http://empoweredbiblestudy.blogspot.com/ Trials come in various forms from small ones to gut wrenching life changing trials. In this webinar see how our attitude contributes to our trials being turned into triumphs. How we can have joy and peace as we grow in our Spiritual walk.

1. Empowered Bible Study Ministries
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2. Turning Trials into Triumphs
James 1:2-12
Welcome to Empowered Bible Study Ministries. Today we are looking at James
1:2-12 as we learn how to turn Trials into Triumphs.
So many times people think that when they accept Jesus Christ into their heart
and become a Christian, all their troubles and trials will disappear only to find
out that that is not true and they find themselves unprepared and discouraged.
All too often we approach trials as being difficult prompting groaning and
complaints because we don‟t understand the purpose for them.
My Friends, as we continue in our study today, we will see how our response and
our heart attitude contributes to our Christian Maturity. We will see how God
uses trials to mold and shape us into what He wants us to be, to bring honor and
glory to His name.
After a brief introduction in verse one, James immediately jumps right in and
gives us essential elements to have victory over our trials.
Each of these essential elements asks us to evaluate our own reactions, values
and perceptions.
There are four particular elements that Warren Wiersbe points out that James
gives us.
Let's look at them:
1. A Joyful Attitude - James 1:2
2. An Understanding Mind - James 1:3
3. A Surrendered Will - James 1:4, 9-11
4 .A Heart that wants to Believe - James 1:5-8
You know, trials come in many forms, they are a part of life and we need to be
prepared now for when they do come.
James 1:2 says „My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials”
NKJV. It doesn‟t say if but when.

3. 1 Peter 4:12 “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is
to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you” (NKJV)
You see, scripture is telling us that we will go through trials; the question is my
friend, „how will we go through them—as victims or victors.
James 1:2-4 “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials,
knowing that the testing of our faith produces patience. But let patience have its
perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” NKJV
These are such comforting words. Remember, as we saw last week, James was
writing to Persecuted Christian Jews. They were not living the easy life. Saul of
Tarsus was going house to house pulling Christians from their homes and
throwing them in prison. They were having several problems in their personal
lives and in their church fellowship.
James compassionately identifies with them and says ‟my brethren‟. Meaning
my brothers and sisters in Christ, he knows what they are going through; he too
is going through various trials and persecution.
Then he exhorts them, knowing that at this time they are going through these
trials, he says count it all joy.
This is a remarkable command—we are to choose to be joyful in situations
where joy would naturally be our last response.
Does this mean that we are to laugh through our trials? Absolutely not!
Some trials can be like a little pebble in our shoe that pricks us and irritates us
each time we walk, others can be gut wrenching, life changing experiences.
James is encouraging us to have pure joy in the very face of trials. He is not
asking us to pretend to be happy.
Ladies, rejoicing goes beyond happiness it is an inner peace that only God can
give us.
Happiness centers on earthly circumstances and how well things are going
here.
Joy centers on God and his presence in our experience. It is possessing a spirit
of joy, an attitude of joy and perseverance as we face the trials in our life.
This joyful attitude comes from knowing as we see in James 1:3 that God is
allowing this trial in our life for a reason and purpose. That you can see the trial
through His eyes and know that He will see you through it and that there is a

4. greater purpose beyond ourselves that we are going to embrace.
Now when we talk about falling into various trials in verse two the Greek word
for fall is to fall in with, among or surrounded. The Greek scholar A.T. Robertson
says, “it is the picture of being surrounded by trials. (Word Pictures in the New
Testament Vol6. p.11)
Various trials means variegated trials, trials of many colors. Trials come in all
shapes and forms. From financial problems, health issues, moral issues,
accidents to the loss of loved ones and more. They can be small trials to huge
life changing trials.
Peter used the same word in 1 Peter1:6,8 .
Now, you can respond to trials in many ways, but how you respond reflects on
your Christian walk. Where are you in your Christian walk? How mature are
you?
When trials come, do you cry out and say „Why God, why me!‟ and simply give up
and turn your back on God? Or do you trust that God is in control of every aspect
of your life and seek wisdom and guidance through the trial.
Do you groan and complain or do you say „Lord, I know you have a plan and a
purpose for my life, teach me what you want me to learn through this , give me
your eyes that I may see what you want me to see through this trial.‟
There are going to be times in our trials where we can see what God is doing
and the purpose for our adversity; but there are also going to be times that we
don‟t understand why God has allowed that trial into our lives. We don‟t
understand why we are going through such pain or having to watch a loved one
go through pain.
It is in these times that we need to respond with humble faith, trusting God to
work in our lives according to His plan and purpose.
Oh my friend, God wants what is best for you!
John Walvoord said:"A test is given to see if a student can pass, not pass out.”
You see, a trial is a test that is given to us, not to make us pass out, but to help us
grow spiritually that we may mature in our Christian walk.
1 Corinthians 10:13 says that God will not allow us to go through any more than
what we can handle.

5. Now I know sometimes it feels as though we can‟t handle any more, and we ask
God as Paul did with the thorn in his flesh to please take this from me. But God
knows how much we can handle and will give us the grace we need to see us
through. He may not want to remove that thorn as with Paul and that is ok. We
need to Trust that God is working everything out for our good.
John Walvoord goes on to say:
“James gave sound advice on how to score high on every test. One who brings
the right attitude to the trial, who understands the advantage of the trial, and
who knows where to obtain assistance in the trial will certainly end up on God‟s
honor roll.”—Bible Knowledge Commentary
The path of life is not always an easy path to walk, but one thing we do know as it
says in Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”
NKJV
It is not through our own strength but through Christ who strengthens us. And
that is what this is about. Learning to Trust God to sustain us and help us in our
Christian Walk - total surrender of our life to Him - as a bondservant to his
master.
You know, believing God exists is not the same as trusting the God who exists.
It is easy to believe that God does exist but knowing that God is in full control of
your life, that nothing is going to happen to you today that God has not allowed
and that there is a reason and a purpose for everything, and through this you will
have victory over your trials.
As we depend on Christ to help us through the trials in our lives, this ladies is
where we will grow in our Christian walk. As it says in James 1:3-4 “knowing
that the testing of our faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect
work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” NKJV
Patience is not a passive acceptance of circumstances. It is a courageous
perseverance in the face of suffering and difficulty.
If we are able to look beyond the present trial and see the product God intends
to produce through our suffering, we will experience joy.
When our attitude is right, where we are seeking what God wants to show us and
not dwelling on the circumstances themselves, then this is where we will grow
spiritually, we will mature in our Christian walk.
We may not be able to understand the specific reasons for God‟s allowing
certain experiences to crush us or wear us down, but we can be confident that
his plan is for our good.

6. You know it is when you crush the pedals of a Rose that you smell the strongest
fragrance.
What may look hopeless or impossible to us never looks that way to God!
It is not the trial itself that is to be the ground of our joy; rather, it is the
expectation of the results, the development of our character that should cause
us to rejoice in adversity.
So we are to have a „Joyful Attitude‟; an „Understanding Mind‟; and a
„Surrendered Will‟.
Isaiah 26:3 “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You.” (NKJV)
We need to keep our eyes on Christ and the greater goal. Just like Peter, while
his focus was on Christ he was able to walk on water, but the minute he allowed
the distractions around him to take his eyes off Christ, he began to sink. Our
focus needs to be on the greater picture knowing that God is in full control of
every aspect of our Lives.
If we value comfort more than character, then trials will upset us.
If we value material things more than spiritual, then we will not find pure joy in
the midst of trials.
If we live only for the „now‟ and not for the future, then we will miss out on the
true blessings that comes our way as we see the big picture unfold with God‟s
plan and purpose for our lives.
Job 23:10-12 “But He knows the way that I take; When He has tested me, I shall
come forth as gold. 11foot has held fast to His steps; I have kept His way and not
turned aside. 12have not departed from the commandment of His lips; I have
treasured the words of His mouth More than my necessary food.” (NKJV)
Listen to that: I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary
food.” My friend, do we treasure God‟s words (which is our spiritual food we
glean from scripture)—our spiritual food more than physical food?
We need to be walking close to the Lord, being in His word daily, communicating
with Him daily, pursuing a deep personal relationship with Him so that when
these trials hit we can have a confidence to know that God is working everything
out according to His plan and purpose for our lives.
It is not a question of if trials come but when they come we need to be grounded
with the Lord.

7. Martin Luther said “Were it not for tribulation I should not understand the
Scriptures”.
The word of God is our instruction book for life and as we go through the trials
and adversities of life this is when it transforms that „Head knowledge‟ into
„Heart knowledge‟.
As we see in Job 42:5 “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my
eye sees You.” (NKJV)
Job went from Head knowledge to Heart knowledge—now he knew God
experientially. He didn‟t just hear of him he now knew him experientially. When it
says „my eye sees you‟ it is referring to the heart.
When God called Abraham to live by faith, He tested him in order to increase his
faith.
Oh my friend, we need to switch our thinking about trials. Instead of thinking of
a trial as negative, think of it as a positive. Think about the outcome and what
God is going to do in your life as a result of this trial.
Maybe your trial is to set you straight again on your Christian walk—may be you
have strayed away,
Maybe there is something you are doing that God doesn‟t want you to be doing—
He will get a hold of you to set you straight
Maybe it is simply to help you mature in your Christian walk.
No matter what the trial is for, there is a reason and purpose! Ask God to give
you wisdom in your understanding of the trial so that you may grow spiritually.
James 1:5-8 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all
liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6let him ask in faith,
with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed
by the wind. 7let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the
Lord; 8he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (NKJV)
Warren Wiersbe said “Knowledge is the ability to take things apart, while
wisdom is the ability to put them together.
God wants us to ask Him for wisdom. In fact, it is in the Greek Imperative mode,
meaning it is a command it is not a suggestion.
The wisdom we are talking about is to seek God‟s guidance as we go through
the various trials. When we seek God‟s guidance we are saying „I don‟t want to

8. waste this opportunity to spiritually grow in my Christian walk. Show me what
you want me to do, teach me what you want me to learn. Seeking God in the
midst of your trial.‟
Verse six tells us that not only are we to Ask but that we are to ask in Faith. Does
it do any good to ask for God‟s guidance if we don‟t believe He will answer the
prayer. No.
Verse eight says that we are double minded when we ask for wisdom but have
doubt in the answer. In fact, James compares the doubting believer to the
waves of the sea, up one minute and down the next.
It is easy to say, „I believe God is going to work this out,‟ but then we find
ourselves keeping one hand in there as if to say „well if I don‟t see results soon, I
will do this or that to solve the problem‟. Are we really letting God in the driver‟s
seat or are we trying to sit on half the seat grabbing the steering wheel?
We don‟t know what the day may hold; therefore, we need to ask for God‟s
wisdom each morning to face the various issues of life.
The more we seek God in every aspect of our lives the more we will grow in
maturity.
Verses 9-11 James tells us that it doesn‟t matter whether a person is poor or
rich, healthy or unhealthy, he is to rejoice in the Lord.
James 1:9-11 “Let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation, but the rich is his
humiliation, because as a flower of the field he will pass away. For no sooner
has the sun risen with a burning heat than it withers the grass; its flower falls,
and its beautiful appearance perishes. So the rich man also will fade away in his
pursuits.” NKJV
Apparently, money and social status were real problems among the people in
James times as we still see this problem of „status‟ today.
Trials have a way of leveling us. Whether you are rich or poor, when you are in a
trial you still submit to God‟s will. You still ask for God‟s wisdom to see you
through the trial.
God‟s goal for our lives is Christian Maturity. He does not want us to stay as
babes in Christ. He wants us to grow in our faith, grow in our walk, grow into
who we are in Him.
We need to surrender our lives to God knowing that He has a plan and purpose
for us. That He will complete the work that He has started in you.

9. God does not leave us hanging, he will equip us for the service that He wants us
to do. In order to equip us, we will have to bear some trials which will help us
mature in our Christian walk.
Look at Joseph‟s life. It was not an easy road, but through all the trials and
adversity that he went through, God was preparing him for a time He wanted to
use him in. Joseph had to suffer and wait on the Lord to see the ultimate
fulfilling of God‟s plan in his life.
God builds character before He calls to service. He equips us for what our
purpose is. If we try to go through trials without a surrendered will, we will end
up more like immature children than mature adults.
Sometimes God has to wean His children away from their childish toys and
immature attitudes.
David said in Psalms 131:2 “Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a
weaned child with his mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.” NKJV
James ends this section in verse 12 with a Beatitude:
James 1:12 ”Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been
approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those
who love Him.” NKJV
When you love God and are truly seeking a deep personal relationship with Him,
when you are seeking daily His wisdom to sustain you in your day to day living,
you will not fall apart when trials come because you are secure in God‟s love.
You are not double-minded trying to love God and the world.
James tells us that as you endure temptations that you will receive the crown of
life. Ladies, this is an eternal reward.
James teaches us that God‟s long-term goal for us is maturity and
completeness, but his eternal goal for us is the Crown of Life, a rich expression
of hope.
As we patiently endure by trusting God here on earth in our day to day lives, we
will bring honor and glory to God as we mature in our Christian walk.
As we look forward to that wonderful reward, the Crown of Life, and to the one
who will present it to us, Jesus Christ, it can be a source of strength and
encouragement in times of trials.

10. Ladies, as you endure the trials of life, let it be a process of growth. We must
learn from them so that we can apply them to our lives.
God told the Israelites to remember the 40 years in the desert in Deuteronomy
8:2-3 “And you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these
forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in
your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3He humbled
you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor
did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by
bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the
LORD” (NKJV)
By bringing the adversity in the form of hunger in their lives during those 40
years and supplying food, they learned that God supplies their needs.
In order to profit from this lesson, they had to remember it.
We too, if we are to profit from the lessons God teaches us, we must remember
them. We must allow them to sink deeply into our hearts so that each time
another trial comes we will remember how God widdled away the imperfections
of our life to make us more like Him.
The Lord can do great things in our lives when we learn to wait on Him. It is
when we jump ahead and try to do things on our own that we get into trouble.
 Abraham ran ahead of the Lord - when they saw that Sarah was barren and
yet God had promised a blessing through the seed of Abraham, Abraham
decided to run ahead and solve the problem on his own by having a child with
Hagar, Sarah‟s handmaid. This ended up being a huge mistake that has had
bad ramifications throughout history.
 God had His own timing for the seed of Abraham to be born—which
was fulfilled
 Moses ran ahead of the Lord, murdered a man and spent 40 years with the
sheep to learn patience
 Exodus 2:11-12 “Now it came to pass in those days, when Moses was
grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens.
And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. 12he
looked this way and that way, and when he saw no one, he killed the
Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (NKJV)
Sometimes we get impatient and we think we need to help God complete the
work in us, but in reality, He knows what is best and will complete the work in us
at the proper timing.

11. It is when we go through the trials of life that we grow isn‟t it. When things are
going good, we seem to stand still in our Christian walk. It is through the
adversities in life that our faith is stretched. It is through the adversities of life
that bring us to our knees where we say „ok Lord, I surrender‟.
If we can learn in the beginning of the trial to surrender it will make the trial more
bearable because we know, that we know, that we know, that it is for our good!
In closing I‟d like to read you a quote that Lehman Strauss quoted from another
Pastor:
“Life on earth would not be worth much if every source of irritation were
removed. Yet most of us rebel against the things that irritate us, and count as
heavy loss what ought to be rich gain. We are told that the oyster is wiser; that
when an irritating object, like a bit of sand, gets under the „mantel‟ of his shell,
he simply covers it with the most precious part of his being and makes of it a
pearl. The irritation that it was causing is stopped by encrusting it with the
pearly formation. A true pearl is therefore simply a VICTORY over irritation.
Every irritation that gets into our lives today is an opportunity for pearl culture.
The more irritations the devil flings at us, the more pearls we may have. We
need only to welcome them and cover them completely with love, that most
precious part of us, and the irritation will be smothered out as the pearl comes
into being. What a store of pearls we may have, if we will!”
What irritants are you facing today? Count it all joy knowing God has a plan and
purpose for your life. Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.
Knowing that each one of those irritants creates a beautiful pearl.
I have enjoyed studying God‟s word with you and look forward to being with you
again as we continue our study on the Book of James.
Until then,
God bless
To view this study and archives on the book of James go to:
http://thestudyofthebookofjames.blogspot.com/
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