Another Item on Our “Thanksgiving List”

REFERENCE: James 1:2-4 Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

Observation: When Thanksgiving Day comes around we usually don’t put “troubles” on our lists of what we are thankful for. Yet most of us want to be more mature. James tells us that this maturity is connected to how we deal with difficulties in our lives. If we past the test of faith and endure in the face of it, it does bring something good into our lives and it is a reason to have joy and thanksgiving.

Application/Confession: Gloria and I went through 7 years of trials in our lives. It is amazing now how many people come up to me and tell me how much of a different person I am now than I was before this time of trial. It is true, troubles dealt with correctly, dealt with in prayer and faith, do produce good things in us, if we let them.

PRAYER: Lord, I am facing a “mini-trial” of my faith right now. I am asking You for financial blessing for the church. Teach me to put my experiences to use and believe that as You have been faithful in the past You will be in the future. Help me to pass my “test of faith”.