Before the Teaching Began : A Devotional on James 1:2–4

Before the Teaching Began : A Devotional on James 1:2–4

Some rooms I do not understand why I go into. I have a sense of why I should not. I have the doctrine on it. I have preached it. And the door still has a handle that fits my hand, and I open it anyway.

That is the gravity I am talking about. The pull toward the same old things. The drift before rebirth that did not get all the way evicted by rebirth. The old dies hard, and the dying is itself part of the work. This is in me. It is in the people I am teaching too. There is no exemption available for either of us.

James speaks here, in the same room with us.

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing" (James 1:2–4, ESV).

The command is not a feeling instruction. The verb is closer to reckoning than rejoicing. Count. Reckon it. Enter it in the ledger. Do this before the heart catches up. The heart usually arrives later, and James knows it.

Various kinds. The phrase is doing work. Some trials we walk into. Some come for us. Some find us because we are following Jesus. James names no separation. He says: count it. All of them.

What I keep missing in the verse is the order. The testing produces. The steadfastness has its full effect. The end result is being perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. The work is built into the trial before the trial begins. The curriculum is already drawn up, and the

Teacher is already inside it.

I keep calling it the training room. James calls it the testing of your faith. Either way, here is what I want to say. The room was set up before I walked in. The Teacher was involved before the teaching began.

That is the turn I keep needing. The text says He was already there, present in the resistance. The trial is not Him being absent. The trial is Him being so close I cannot see the shape of His hand.

Jesus set the terms of entrance into the room. "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 16:24–25, ESV). Self-denial is the map out of every door I keep opening anyway. The gravity toward the world is the gravity of self, gloried up and given a new name. The denial command is what walks the disciple out.

Paul confirms the curriculum. "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Romans 5:3–5, ESV). The same chain showing up in a different writer. The pattern is not an accident of one apostle's preferred image. This is just how it works.

Hebrews adds something Paul did not. Pulling the cocoon open early is its own kind of failure. "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it" (Hebrews 12:11, ESV). Later, after the soreness has resolved and the strength has not. The fruit shows up after the training has finished.

Job is the longest case study Scripture offers on this. The trial did not come from his own direction. At the first stripping, with all four kinds of loss arriving at once, he counts before he feels. "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21, ESV). It is correct doctrine made early, before the full weight has landed. The seeing has not happened yet.

Forty-one chapters later, after the argument, the demand for an audience, the silence, the whirlwind, Job arrives. "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you" (Job 42:5, ESV). The seeing is what the trial was producing. The Teacher was involved before the teaching began. The teaching produced the seeing.

Here is where I stop, because here is where the conviction lands on me. I drift. I enter the room I cannot account for. I look back at the doorway, and the handle is shaped to my hand. The gravity that keeps pulling me into rooms I cannot explain is gravity I generated. The room itself belongs to the Lord, and the Lord uses it.

The reduction I keep trying to make — that trials are lessons — is the reduction I have to refuse. The trial is not delivering a lesson. The trial is delivering me.

So the question is not whether the curriculum is in session. The question is whether I will let steadfastness have its full effect, or whether I will pull the door open early and walk back out into the drift.

The Teacher was there before the teaching ever began, and He is still there. The room was set up for the seeing, and the seeing is what I keep saying I want.

Scripture chain: James 1:2–4 · Matthew 16:24–25 · Romans 5:3–5 · Hebrews 12:11 · Job 1:21 · Job 42:5 (ESV)