“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” James 1:2-4. Temptation and patience are hard at work in your life, are you taking advantage? Count every bit of the temptation and trial you are enduring as joy. To do that, we have a bit of work to do ourselves. No temptation is joyful when we are resisting against it and enduring through it, but it is our task to “count it all joy.” We need to look at the bad situation and prayerfully take an accurate account of the temptation, and see it as a means for joy because of what it is going to accomplish. We must look at temptations in the right way – temptation is working something in us for our good. Hopefully it will give your spiritual muscles a workout. When I played football, we put in hours of offseason conditioning in the weight room. When the coaches were pushing us and working us hard, I was hot, tired, sore, and wishing it was all over with. But we were working our physical muscles and getting stronger with every workout. We couldn’t see the immediate effects but we kept it up being reminded of the benefit this workout would have on the football field on Friday nights. We counted every exercise as profitable to what we wanted, even though it wasn’t very fun at the time. Likewise, temptation works our spiritual muscles.
Temptation gives your patience a workout. It is “trying” your faith. It is putting your faith to the test. Biblical patience is endurance, it is not giving in or giving up, but patiently pressing on looking for our deliverance. Temptation makes us struggle against it and to endure in holiness. It’s resistance training, fighting through the trial and not giving up because it’s hard. After months of offseason training, it was time to start actually playing the games. Those players who had put in the hard work of conditioning and strength training were better equipped to play in the games. We wanted to play the game and play well – that was what we wanted most. In order be better players, our coaches put us through difficult weight resistance training. Every time I was excised by resistance, I became just a little stronger. Temptation works in our soul in a similar way. As Christians, we desire holiness, and one of God’s ordained means for spiritual growth is enduring temptation. As we press back against the resistance of temptation, it exercises our patience and endurances. Patience, in turn, completes us. It strengthens our spiritual life, by making us more dependent on God, motivates us to prayer and Bible reading. The more we fight through trials and battle against sin in our lives, the more endurance we have. It gives us a full spiritual workout.
