Got Any Troubles?

Have you any problems? Have any temptations been teasing you? Let me step aside and let the Lord take center stage with a very germane message. It is from a little known Bible translation, the Phillips version, James 1:2-4.

When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives, my brothers, don’t resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realize that they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance, But let the process go on until that endurance is fully developed, and you will find you have become men of mature character, men with integrity with no weak spots.”

Let me encourage you to do as I did a number of years ago. For it to become your new outlook, memorize it. Just take it bit by bit for several days and learn it.

Now our Lord wants to offer you help in developing such an attitude in verse 5.

“And if, in the process, any of you does not know how to meet a particular problem he has only to ask God — who gives generously to all men without making them feel guilty, and he may be quite sure that the necessary wisdom will be given him. But he must ask in sincere faith without secret doubts.”

The Lord opened Himself for questions in that verse and through the years I have taken full advantage of the opportunity of asking.

In the first verses we are told trials help to make us complete. Verse five notes that at times we lack wisdom as to how to face our trials and temptations. Then comes the offer to give us wisdom to help us become more complete. 

God gives us wisdom from His unlimited supply. As the Creator of all things, He knows how they work and out of His supply of wisdom He will give us what we need, and not make us feel foolish for asking. 

We are to have faith in God, it is not faith in which we have faith. This passage does not endorse the blab it and grab it school of thought. Our faith must be in God and His ability to perform it. It is not faith that He will do a thing, but that He can do it. So we ask and leave it to His wisdom as to what He does about it.

Note this passage is speaking of asking for wisdom, not things. You can be confident that if you ask for wisdom this passage says you will be given it.

Why not pause right now and ask for the wisdom you need in facing a pressing condition.