Count It All Joy

Count It All Joy

            My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.   James 1: 2-4

            Count it all joy. Really? If you had given me this verse a couple of weeks ago, I would have told you to screw off. Ok, not the nicest of Christian words, but you get my point. Towards the end of Thailand and at the beginning of Cambodia I was in a bad place. A tough place. The kind where you want to give up. On everything. And everyone. Including God.

As you read in my recent blog ‘Through the Valley’, I was going through a difficult time. A trial. It wasn’t joyful. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I didn’t see the point of it, and I felt as though it was a cruel joke being played by an even more cruel God. I questioned why I was on the race at all. I questioned who was God really that He would allow this to happen to me.

“I mean come on God! I’m out here doing Your work. I’ve sacrificed my time, my friends, my family, and my stuff. This is how you’re going to treat me in return?!”

I can’t help but laugh at it now. Thinking of myself higher than I really am. As if God owed me something, or as if I should have an easier time in life, because of the “things or works” I do for His glory.

I had a choice. Joy or pity. I was tired of the latter. I started to choose joy in the variety of the big and the small things. BBQ chicken for breakfast? Okay, cool. I’m teaching English to some kids who know close to no English at all? All right, let’s do this. I have to choose to see the best in this person, though everything within me wants to yell and scream at them? Let’s give it a go. And that was that. I decided that in every aspect of my life I was going to count it a joy. I was going to choose Jesus over complaining, negative thoughts, doubts, and frustrations. It was difficult to do what was feeling so unnatural, but what overcame me was a peace that surpassed all understanding. I was finally feeling more of myself than ever. And it was because I was becoming more like Him.

We find our true selves, who we were always meant to be, when we become like Him. I know, I know. It’s difficult. It’s messy, frustrating, agitating, annoying, and it downright seems impossible at times. We fail again and again and wonder how God could ever love or forgive us. And from there we look to the cross, and are reminded of exactly how He feels about us. Jesus, the author of our faith, is the perfecter of our faith as well. He will not give up, nor will He let go. We are His children. And He is our Father. I am finding joy in the trials, because it is in the midst of the valleys of the unknown we find ourselves in that we grow and mature the most in Christ. We don’t grow or learn when life is all rainbows and sunshine. We do when we are tested to our limits and beyond.

So, consider it a joy my friends as we face many trials and tribulations. They are not for nothing. Actually, they are for everything. Because Christ is everything. Period.

We find joy at the mountaintop. But how would we ever know joy without the valley?