I don’t want to suffer. I know you don’t either.

We want good health for ourselves and those we love. We want enough money to pay the bills with some left over. We want our relationships, especially with family members, to bring us joy and satisfaction. We want to be successful in our work. And we want our neighborhood, our city, our country and our world to be a safe place to live. And when we pray, we want God to answer. Sooner than later.

Does that pretty well capture what you want? It does for me.

I want my needs met today, not tomorrow. I don’t want to know how things will work out in the future, because that implies they’re not worked out today. And that makes me uncomfortable. And I don’t want to be uncomfortable.

That’s just not reality though. It’s not the way life works. It’s not the way God works.

James 1:2-4 says:

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

James is letting us know how life really works. And it’s contrary to the way we want it to work. It’s contrary to the way the world system tells us it should work. It’s even contrary to the way some Christians tell us it should work. Some would have us believe that if we just have enough faith and do all the right things, then everything will work out the way we want it to and just as importantly, when we want it to.

That’s not true though. I had a good friend who died from colon cancer. He had faith and did everything he knew to do. I have a friend who’s enduring chronic physical pain and a murky diagnosis. She has faith and a team of people praying for her. One of my daughters experienced a painful marriage for years and is recently divorced. She had faith and still does.

James doesn’t say “if” troubles come our way, he says “when” they do, we’re to consider it an opportunity for great joy. Yeah, I wish it didn’t have to be that way either, but it does.

We’re to consider troubles to be joy because we know that when our faith is tested, our endurance grows. When our endurance is fully developed, we enter into a new dimension of relationship with God where we discover He’s all we need, that in Him, we lack nothing.

When we pray for “breakthroughs”, I think what we’re really praying for is a quick way out of our troubles. At least that’s what I’m doing. It sounds something like this: “Oh God, please help me! I need a breakthrough today!” We want an end to the suffering right now. Have you ever prayed for a breakthrough to come in six months? Or six years? Me either.

Maybe the better prayer is not for a breakthrough, but a go-through: “Oh God, give me the wisdom and strength to go through these troubles. Increase my faith. Help my endurance grow. Help me see I need You more than I need comfortable and pleasant circumstances.”