In this compelling episode, Pastor Jack Hibbs takes us on a journey through the Book of James, emphasizing the role of trials in testing and strengthening our faith. Discover the profound difference between joy and happiness and how enduring life’s difficulties can develop patience and perseverance. Listen as Pastor Jack shares personal stories and scriptural wisdom that reveal God’s hand in our trials and the ultimate purpose they serve in our spiritual growth.
You want to be really happy, be a Christian. Because what happens is if you have God in your life and you understand that trials are going to come to the believer and God has engineered them to the perfecting of our faith, then here’s the good news. You’ll have joy in your heart. And that joy is something other than happiness. But joy can generate happiness.
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This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I’m David Jay, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God’s Word, the Bible. What if today was the day that Jesus returned? Well, that’s the life-changing perspective explored in One Day Nearer by Steve Miller. And it’s this month’s featured resource from Pastor Jack. Now, this inspiring book helps you focus on the hope that Jesus is returning. And this book offers practical encouragement to live each day with faith, purpose, and joy. One Day Nearer by Steve Miller, available for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com slash real radio. That’s jackhibbs.com slash real radio. On today’s edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack begins his series now called The Book of James with a message titled, Faith Well Done. Before it came one of the books of the New Testament, James was a letter sent out to those Jews who had received the gospel and had followed Christ, but they had a limited understanding of God’s grace and how it works in the life of a believer. You see, these believers misunderstood the theology behind grace. You see, they thought that they could sin freely because grace could handle it, and that being forgiven only magnifies the grace of God. So today, Pastor Jack teaches that every time the world gets angry at our right living, God’s name is blessed. The world is against us, even persecutes us, but the result is pure and sincere joy in our lives. Now with his message called, Faith Well Done, here’s pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs.
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Trials come into our lives to prove our faith. We say we have faith. James says, let’s put it to the test. It has to be that way. And so realize this morning that trials are determined for the life of the believer. He says, count it joy. Come to a conclusion. And then he uses the word joy. The word means pure joy other than happiness. This is not the word happy. Oh, I want to be happy. Good luck. Honestly, good luck is all you have. Good luck on that. You want to be really happy, be a Christian. Because what happens is if you have God in your life and you understand that trials are going to come to the believer… and God has engineered them to the perfecting of our faith, then here’s the good news. You’ll have joy in your heart. And that joy is something other than happiness. But joy can generate happiness. Happiness will rob us of our joy because it often is fleeting. It flies away with the latest bad news. But not joy. You can be standing outside of that house that burned down and everybody, you know, is there and somebody who doesn’t know the scripture might say, you know, you’re to be happy in all things. That’s not true. We’re to have joy in all things. But for some reason, we’ve been taught, or maybe we just think, that when our house burns down or a family member dies, that we’re not supposed to cry, that we’re not supposed to have emotion, that we’re not supposed to be grieved. We’re supposed to say, we’re happy. Oh, praise the Lord. Thank you, Jesus, for burning my house down. No, God uses the difficulties of life to perfect our faith. He may not have burned your house down. And it would be silly if a father said, come on, kids, let’s gather around the fire heap, get out some marshmallows and sing Jesus a song. We’re in the joy. That’s not right. That’s not what we’re talking about. You can be standing at the gravesite of someone with tears flowing down your cheeks and have deep abiding joy, knowing that there’s a peace that flows deeper than a river. That’s joy. You know, even in our declaration, our constitution says that we have the freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. That’s a bummer. I wish he would have wrote in there joy. And then they should have put a parenthesis saying, see Jesus Christ, page 92, you know, for joy. But trials are going to come into our lives. In 1 Peter 1, verse 6, the Bible says, In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved, you see, grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to the praise and honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Trials, God mixes them up and prepares them just for your name, for who you are. And it may seem like it’s overwhelming. It may seem like you’re gonna die, but you won’t die. He’ll see you through. This last service, someone handed me a note. Unfortunately, my heart broke over this because there is no name or phone number to respond to this. It says, Jack, I’m aching. I wanna express my anger, but I’m afraid. I’ll be rejected. I can’t endure anymore of these trials. I’m not a hypocrite. I know that what I’m choosing not to do is right, but sometimes I just draw near to it like a moth to a flame. One day I’m on top, and the next day I’m literally in the pits, literally a holy roller coaster in my life. My heart is screaming out, but no one is hearing me. I want out. That was handed to me last service. Don’t, if this is you or you feel like this person, don’t bail out. The Bible tells us in the book of Corinthians that God will not allow you to be tested beyond that which you are able. He’ll see you through. Make your hope in God. I know it’s tough. You’re hardly able to make the month’s payments at the end. And you’re wondering, well, how is this ever going to break off of our lives? Are we ever going to be free of this yoke? I had a family just so concerned about that one time. They said, you know, are we ever going to just break even? And I said, you know what? I don’t know. And I felt God spoke to me in that moment because I’d never thought about this before. I said, could it be that God has placed you in the midst of this body to test our love, to test our commitment and our selfishness, that we might free ourselves up and bless you guys back as a family? Could you possibly be placed here in this church to test our commitment to God? Could it be that those that are around you and I, remember the 25 of us who are going through hard times? Could it be that God is using these things in our lives to test the love of this body? This last week, last service, there was a man here all in a wheelchair with a serious surgery. And he couldn’t wait to get to church because you guys all sent flowers to him and prayed for him and made phone calls to see if he wanted his trash cans taken out. Our meals cooked. And he said he couldn’t wait to get here today. He’s all bandaged up in a wheelchair. Like he fell off a truck. Love brought him here. Faith does things like that. What’s an irritant in your life and in my life where we’re saying, man, I want out from underneath this thing. God says, wait, just wait a minute. This irritant called the trial I’m going to use to great things in your life. We’ve all seen an oyster, haven’t we? Aren’t they about the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen? Have you ever seen an oyster in its shell? They are one goofy looking deal. Looks like a bunch of burnt potato chips all stuck together. And that oyster is happy as a clam, his next door neighbor. He’s living down there in the ocean. He’s fine. And then he opens his yap one day and gets some sand in his mouth. And that little grain of sand sits there and he’s saying, hmm, what is this? This is an irritant. If I were a Christian, I’d call it a trial. And this really bugs me. In fact, I can’t stand it anymore. And what happens is he begins to secrete a solution or an emulsion that’s inside of his own being, his own body. And he spits on this thing of sand and begins to coat it, spits on it again. He keeps spitting on it. What he winds up doing, listen, he winds up investing part of his own life and energy into the dealing with the problem that’s right in the middle of his very life. And he begins to respond to that irritant until it’s completely coated, and we call it a pearl. And at the center of every pearl is a grain of sand. And that oyster hated it. But at the end, it was able to burp up this wonderful pearl. In our Christian experience, God puts a grain of sand in there and we’re going, I can’t stand this. How long is it going to take? And God wants us to take what’s inside of us. Jack, I don’t have anything left. Wait a minute, friend, listen. You’ve got tons left. No, I can’t go on anymore. Yes, you can because you’re not the one that’s to be putting forth what’s inside of you. The word of God has been placed inside of you. Remember, we’re Christians. If there’s one verse that lives inside our heart, God wants to bring that verse up and make it a reality in our lives. It can rattle around in our little head all our lifetime long until a trial shakes us and it falls down into our heart. You can hear it go ka-plunk, and all of a sudden it goes out of head knowledge and into life knowledge, and we produce pearls. The word of God comes out to the problem. You see, that’s why it’s not our strength. I can do it. Oh, don’t say you can do it because you can’t do it. I whipped it. You didn’t whip it. God whipped it. You want to get through your trial quicker? Yes, please let me know how. Take it to the word of God and apply the word of God to the trial and watch what happens. You see, you and I need to start doing this with our lives. If you’re like me, I wake up five days into the trial. What happened? They come so camouflaged so many of the times. Then you wake up. It’s a pearl in the making. You don’t need to stress. We need to be so much closer as a body. When somebody’s got the hiccups in this sanctuary, everybody around here is going to know it. If your phone goes off or your beeper goes off, we all know it, don’t we? Why can’t we broadcast things like, you know what? I need my lawn mowed because I broke my leg. I’d never do that. I got too much pride to do that. That’s part of our problem, isn’t it? We need meals because we can’t make our own food. We’re so sick. The body wants to love and minister to the body. And your trial, God is using. Let’s keep going on this. The third thing that we need to see is the development of our faith in verse 3. And he says, knowing… that the testing of your faith produces patience. Well, can you circle the word knowing, testing, faith, and patience? All of this is swung into action by the work of God because of the end of verse two, there’s a word called trial, trials. And the word in the Greek means multicolored. Multicolored, the trials are various trials, multicolored trials. Have you ever seen a carpet, a woven carpet? It’s a beautiful thing, but you see it from the backside. Have you ever seen like a montage carpet where there’s all these different colors under the rainbow and more? And then you go to the back end of the carpet and it’s like, what is this? It’s like somebody lost their lunch on this thing. It doesn’t make any sense. All these things are hanging. It doesn’t make any sense to me at all. And you’re sitting there criticizing it and wondering what is with this thing? And the guy goes, excuse me, but you’re looking at it from the wrong side. Oh. Yeah, I knew that. And you walk over to the right side of the carpet and it’s a beautiful, beautiful carpet that tells something. You’re looking at it from the back side, from the wrong side. Where we’re at, a trial looks insane. It’s multicolored. It looks wild. And we have fallen into it. And that word fall means surrounding us. So we’re looking at, oh my goodness, no, listen, we gotta get outside and view it from the outside looking in and it’s a beautiful pattern. We need to remember that. So knowing that, he says in verse three, no, and by the way, here is James again. He’s got the chalkboard out in front of us and he’s commanding us. This is not a suggestion. Can you please maybe get to know this? He’s saying, know it. Know this, that the testing of your faith produces patience. And the word testing is what we would think about that gold, gold that’s found, that you’d pour acid on that gold. The more the acid is poured on the gold, what happens? The more pure the gold and its purity is released or revealed. If you found a gold nugget, let’s say you were digging around, you found a nugget of gold, you’d run down to the assayer’s office. That assayer would pour acid. And wouldn’t you think, what are you pouring acid on it for? It’s gold. Come on, take it easy, will you? Put some milk and butter on it. Don’t pour acid on it. No, the guy knows what he’s doing. He’s the assayer, and it means a lot what he says. He pours acid on there, and he says, you know what? This is gold of very high quality. This acid ate away all the impurities. And that assayer would turn and say, this is worth $200,000, but your claim could be worth multi-millions of dollars. And so God says, I know you’re in the middle of a trial, and it’s worth a lot to you right now, but believe me, where you’ve come from and where you’re going, buddy, is worth an eternal weight of glory. And so you just hang in there. By the way, you know about the working of gold. The more you heat up gold… Under the pressure, the greater the dross comes to the top. They scrape off the dross and they heat it up more. They scrape it off, they heat it up more until the artisan or the goldsmith looks into the molten gold and he will continue to scrape off the junk until what? Until he can see his face in the reflection of the gold. Once he sees his face, he says it’s pure. It looks like a mirror, a gold mirror. And that’s when he knows he’s done. And God is doing that with our lives. Every trial that comes into our life, that’s what Philippians 3.10, jot it down if you would. Philippians 3.10, you’re gonna love this verse. The Bible says there, Paul is speaking that I may know the power of his resurrection. And everyone said, amen. And the fellowship of his suffering. And everybody said, oh no. I want the power, but I don’t want the pain. Amen. that we might be, it says, conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. When God scrapes our lives and removes the dross and he looks over the bucket, he sees that gold in there and he says, I can see me in there. God looks at your life and he says, now I can see me in there. They’re walking by faith. They’re leaning on the word of God. I can see me in there. It’s a wonderful thing, the development of the Christian faith. And then finally, verse four, the maturing of the Christian faith. But let patience have its perfect work. that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. The word patience is the word perseverance, the stick-to-it-ness, the heart to keep on going. God is so wonderful, and those of you who are kind of just wondering where you’re at and can this stuff be true, I want you to consider this one thing. Have you noticed when a Christian comes to Christ for the very first moment, what do they do? They take off like a skyrocket. And then God is waiting. And if you’re a new believer, I want you to hear this. God is waiting. And you’re so excited. You know what you wind up doing? You wind up memorizing John 3.16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. And you’re telling your friends. You’re telling your neighbors, your enemies. You’re telling your dog and your cat. You’re telling everybody. You’re so excited. You’re a new believer. You’re like a skyrocket. And you’re telling everyone about it. And God is smiling, and he’s smiling, and he’s happy. And so what I’m going to do now is I’m going to give you a little trial. I’m going to have the, you know, inner tube blow out on your bike. and you’re going to get all bummed out. Let’s see if you really believe what you preach. And by the way, the word that’s used for testing is to prove its value, not to test it to destroy it, not to test it to break it. That’s a whole different Greek word. It’s to test, to confirm its assurance and its validity. It’s a good thing. For God so loved the world. God, don’t you love me anymore? Yeah, I’m giving you a little trial. But God, how can this be happening to me? I’ve been preaching your word and I get a blowout? It’s because I love you and I want my word to become a reality in your life and I want you to believe what you preach. But God, can’t that be done some other way? No, it can’t be done any other way. And as you grow along and go from trial to trial, God turns up the flame. Well, I’m just going to stay kind of a remedial believer all my life then. I want to stay in the slow class. Let me give you a secret here, a little tip. It doesn’t work. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t work. He’ll force you out of the class. How? He gives you a trial that makes you want to leave the class just to get you in another class. He will not let you sit idle. He will work in your life until he has accomplished that which pleases him. That’s why we’re supposed to grow. You know, and if you’re not growing at this church, go to a church where you grow. It’s all important. Well, Jack, aren’t you afraid somebody’s going to leave? Gee, let me think about that. You wind up going to some other church, you get stronger in the Lord, and you wind up leading somebody to Christ or helping out with the homeless or blessing some person that’s in the hospital. Let me see, how do I lose? Have you forgotten we’re one body? If you know somebody who’s at a place who’s not growing, they, not you, not me, they owe it to God to find some place where they can grow or to be maturing. And what’s implied here is that we grab this wheel and we hang on and we say, Lord, keep me on the straight and narrow, man. Let’s go for it. I want to grow. I want to mature. You just put me on that path. Be patient while he does this. I got to tell you, last night on the way to the church here for the Saturday night service, I had a blast. I was driving down this road, and it was a two-lane road. I mean, two lanes going one way and two lanes going the other way. So maybe that’s a four-lane road. Is that four-lane? So I’m driving along, and there’s these two guys in front of me, and they happen to be side by side. They’re certainly going the speed limit. And I was driving, and I’m just sitting back there, and this guy comes up behind me with this brand new black BMW. It was really nice. Tinted windows, and it just looked great. And I think, those are really spiritual cars, because it says BMW, be my witness, is what that means. And This guy in this BMW comes up behind me, and he does what every BMW commercial does. He blinks his headlights at me. He goes around me. He comes up to these two guys that are in front of me, and he blinks his headlights. Then he moves over behind the other guy, blinks his lights on him. Nothing happens. He moves back behind the other guy. He’s blinking his, and he goes, then he gets right in the middle of both the cars. Behind them, blinking. Now, I don’t care if you’re driving a Rolls Royce. At this point, this guy starts honking. That’s zero class. He’s… And I’m thinking, oh, bad witness. This is not good. You were okay blinking. Because, you know, that’s a big thing in Europe, too. You’re supposed to blink and they move over. And he’s driving a European car, so he’s got to be European about it, right? Now he starts honking, which is a very pagan thing. Very pagan. Honk, honk, honk, honk. Oh, and you can see his now. His head’s going like this. He’s like. And all of you can see these superlatives and adjectives and verbs coming out of his mouth. Blinking, honking, BMW. Just going through this thing. And in a moment, I’m watching going, this is great. This is so great because I’m on my way to teach a study on patience in the midst of trials and tribulations. Thank you, God, for this man, whoever he is, Lord. This is so good. This is like something I can share with the church. This is so good. And at that moment, I noticed the two drivers up front and the two separate cars, they looked over at each other. And in that moment, an eternal bond was created. There’s no way. So now I’m fully committed. I’m going to stay on this chase. And they would not, it was obvious, they would not let this guy by. And if I would have had a camera, I could have like won $10,000, you know. And this guy’s going back and forth and he’s like wearing the tires out in that car. He was so stressed. And I mean furious, honking and blinking and getting right up on their tail end and hitting their brakes and And then I had to turn off and go park at church. I was having the best time. Be patient. If we would have crawled in that guy’s cockpit and said, are you having a trial right now? Oh man, look at these idiots. I can’t believe these guys are on the road. I can’t believe they give their license. Calm down. Look somebody calm down. This is a BMW. Just take it easy. See, that’s so many times it’s like us. Come on, come on, come on. Things aren’t happening. Come on. It’s not happening fast enough. Oh, man, come over here. And we jump right out of the fire pan into the fire. And God says, just hang on. Believe my word, will you, for a moment? I’m going to reveal some awesome pearl in your heart in a moment. And we get right there so often. We pull the ripcord and bail right out of the deal. And God says, oh, man, now we’ve got to start this over next month. Let’s pray now then. Oh, let’s pray. Father, we come before you and we would ask you, Lord, that you would cause us to see you in it all, that you engineer trials. So Lord, today, tonight, this afternoon, tomorrow, next week, next year, whenever it goes wrong, we may not understand it. It may look like a bunch of woven together cloth. We don’t see the pattern at all. May we remember that your word invites us to look from your perspective, that it makes sense on your side, and to be enduring patiently to see your hand in it. In Jesus’ name we pray.
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Amen.
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Pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio with his message called Faith Well Done. We’re glad you could join us today. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack’s series called The Book of James. It’s a series on walking in faith by putting it into action. And we’ll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.
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So as you heard from our broadcast, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And if you’d like to know what a commitment to Christ can mean in your life personally, we would love to help you out with that. Go to jackhibbs.com slash know God. That’s K-N-O-W, God. And there you’ll be guided through what a commitment to Christ can mean in your life and the freedom that you’ll find in knowing God. Don’t miss out. That’s the Know God tab at jackhibbs.com.
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Everybody, brand new year. Listen to this. What a promise. Psalm 65, 11, God there announces that his paths drip with abundance and he makes his way prosperous. So listen, draw close to God. Enjoy the new year in Christ. Celebrate him every day and everything that you do. Listen, let God’s work in your life be an incredible witness to other people. Bring them along. Bring them along with you into the kingdom of heaven. Love on them. Listen, the people in your life who are not Christians, start treating them like a Christian. Watch what happens. Share the joy of the Lord because you can. And exalt in his liberty and freedom because he’s given it to you. Let’s have an awesome new year in Jesus Christ together. Amen.
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This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We’ll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.
