…the testing of your faith produces patience, but let patience

have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete,

lacking nothing.

James 1:3-4

NKJV

          The only way to know if something is sound and working properly is to test it. James says the “testing of your faith produces patience.” The patience we are urged to here is not patience to sit and stew over something or bear with it through gritted teeth until God is finished with us. It is a confident and settled trust in God’s will. It is to embrace God’s will knowing that He is for me, and He is using this for my good. It’s through this kind of testing of my faith that God grows my faith, prepares me for greater service in His kingdom, and assures me I am truly His.

          This is why James says “let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” As I wrestle through the struggles God allows, and even brings into my life, and I learn to humbly trust Him during them, God uses this process to make me “perfect.” This does not mean morally perfect or sinless, but “mature,” “whole,” and “complete.”

          This kind of perfection is the essence of demonstrated righteousness—righteousness that comes from a changed heart. Noah was declared to be a “perfect” or “righteous” man (Gen. 6:9). Not because Noah was morally perfect, but because he chose to believe in God and obey Him.  Noah’s faith in God allowed God to declare him righteous, but Noah and every saint of God who has ever lived had to demonstrate that righteousness. Only God can declare us righteous (perfect), but it’s up to us to strive to live up to that declaration by pursuing righteousness in everything we do.

          This is why Jesus could say in the Sermon on the Mount “be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). We can do this because with His righteousness applied to our account, we can live our life pleasing to Him.  So, while I can never be morally perfect and without sin in this life, I can find my happiness and joy in the Lord and not in this world or the things of it.  When I do, I’ll “lack nothing.” In other words, I’ll want nothing, because I will have all I need in Christ.

          The first man to fly, Wilbur Wright, once said: “No bird soars in a calm.” A bird doesn’t have wings to sit in a nest—it was meant to fly. And a bird does its most majestic flying in the buffeting of the wind. Birds cannot rise and soar with outstretched wings in calm air. Neither do believers in the Lord Jesus Christ rise and soar on the winds of the perfecting Spirit of God in tranquil, calm, undisturbed lives. We were meant to spread our wings of faith and soar like sons and daughters of God.

          How have you handled God’s testing of your faith in the past? Are you currently in a place where God is testing your faith? Will you choose to wallow in fear, doubt, and mistrust? Or, will you choose to believe this test of your faith will produce patience that will make you perfect in Jesus?