What follows is an excerpt from “Good Trouble,” a talk given by tutor Ron Julian at the 2020 Summer Institute, “Struggle and Hope.”

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God deliberately brings hardships into the lives of believers so that our faith might show itself, might grow and mature. We have a lot to learn, and the Bible makes clear that God uses hardships as one of His most effective educational tools.

This theme starts in the Old Testament. Think back to the story of the Exodus. God rescues Israel from slavery in Egypt by performing mighty miracles, culminating with the miraculous parting of the Red Sea to escape the armies of Pharaoh. Then God leads them out into the wilderness where there is nothing to eat. They panic and complain. … God responded by sending them the manna from heaven.

What God did is kind of remarkable. He rescued His people from slavery. We would probably think that the kind thing to do would be to let them rest, maybe throw a party. … Instead, He deliberately puts them in a situation where there is no food, which naturally enough puts them under great stress. Why would He do that?

[T]he answer to that question is the key to understanding the theme of redemptive suffering in the Bible. From God’s perspective, our greatest need is not food. Our greatest need is not freedom from stress and hardship. Rather, our greatest need is to wake up and turn our hearts fully to God. Humanity is asleep, drugged, dull-witted. We live in a world that is filled with things promising us fulfillment. And we buy those promises hook, line, and sinker. We think money—or pleasure or security or status or friends and family—will solve all our problems. And all the time there is one great truth that we always overlook: there is only one source of fulfillment and life, and that is God. And so God, in His mercy and love, knows that what we most need is to wake up to reality. Our biggest problem is that we have turned away from God, and the only solution to our problem is to turn back to Him. And so God is using the hardships of this life to get our attention, to get us seriously thinking about how we are going to relate to God. …

This is not a one-time lesson. It is one that believers need to learn time and again. We may genuinely believe the gospel. But we are still sinners. And we still live in a world that constantly lies to us about where life is to be found. I have been a believer for almost fifty years. But I still find it very easy to let the world lull me to sleep. I still need to be brought back to reality: the reality about God, who is my true friend, the true source of life. And if I refuse to wake up, well, it calls into question whether I ever really believed the gospel at all.

This theme is central to the book of James. …

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. (James 1:2-3)

What are trials? As James uses the word, trials are difficulties which test our faith. Not every hardship is a trial in this sense. … A trial is something that forces us to confront whether we really believe the gospel. The rubber has met the road. Our faith is costing us in some way. We are feeling the pressure to abandon the claims of the gospel on our life. The result of trials, in the life of the believer, is that ultimately they result in perseverance. Because our faith is genuine, we do not abandon the gospel and its claims on our life. Verses 2 and 3, therefore, can be paraphrased like this: Rejoice when God tests your faith through hardships and suffering because a genuine believer will persevere in faith rather than abandoning the faith, and this is a very desirable result. …

To understand why persevering in the faith is so desirable, we have to ask what James means by “the faith.” The gospel asks us to believe, to have faith, concerning many things, but in this letter, James continually focuses on the future hope promised in the gospel. By continuing to believe and embrace God’s message of salvation, believers have a great destiny. He makes that clear in several places. In 1:12, he says that the believer who perseveres will receive the crown of life, which the Lord promised to those who love Him. In chapter two, he says that poor believers are rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to those who love Him. And in James’s great exhortation in the last chapter, he says,

Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receives the early and late rain. You also be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

Life is hard now, but the one who patiently perseveres will gain the crown of life, will inherit the kingdom which will come when the Lord returns. …

As believers we have been promised that one day the Lord will return, establishing His blessed kingdom and granting us the crown of life. But we won’t inherit unless we actually persevere in believing that this is our great hope. And this in turn gives us a foundation for understanding why we would rejoice when the testing of our faith results in such perseverance.  …

James gives two reasons why perseverance in faith is so valuable. … The implicit reason is this: perseverance under trial brings us assurance and comfort that our faith is real. … James has a second reason why perseverance in faith is so valuable, a reason that he makes very explicit. As he says immediately after verses 2 and 3, “and may perseverance have a perfect work, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”… When faith has become such a solid reality in our lives that it colors the way we think and act, then we have become “perfect,” or rather, mature. …

Jesus, Paul, John, Peter, the book of Hebrews, and so on … agree with James about how God uses hardships to highlight and mature our faith. And another thing they all agree on: God is the one who does this. He brings the suffering. He causes the growth which brings us assurance. He causes the growth which results in maturity. This a great and terrifying and beautiful reality of life as a believer. That is why the Bible puts such emphasis on the redemptive power of suffering.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of Colloquy, Gutenberg College’s free quarterly newsletter. Subscribe here.