We kick off Season 2 with one entirely unsugarcoated truth: trials of any sort are never easy. But, with every new trial, new experience, new affliction, new hardship you endure, you are left looking just a little bit more like Jesus. Plus, an in-depth look at God’s giving (and how it always comes in direct response to your specific, no-doubting, asking).

Welcome to a brand new season of the Dig Your Well Podcast! Did you miss the Season 2 Intro (episode 008)? Make sure to give it a listen first to hear about the new layout of this season’s episodes and how to dig in on your own before we even begin! Otherwise, let’s get digging into the first eight verses of James 1!

The Technicalities

Welcome to the Book of James – a five-chapter letter written by James to the Jewish Christians living outside Israel and scattered throughout the Roman Empire. When you begin to read this first collection of verses, they read a lot like Solomon’s proverbs. But, where Proverbs’ key word is “wisdom,” in James, it’s “faith,” and James uses that keyword throughout the entire letter to give a ten-part guide to understanding it, bolstering it, embracing it, recognizing the fruit of it, and reaping the benefits of it.

On their own, without any context whatsoever, the truths that fill these pages are powerful – no question. However, James’s backstory is the thing that really makes this book come alive. To understand it, you need to piece a couple of separate biblical passages together: Galatians 1:19 (where Paul tells you that James was Jesus’ brother), John 7:5 (which reveals that all of his brothers weren’t just unbelieving during His life, they actually mocked Him for claiming to be the Messiah), and 1 Corinthians 15:7 (the moment that James saw his brother as Messiah for the very first time).  

With that overview, take a look at John 7 to see the crux of James’ story and how it intimately plays into the entire theme of this letter. In the chapter, it was almost time for the Feast of Tabernacles (one of the three Jerusalem feasts that all native-born male Jews were required to participate in), and Jesus was in Galilee instead of Judea, where the feast was held because the Jewish leaders were looking for Him to kill Him.

His brothers (James included) taunted Him, telling Him to go to the feast so that His disciples could get a front-row seat to the works He was doing (John 7:3). Now, pause there and notice the word “works.” It’s the Greek word ergon, and it’s the same word that James uses 16 years later in this letter. It’s fascinating to me because it shows me that that moment stuck with him. I imagine it was the same moment that played in his mind as he truly recognized Jesus as the resurrected Messiah that day in 1 Corinthians, and no longer his brother whom he mocked. I also imagine it’s the one moment he would spend his life making up for and correcting.

Then, in John 7, James lived the epitome of a dead faith in the sense that Jesus was alive, walking among them, but their faith was not in Him. It was in a Messiah that had not yet come, was not alive. He, of anyone, knows the difference between dead-faith walking and living-faith moving. Here, in this letter, he describes both in vivid detail.

As I write this, I just finished digging my way through Galatians and am fresh off of Paul’s ending words – that you and I bear in our bodies the wounds, scars, and outward evidences of persecutions which testify to Jesus’ ownership of us. And here, in James 1, those persecutions are called by another, more fitting name: trials.

“Consider them nothing but joy,” James says in verse two, which sounds a little bit crazy, doesn’t it? But every piece of proverbial advice that he gives throughout this book is to be exercised through faith. And, because of our faith in Jesus, and that Galatians 5:17 understanding that His mark has been pricked into your skin and His brand is forever seared onto your body in the most beautiful kind of Isaiah 49:16 reciprocity, we consider them joyful. They are the trace evidences of every hardship you have ever and will ever endure for Him and for His glory. And nobody can take that away from you, no matter how hard they try. You are His. And He is yours. Oh, the unbridled joy that comes from that.

Now, listen, a quick glance at the Greek linguistics and usages for both “fall” and “trials” in James 1:2 is a hard lesson in not-so-fun things (like hitting a reef and getting shipwrecked or being surrounded by thieves who mug you and leave you for dead, or any one of the nightmare experiences the apostles experienced at the hands of the Jews in the book of Acts). James isn’t saying it’s easy, but if, by faith, you allow patience to have its perfect work, your faith will be fully developed. So, with every new trial, new experience, new affliction, new hardship you endure, you are left looking just a little bit more like Jesus. Count it joy.

And, while you’re counting? Ask God for wisdom because your perfecting faith will lack nothing, eventually. But, in the meantime, in the still-perfecting period in which you are still here, still breathing, you will need some wisdom to get you through the trials you’ve determined to rename “joyfuls.”

So, James says, “Ask Him.”

Making it Personal

You’ve read the story of when Solomon asked God for wisdom, haven’t you? You know, the one where he offered a thousand burnt offerings and, that night, 2 Chronicles 1:7 says that God appeared to Solomon and said, “Ask! What shall I give you?”

Story short, Solomon asked for wisdom and knowledge, and God granted both to him (as well as riches, wealth, and honor, for having a heart that didn’t ask for the material things instead).

But did you know that 1 Kings 3 offers a subtly different detail to that story, specifically regarding God’s appearing to Solomon? You can see it in 1 Kings 3:5, where, that night, after all of those offerings, God appeared to him in a dream. He had that conversation with God in his dream. When he woke up, he lived as if it were real. He leaned into the substance of the dream by faith, believing God for it. It’s a beautifully subtle example of the Holy Spirit interceding on his behalf (Romans 8:26 style), telling him how to pray and what to ask for.

That said, when James writes, “if any of you lacks wisdom,” he uses the Greek word sophia, which, in the context of this verse, means “the knowledge and practice of the requisites for godly and upright living.” In using that specific word, James also provides the prayer guidance of asking God for it. By using the word definition alone, you can say, God, give me the knowledge to know what is required to endure this. Then, show me how to practice it.

Here’s the catch, though: you have to ask God for it without an ounce of doubt in sight. Here’s how that looks: Take the James 1:6-8 description of a doubting asker and compare it to Matthew 8:23-27. Asking in faith, nothing doubting (as the Greek language is literally translated) means that you are just as confident in God when the sea is calm as you are when it is dangerously and categorically tempestuous. If you look more like the disciples in the Matthew 8 storm than Jesus, sleeping soundly, you aren’t able to receive anything from God because your hands are too busy clinging to the side of the boat than to Him.

But, when that storm kicks up, and you cling to God and rest so confidently in Him that your spirit is just as the sleeping Jesus, that’s when God can whisper wisdom.

“Ask God,” James 1:5 says. It’s such a simple and succinct answer to a complicated and (often very painful) experience that it feels almost too good to be true. Except, it isn’t. The “when” of your trials is just as sure as the “gives” of God’s wisdom. But it’s important to understand that you need to actually ask God yourself for that wisdom (just like Solomon did in his dream) because the Greek word for the context of His giving specifically describes giving to someone who is asking.

But my favorite part about all of this lies in the linguistics of the way that God gives His wisdom, because the suffering we endure isn’t quiet. It’s loud and it’s exhausting and it’s all we can do to hang on until it passes. And in those trials, when God gives wisdom, the Greek word says it very clearly: He gives it sincerely. And openly. And frankly. And simply.

And in that simplicity alone, we can count all joy.

Thanks so much for listening!