Spiritual Skill: Joy (wk. 11/13)
I speak with a lot of former high school and collegiate athletes that HATE exercise. Cardio is usually the major culprit. Cardio in sports was often punishment. Drop a pass, run a lap. Miss a block, run a lap. Then there’s the team conditioning. Various endurance training for ungodly long periods of time. It’s painful. But it is the mental response to that pain that creates suffering. Suffering is believing the pain is senseless and unending. Suffering is a choice. In sports, when we are doing this kind of endurance training, we focus on the championship. We focus on the trophy! We picture the success and the suffering diminishes, even when the pain doesn’t. In our faith walk, we are learning to understand the purpose of enduring pain in our lives. Joy is knowing what success looks like in our faith. Joy sustains our willingness to sit with pain.
Research has indicated that former athletes have an increased risk for addiction. In part, I think this happens because of the fallout when there is no trophy or championship to chase. Before, there was purpose in the pain. But after the competition ends, they don’t have a way to appreciate pushing through the pain anymore. People arrive in a place of addiction, in part, because they are attempting to escape the experience of pain. Recovery from addiction is a process of learning to sit with pain when previously you attempted to escape the pain through alcohol, pornography, or even food/sugar binges.
If you’re unfamiliar with my story, I’ve struggled with all of those at some point or another.
In the early stage of me overcoming my 20-year addiction to pornography, I was in a particularly dark place. My daughter, Beyla, was about four months old and crying hysterically late into the night. My wife was still recovering from the postpartum experience which included depression and psychosis. I was desperately trying to get my daughter to fall back asleep out of fear she would wake my wife up. I was overwhelmed and in tears. In that dark place, I prayed so deeply for the suffering to end. And in a moment, I was given a clear picture that someday, this child would say that she loves me. She would say that I’m the best daddy and be thankful for my strength in persevering through that dark time. In that picture, I received joy from that future version of me who was experiencing that moment. They were thanking me for persevering. The pain didn’t end, but the suffering gave way to joy. I knew what I had to look forward to and knew what was on the other side of the pain. I could see the trophy on the other side of this challenge in front of me.
In the book of James, the author speaks of this kind of perseverance amidst real world struggles. He’s writing to the growing church within Jerusalem who experienced poverty, persecution, oppression, greed, and temptation.
In James 1:2-3, “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.”
In other translations, they also use the word endurance! This kind of endurance of faith in the face of adversity, the author says, should be the reason for PURE JOY. Pure joy can’t come from anything except from Jesus. Jesus proclaims this in John 15:11, saying “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
HIS joy so that OUR joy may be complete. Joy is the external evidence of God’s internal work in our life.
It is the completeness of our joy that produces perseverance of faith. But for what? What’s the end goal?
In James 1:12, “Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”
You will be crowned a CHAMPION! A crown of glory better than anything we could receive anywhere else. This is how pain ceases to be suffering.
In my story, there was a second picture that I received in that dark place. It was the version of me in the future who is sitting at the feet of Christ in heaven being crowned in glory and worshipping Him. That version of me is cheering me on letting me know of the victory – the pure joy that comes from enduring pain in faith.
Questions for Reflection:
Is there a time in your life that you were facing a trial and did anything good come from it?
Would you have felt differently about the experience knowing the good that would come of it?
What pain are you enduring now that you need to invite pure joy into?
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