Count It All Joy: What I Learned About Trials from Being Lost

James 1:2-4

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." (ESV)

I used to read that verse and think James had never actually gone through anything hard. Count it all joy? Joy is not the word I would have used for the season I want to tell you about.

A few years ago I went through the breakup of a relationship that mattered to me. I will not walk through every detail here, because the specifics matter less than what happened inside me. What happened was this: I got lost. Not lost in the sense of not knowing where I physically was, but lost in the deeper sense James's original readers would have understood. I did not know who I was without this relationship. I did not know what I believed, or whether God was actually paying attention to my life, or whether any of it would ever make sense. If you have been there, you know that kind of lost does not feel like an adventure. It feels like drowning in slow motion.

James was not writing to people with easy lives. The ESV Study Bible notes that he is writing to Jewish believers scattered outside Israel, likely facing real economic pressure, social hostility, and the ordinary hard edges of life in a fallen world. When he says "trials of various kinds," the Greek word behind "various" is the same word used elsewhere in the New Testament for the many-colored coat of Joseph, or a many-faceted diamond. Trials come in every color and shape. Mine happened to be relational. Yours might be a diagnosis, a job loss, a wayward child, a fractured friendship, or a grief that will not lift. James is not writing about one kind of pain. He is writing about all of it.

Here is the part I could not see while I was in it: the word James uses for "testing" is the same word used for testing metal in a furnace to prove it is genuine, to burn off what is impurity and leave only what is real. That is not a punishment. It is a refining. God was not causing my pain to hurt me. He was using the trial to strip away what I was leaning on that was never going to hold me anyway. I just could not see that from inside the fire.

What I want to tell you is not that I figured this out on my own, because I did not. I had a friend named Stan. While I was lost, genuinely lost, Stan did not try to fix my relationship or give me five steps to feel better. He pointed me back to the Lord. That is really all he did. He kept showing up, kept pointing, kept reminding me that the ground under my feet was not supposed to be this relationship or my own understanding, it was supposed to be God. James says that trials test our faith, and steadfastness is what that testing is meant to produce. I do not think I would have found any steadfastness at all if Stan had not kept pointing me toward the only place it actually comes from.

That word "steadfastness" is worth sitting with too. It is not passive. It is not gritting your teeth and waiting for the pain to end. The Greek word, hupomone, means something closer to "remaining under." It is the posture of staying put under the weight instead of running from it or collapsing under it. I did not remain under my trial gracefully. I remained under it because a friend kept walking me back to the only foundation solid enough to remain under anything. That is steadfastness by grace, not by grit.

And here is where I have to be honest with you: I am not on the other side of this with a bow tied on it. James says to let steadfastness have its full effect, so that we may be "perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." I am not there. I am still a work in progress. I still catch myself leaning on things that cannot hold me. But I know what remaining under feels like now, and I know that lacking nothing is not a finish line I cross so much as a direction I am being formed toward, one trial at a time, the same way a diamond is not finished after a single cut.

So here is what I am asking you to do, not just think about. If you are in a trial right now, whatever color it is, do not try to be your own Stan. Call someone. Text someone. Ask a friend to point you back to the Lord the way I needed to be pointed. And if you are the one who is steady right now, if the fire is not on you at this moment, go be a Stan to someone who is lost. Do not fix their situation. Do not give them five steps. Just point.

Take a minute right now and pray this: "Lord, I do not want to waste this trial. Whatever it is testing in me, let it produce steadfastness instead of bitterness. And send me someone, or make me someone, who points back to You." Then go send that text you have been putting off.

Count it all joy. Not because the trial feels good, but because of what it is quietly building in you, one refining at a time.