine. Yours is yours. It's not like yours is harder than mine or mine's harder than yours. They're hard. And if they're hard, they're painful. And if the loss is great, they're undeniably painful. Lost a child, lost a marriage. You just lost a child to waywardness or whatever. The death of a parent. there's deep, deep pain and loss. And the first

thing you would do is to show empathy if you can relate. But even that, I don't try to tell somebody that I can relate. I understand. The probability is, no, I don't. I mean, unless I went through their exact circumstance, I don't understand. I know chronic illness because I have it in my home. But I don't tell people I understand. I tell them I'm sorry. Man, I'm sorry. This is hard. And I just want you to know you're not alone.

God is an intimately acquainted. He's a comfort in all kinds of trouble. He comforts you with a kind of comfort nobody can give. He might use people like me. I want to be one of those people. So I want to encourage you. I want to comfort you. That's where I would start.

And then I would try to help them understand, but don't think this has no purpose. Don't think this has no designed value. One of the hardest things to deal with when hard things happen is why. And I like to tell people, anchor in what you know, because you do not know why. What you do know is that God is good, and he sovereignly is ruling in the not good to do good that doesn't feel good. That's a conviction. And that's what you know. Yeah.

I think even that's just wise because I think sometimes people respond to other people in trial and they want to be the proclaimers of truth, you know, which is helpful. Sure. you know but I think just acknowledging this is tough or I'm sorry and I watched you do this even when we lost a friend of ours you know and just walking you're navigating this with his children and a wife who's got five kids and I'm sorry this is tough um and it is true what you said about the comfort and uh I've seen you do that in such a unique way of comforting people and just expressing your sympathy and not trying to be a me too guy I've been there done that I know what you do that in such a unique way of comforting people and just expressing your sympathy and not trying to be a me-too guy. I've been there, done that. I know what you're going through.

Just I'm sorry. I'm praying for you. And you mentioned it. And I think this is one of the other purposes of trials that you just touched on is that one of them at least is, and Paul says in Corinthians, blessed be the God of all comfort who comforts us in our affliction so that we too may comfort others with the same comfort that we have received from God. And I think that's got to be included that one of the reasons we go through trials is that we receive the comfort of God in a supernatural way so that when we re watch other people going through a trial, even if it's different than the one that we've walked through,

we can comfort them. And, uh, I'm thankful for that reality. And that's even a testimony to your own life. Well, and I think you mentioned Corinthians. Paul said, I want this thorn to be gone. And Jesus made a statement, my grace is sufficient for you. In other words, what I possess by way of favor and help in your time of need is enough. And my power is made perfect. Teleos, it reaches its fullest expression in your weakness, which is why Paul said, I'm going to glory in my weakness. It didn't go away. I was just begging to get rid of it. What happened is I came to understand that my weakness is a stage to experience God's sweetness, his greatness, his goodness. And that's why I glory in my weakness, that the power of Christ might be experienced. And you

were talking about the comfort of God being experienced. What about the power of God? So one of the things trials do, it gives us a place and a space to experience grace and power and comfort that nowhere else does. And that's why in my weakness, I can say I'm strong. Yeah. And Paul would have never learned to say god's power is perfected in my weakness and my own inadequacy is a stage for his glory if god had removed his thorn the first time he prayed and 100 and so even that persistence and perseverance through trial um that's what you just say don't waste it because we get to a point where we are so reliant upon a strength that's outside of ours because we're depleted resting on on god's alone can i say one more thing yeah verse five which everybody knows in james one says if you lack wisdom ask of god

yeah first class condition if is really since it's an emphatic way of saying since you lack wisdom for what? The trial that you don't understand to cooperate with God in a way that affects these good outcomes. Since you lack that, the word lack is you don't have any. What? Wisdom. Know how to navigate this uncharted waters of my difficulties. Ask of God who gives it generously, liberally, without reproach. And if you ask like that, it'll be given him. The thing that's important that must be said is I don't know how to navigate my trial. And if it's hard, I really don't know how to navigate my trial. And if it's hard, I really don't know how to navigate my trial. But God has wisdom to direct me through an exercise of my faith

that I would know how to do without that help. So ask. Ask in faith and trust that God, the master trainer, will coach you through the exercise. You've never done a day in your life, but it's the most important one that you will ever do. You need wisdom is my point. And otherwise, you don't know what you're doing. Yeah.

Well, I'm thankful God gives generously to those who ask. And Harry, thanks for just your help on this subject. And I appreciate you. So grateful for you. Thank you, Brian.