Crown of Life

James 1: 12 says: “God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterwards they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”

I’m not sure about you, but patiently endure testing and temptation? Hmmm. When there are tests and temptations I’m not sure how patient I really am when I think about it. What does it mean to patiently endure in the context of this particular verse we are reading in James.

If you are at all familiar with the bible and have a personal relationship with God I would hope you would be confident that God’s promises always prove true, (Psalms 18:30) and that any personal promises he gives to you will always come to pass. This being said, how well do we hold onto those promises when the trials and temptations appear before us?

At the beginning of this year I had the promise that this year would be a year of restoration for me. Of God restoring me back to better than before, of healing all that was needed for me to move forward with the call he has placed on my life. By the time we got to September I was saying to God, there’s only 3 months left of this year and I haven’t seen a whole lot of restoration yet, when will it come? I suppose this was me showing my impatience. I mean if you have a promise for the year and 9 months in you are still waiting, then there is likely to be a wee bit of impatience there.

However, looking back at what I was going through in those 9 months I can see how God was weaving this beautiful tapestry together. He was removing what needed to be removed, breaking apart what needed to be broken, peeling away all the layers of the onion so to speak, until we finally reached the core of what I needed to heal in order to move forward. Yes it has been a long process. Yes it has been a painful process. Yes it was a much needed process. Because now as I can see the restoration building within me, I know that I needed to have the best foundation. I needed to pull out those roots of wrong belief and replace them with the truth. We can completely trust in God to do whatever it is that needs doing whilst we wait patiently, enduring all the things we need to go through, knowing that we will see the promise of God in the land of the living.

It is really having a complete confidence in God of his promise coming to pass. You will be blessed in this, because you have shown trust in God, you have stayed close to Him, you have had conversations and been faithful in the things He has asked of you during the process. Faith would not be faith if we had everything handed to us, or if God told us his plans ahead of time. Faith is in the unknowing, yet trusting. It is in the obedience to God’s call even though we don’t know anything beyond the next step. It is believing what God’s Word says regardless of what our circumstances or the world around us is saying.

The blessing and reward we will receive for remain faithful during the testing and temptations in life will far outweigh anything we could ever hope for or imagine. You will be blessed and you will receive the crown of life He has promised to those who love him.