Day 3 - Week 65 - James 1:3-4, "Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing."

From Charles Spurgeon's sermon on this verse:

Look at the weather-beaten sailor, the man at home on the sea.  He has a bronzed face and mahogany-colored flesh.  He looks as tough as oak and as hardy as if made of iron.  How different from us poor landsmen.  He can go out to sea in any kind of weather; he has his sea legs on.  How did he come to this strength?  By doing business in great waters.  could not have become a hardy seaman by tarrying on shore.  Now, trial works in the saints that spiritual hardihood which cannot be learned in ease.  You may go to school forever, but you cannot learn endurance there:  you may color your cheek with paint, but you cannot give it that ingrained brown which comes of stormy seas and howling winds.

Isn't that a great word picture?  Can't you just see in your mind the crusty old sailor that Spurgeon is describing? 

"Spiritual hardihood"...that is our goal!  Or as Robert J. Morgan states it, "Endurance is the ability to undergo a period of stress and strain with the inner strength of Christ, emerging from it stronger than when we entered.  It's looking squarely into the face of discouraging circumstances without despair.  It's assuming that God is going to work all things for good.  It's acting as though it's already done though yet unseen.  This seems to be a quality the Lord values beyond almost all else.  It's one of His secret formulas in developing the chemistries of our Christian personalities."

Wow!  I want to be able to look squarely into the face of discouraging circumstances without despair.  That, to me, is true spiritual hardihood!  Becoming strong enough not to crumple when things look bleak; better yet, not to even blink an eye because I know that my God is working on my behalf.  That I have a faith confident enough to rely on my God's ability, that the good result is already in the works.  I can look tough times square in the eye, just like a weather-beaten sailor, and say, "I'm ready for the storm, the calm that follows will come."

I think I've described counting our trials as joy...it is not that we want hard or bad times.  It is that we know God is with us and He will use them for our good, and for our growth. 

"My old eyes get dimmer.  The specialist says the light will fade altogether.  So I gird myself for darkness, quote James 1:2 to 4, shout Hallelujah and go on."  - Salvation Army hero, Samuel Logan Brengle, facing old age and blindness