James 1:1-4

James 1:1-4 (NLT)
"This letter is from James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am writing to the "twelve tribes"-Jewish believers scattered abroad. Greetings! Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing."

Just recently I asked myself, how can anyone seriously rejoice from harship and pain? But, the words after that are what get me. "For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow." In every hardship that we face, we have a choice of either learning and growing from it, or succumbing to the hardship. I think my earlier question came from a misunderstanding of those words. No human could possibly rejoice when they are having hardships and enduring pain. Even Jesus himself could not do it. But it is what happens after that matters and decides where we are heading in life.

The great thing to this verse is the end - it tells us that after we have come through all of those hardships and have developed our undurance, we will be perfect. The thing is, we will never be perfect until we are with our Creator. This sends my mind into another round of whirlwind questions, all of which are silly actually. Why strive through those hardships if we won't see the end result until after we are dead? Most of the things that happen in our life I believe we won't understand until we are dead - we wont get the full picture until God can show it to us Himself.

As Christians our faith is based just on that - faith. I am currently reading a book called, "Butterfly in Brazil." Very intersting book and the title comes from a theory a man once made, if a butterfly in Brazil flaps its wings, will it cause a tornado in Texas? Such an insignificant thing, like a butterfly flapping its wings [something it must do] could cause something quite great to happen. This isn't meant to be literal, but it takes us to so many places with our faith. When we flap our wings after times of hardship and let the world see that God brought us through - that is what might cause a tornado far away and we might not even know it. We all have our every day things to do, as small as they are - they can turn into big things through God's power. :] I find that amazing.

Personally I am over joyed to see what the Lord has already done through the hardships in my life. And am so excited to see what he will do with my future hardships and life in general! Our God is an awesome God after all!