Lesson 1: Faith’s joy in trials
 James 1:1-4
1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,
3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

 The first thing we need to remember to be able to understand this book of James, is that it is written to people who have believed in Jesus as their Savior, who are born of God and have eternal life. Nothing in this book is written to those who do not believe – which is why this book concentrates on what faith looks like, not on how we accept Him.

Most of us want to have a strong and active faith in Jesus Christ, but many of us do not know how our faith in Him grows. In this study we will discover from the writings of James what it means to have a faith that is living, growing, and active.

We need to begin by understanding what faith is. We often think of it as a noun – as something that we have, something we possess. When the Bible says “faith as a grain of mustard” (Luke 17:6), we understand it this way.

But faith must also be an action. One of the best ways to show the difference is if we substitute “trust” for “faith.” We can say of a dear friend, “I have complete trust in my friend.” Trust is then a feeling. But when we read in Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart” trust becomes an action. It is a command for us to DO something. In this study we will use faith and trust as meaning the same thing – sometimes it is something we have and sometimes it is something we do.

In Verse 2 of the beginning of James, we find the first command which means we must do something for our faith to grow.


*How do you meet trials in your life now?
*When is the last time you thanked God for something that went wrong in your life?

How often do we see trials and troubles as things we just need to get rid of? Is our first reaction to a trial one of running to God and asking Him to take this trial or trouble away?

The first step in growing our faith strong, then, is learning to thank God for our trials and troubles (1 Thessalonians 5:18 and Ephesians 5:20). The action required of us here is to “count it all joy.” We must learn to be thankful for the car that was stolen, for the job we lost, for the illness that came, for every trial we have in our lives. Why? Because Jesus’ promise is that if we learn to be thankful, every trial will be used by Jesus to produce out of our faith a steadfastness. Steadfastness means the ability to stand strong, stick to something, being reliable. And steadfastness produces more God-likeness in our lives, making us more like Him and giving us more ability to be steadfast and joyful in the next trial.