Lookahead:  So did all this waiting for the LORD to call me as a full-time minister accomplish anything?  Yes, I believe so.  It kept me honest, and I began to realize over the years that I was not wired to be a missionary in some remote corner of the world—or to live on an airplane criss-crossing the country as an evangelist—or to sing on the Hillsong Worship Team.  Eventually I understood what my giftings were—and what my heart’s desire was.  Was I incrementally perfected/made holier?  Not by a long shot.  Rather than moi becoming more perfect, my relationship with Jesus was becoming more mature and complete, along with my revelation and understanding. 

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.  James 1:2-4

These verses have seemed puzzling to me over the years.  When I was a new convert, I just accepted them on faith—I knew that I should feel joyful, but figured I just needed to work on it some more.  Eventually I began to view these verses from a commonsense perspective and admitted that they made no sense, common or otherwise, to me—based on human behavior in general and mine specifically.

These verses imply that we should be joyful at the prospect of trials or temptations coming our way, commensurately testing our faith—because this develops patience—I guess so that I can wait it out through yet more trials? It was not my experience that I became more patient and/or my faith increased during trials.  In actuality, my faith decreased (Does Proverbs 13:12 not say, Hope deferred makes the heart sick?) and forget about embracing more patience! I ran away as fast as I could if I thought another similar trial might be on the horizon.  Just sayin’…  I was really not enamored with the whole patience concept.  I belonged to the “LORD, please give me patience, NOW” school of  thought. 

Very quickly after I surrendered to Jesus in the early 90’s, the LORD began to address my Instant Grat Mindset.  He gave me a scripture:  But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength.  They shall mount up with wings as eagles.  They shall run and not be weary.  They shall walk and not faint.  Isaiah 40:31.  I was chafing at the bit to enter some/any full-time ministry and do mighty exploits for the LORD—one person compared me to a racehorse in the gate.  During this season of time, I was prophesied over in a revival meeting.  The woman addressed me as “Preacher” saying that that I would preach the Word of God; she told me to get ready.  On another occasion, I felt that the LORD impressed upon me that He was going to give me a healing ministry.  However, on the other hand, it seemed that every time I turned around, I was bumping into Isaiah 40:31—in church sermons, when I flipped open the bible, when I turned on the TV or radio. I continued to earnestly seek direction about how to serve God, and drove out of town to attend a church service that featured a Guest Speaker from Argentina (Claudio Freidzon).  He had an English interpreter, but the sermon was the finest I had heard up to that point—and was highly motivational.  At the end, Pastor Freidzon called us forward to the altar for prayer and I remember that I was filled with zeal and boldness and big plans for serving Him.  Believe it or not, I also remember smiling to myself because I had not heard Isaiah 40:31 for the entire service.  However…when I turned to go back to my seat, I noticed that the church members had draped a huge banner across the entire back wall of the church, and that banner had a scripture on it. Yup, you got it. 😊

Eventually I embraced that scripture.  To this day, I refer to it as my favorite scripture; and, at various times, have displayed it on wall hangings/plaques, key chains, mouse pads, etc.  As a result of that scripture, I cultivated a habit of going to God for my marching orders.  The long and the short of it: I did not enter a full-time ministry.  Instead, I guess you could say that the business world became my mission field.  At some point, I was able to get a Bible Study going at work.  I began to write weekly debriefs of the teachings, for the benefit of those who weren’t able to attend.  The study became more virtual—and my debriefs turned into an email-based Bible Study at work.  And eventually they turned into…this blog…with potential global reach. 😊  If I had proceeded with my proposed implementation of the plan, I probably would have wound up—spiritually speaking—in a ditch on the side of some road. 

So did all this waiting for the LORD to call me as a full-time minister accomplish anything?  Yes, I believe so.  It kept me honest, and I began to realize over the years that I was not wired to be a missionary in some remote corner of the world—or to live on an airplane criss-crossing the country as an evangelist—or to sing on the Hillsong Worship Team.  Eventually I understood what my giftings were—and what my heart’s desire was.  Was I incrementally perfected/made holier?  Not by a long shot.  Rather than moi becoming more perfect, my relationship with Jesus was becoming more mature and complete, along with my revelation and understanding.  (And indeed the Greek word for “perfect” in James 1:4, τέλειος, has much more of a connotation of completion v. perfection.)  Therefore, I can say, yes—cultivating patience did help.  And I never stopped waiting for God during that growth process.  Also, the LORD constantly renewed my strength when my faith otherwise would have flagged.  I did glide on eagle’s wings.  Hence Isaiah 40:31’s special place of distinction in my life to this day.

Going back to James 1:2-4…I still see a problem with these verses in that many people use the Amplified Bible translation or its intent:  the testing (root Greek word is πειράζω) of your faith produces (not patience but) endurance, i.e., we should be joyful at the prospect of increased capacity to endure.  Now we need to appreciate the highly important distinction between developing patience and endurance.  “Patience can be defined as the ability to accept delay or trouble calmly. On the other hand, endurance can be defined as experiencing and surviving pain or hardship.”¹  So we essentially become battle-hardened when we experience trials and this is cause for joy?  As I said  before, when the enemy is kicking me around the block, I am not joyful before, during, or afterwards.  And my risk avoidance tendencies increase.  Thus, I don’t think that, in this context, trials mean bad things that often happen to good people who are living in a fallen world.  (BTW this week I heard a Christian TV Pastor—who’s a real firebrand—say he was gonna kick Adam in the shins, when he got to heaven. 😊)  I think when this verse says “trials” it’s talking about…pop-quizzes. 😉  Here’s an example –   

Now the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near. Then Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” But this He said to test him (same Greek word, πειράζω!), for He Himself knew what He would do. John 6:4-6

What was that all about?  Jesus knew what He was going to do—feed ~20,000 people Himself because the apostles were not going to be able to come up with viable solution;  He knew they were not going to correctly factor Him into the equation.  So why the test?  To establish Philip’s faith baseline—for him? For future generations?  Basically, Philip was operating in the human solution paradigm.  And we must remember that this re-occurred!  The apostles were still proposing human solutions when Jesus later fed the 4K men + women + children (could they maybe have been asking a rhetorical how-on-earth question?—but after doing an inventory of all the available food?).    And Jesus’ after-action-assessment of their faith level was, “Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember?”…“How is it you do not understand?” Matt 8:18, 21. (Underline is mine.)

John proposed the reason for Jesus asking Philip the “What do we do now?” question—using the “πειράζω” test word.  How did Jesus apply this word in His ministry?  He only used “πειράζω” three times in the New Testament…to describe what the hypocritical religious elite were doing with their would-be incriminating questions.  They were trying to trip Him up! However, I believe they were also in data collection mode.  In Philip’s case, he collected some important data to be analyzed during the After Action Review.  First and foremost, he now had the major benefit of a hindsight view of God’s triumphant victory after the faith challenge. How about this for Philip’s imaginary conversation-with-self:  “How could I have missed it so badly?  I should have looked to/waited on God.  He wound up solving my problems anyway.  But things would have been so much less stressful if I had looked to/waited on Him. So why am I still believing in myself and not Him?” Once he took corrective steps toward answering these questions and changing his behavior, Philip probably found it easier to wait on God the next time he had a faith challenge.  (Hindsight Hint:  In that Matt 8:18 scripture, Jesus included the question, “…And do you not remember?”) That was cause for joy—because his understanding was becoming more complete (and as I mentioned before, τέλειος has that connotation of completeness v. perfection). 

But Newsflash, in the James 1:4 verse, “But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing,” there are not one, but two words there: perfect and complete AKA τέλειος and ὁλόκληρος.  And the latter Greek word means…“complete or entire.”  So is this saying, “That you may be complete and complete??” 🙂  Subsequently, I believe that further research is needed to further understand what the real end game is here.  To be continued….

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¹https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-patience-and-vs-endurance/