It is always good to be thankful and express gratitude, but this is especially true with Thanksgiving coming up next week. Today, we’re going to look at gratitude from a different angle and we’ll start with our verse, which is from James 1:2-4:
Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
This phrasing is odd (why should we celebrate failures and tough times?), but James gets right to the point and explains his reasoning. Trials lead to perseverance, which leads to maturity & completeness. This maturity & completeness is then more useful to God, which is the goal.
Thankfulness is typically associated with something positive like good health, financial success, or receiving a gift. If we were to document our gratitude list, trials and difficulties wouldn’t be near the top for most of us.
But let’s look at it from the other side. Think about one of the most challenging times in your life. Maybe it was a death, a job loss, or a financial loss. Now think about some of the positive outcomes of that situation. Your initial thought might be that there were no positive outcomes but think about it and see if you can come up with anything. Maybe a job loss led you to a better job, or a mistake you made in a relationship led you to treat others with more kindness and respect. Or maybe a certain challenge you faced gave you more empathy and compassion so you could be better prepared to serve as the hands and feet of God.
Note that James did not say only be thankful for the “bad” things. His point is that we should be thankful for all things and not just those that appear positive on the surface.
Questions:
- Does it seem odd to rejoice when you face trials and difficulties in life?
- Are any of your trials close to the top of your gratitude list? If not, should they be?
- If you are comfortable sharing with the group, what is an example of a trial or challenge you faced that turned out to be positive?
- If you started viewing trials and failures as positive outcomes, would you be more or less likely to take risks? If more likely, what is a risk you might take?
- Before taking a particular risk, how would you engage God in the process?
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