Learning from the Persecuted ChurchSample

Radical Joy

There are some things in the Bible that really sound strange when we first read them. One of these statements is found in the book of James. We are told we should consider the trials we face as joy. Let that sink in for a moment. This is not an admonition to simply “hang in there,” “shake it off,” and “keep your chin up.” James tells us the trials, difficulties, and persecution that we may face as Christians, we should receive with an attitude of joy. We must learn that these circumstances can be used by God to benefit us in such significant ways. To live in such a way is to live in radical joy.

The Persecuted Church is often among those who live in this reality. This is because there is a recognition that a sovereign God can be trusted in every situation. It is possible because there is a certainty that God will never waste our trials, but will, in fact, redeem them. When prison is understood to be “God’s seminary” for teaching and training someone for a greater service in God’s kingdom, it provides a perspective on life that enables one to consider even trials to be joy. The promise in James chapter 1 is that our trials will be used by God in ways that will ultimately result in our being made “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” When one can understand the struggles of life as the means through which a faithful God perfects and completes us, even those very difficulties can be considered to be joy.  

The Persecuted Church teaches us this can be more than a crazy thought: it can be a lived-out reality.