Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

James 1:2-4

James isn’t a book that a lot of people pick-up and read. It is probably classed has one of the books on the fringe of the New Testament and it very nearly didn’t make it in. However, I was hit by the opening few verses, they just hit me right between the eyes.

Can we honestly say that when we face our daily trails that it is a joy. What about these bigger trails we have, redundancy, serious illness, CONID-19 or death of a family member, do we consider these a joy. I know I do not. Here we see James saying that life will throw up all sorts of trails and disappointments, some that will really test our faith but they are not meant to make us fall; they are meant to make us stand tall, They are not meant to defeat us; they are meant for us to be victorious, they are not there to make us weaker; they are to give us strength to continue forward in faith This will produce perseverance.

Perseverance, “we must let perseverance finish its work”. If like me you are not an athlete so thinking of doing the couch to 5K seams like a lot of hard work. You have to decide to set aside 30-40 minutes 3 times a week, now that is hard enough. Once you have committed to doing it, the whole process starts off on day 1 with light periods of running between larger periods of walking. Has the weeks go on you finally end up running for a full 30 minutes or 5K. You do not one day decide to do a 5K run and then the following day go out buy a pair of trainers and POW you go out and run the full 5K. Between your first tentative stepping out, until being able to complete the full 5K run in takes 9 weeks of hard work, trails, set backs, disappointments. If you wish to see it through to the end you need to persevere and this process builds character, resilience and strength.

“Welcome each rebuff that turns earth’s smoothness rough”

Robert Browning

So for every bump on the road, every up hill stretch, every fence or wall we come across, these are the trails that are making us the person that God whats us to be. In the face of the big uphill slog, we are safe in the knowledge that Jesus is with us every step of the way and moulding us into the best version of ourselves for His glory.