When life gets you down…Count It All Joy!
“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. ”
I have always loved this verse but I must admit it’s a hard one! I get the part “count it all joy”, that’s easy. But it’s the “when you meet trials”, not “if”. you meet trials. James is very clear that we will have trials of various kinds but these trials are not for nothing. They are for the testing of our faith and trust in our Lord and Savior.
James is writing to Jewish Christians. In the Jewish culture (remember Job), if there was suffering in a person's life, it was because they had sinned against God. They must have done something wrong. James was letting the people know that they didn’t have to believe this anymore.
I don’t normally watch America’s Got Talent but recently there was an amazing woman named Jane Kristen Marczewski, 30 years old, who went by the stage name “Nightbirde” (you can watch her audition on YouTube). Her audition popped up on my Facebook feed and I was intrigued. When she came out on stage, you could see right way that she was extremely thin, she had very short hair but she just had a glow about her. Plus an awesome smile!
She shared with the judges that she had cancer in her lungs, liver and spine. She also shared when they asked if she was okay, she said “It’s important for people to know that I am more than the bad things that have happened to me. You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore to be happy”.
I listened to a powerful podcast where she gave her testimony and gave God all the glory even during her trials and illness. She did say that not everyday was great but she knew that the Lord was going to get her through it. When she was diagnosed with cancer in 2017, her husband left her and she had to deal with the cancer alone. After she went through chemo, she received a good report but unfortunately not much later, received news that the cancer had returned and she had about a 2% chance of survival. Even with all this going in her life, she was still about to share her song with America “It’s Okay”!
On her instagram she wrote “Dreams shatter, and eyelashes fall out, and lungs aren’t big enough to carry the song sometimes,” she wrote. “But I still wake up in the morning and draw my hopes on the sidewalk. And every time so far, they’ve been trampled over, or hosed off, or the rain rolled all of it over the curb. But I pick more flowers, write more stories, dream more dreams.”
She passed away in February 2022, but the people that she inspired has been amazing. God definitely used her for His glory and she spread the message of hope and her love for the Lord to so many people.
A few weeks ago, when I had COVID, my doctor prescribed Paxlovid. You take three pills in the morning and three pills at night for five days. These pills were nasty tasting. I felt like I had chewed a tin can all day long. Even gum or mints didn’t take away the taste but in a few days, I was feeling so much better. Sometimes in our lives, we have to endure the nasty things like losing a loved one, losing our job or having health problems or maybe even financial problems. We must trust in the Lord and His promises and He will see us through. Plus we will be so much stronger in our faith!
We need to remember that God is in control and He is walking beside us every second, every minute, everyday of our lives. So don’t give up but let God use the difficult times so that you may become “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing”.