Faith Grows in Adversity

James 1:2-4 (NLT)

                “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.  For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.”

                This past spring when I planted “Heavenly Blue” Morning Glories, I didn’t expect them to wait until October to bloom.  It’s true-the lovely sky blue trumpet-shaped flowers only just started opening last week.  There have been loads of buds for many weeks, yet none of them unfurled until October. 

                Since I was growing impatient with waiting, I decided to go on the internet and do some investigating into the possible reason for the non-flowering of my Morning Glories.  It turns out, I had been too kind to them.   When I planted them, I had to really nurture the little plants.  They were scrawny and spindly and easily crowded out by the weeds.  I tended them ever so carefully, twining the tiny tendrils around the trellis to encourage them upward.  And I gave them lots of good organic fertilizer.

                Apparently, it was too much fertilizer.

                Morning Glories, it seems, only bloom in adversity.  When the plants are happy and healthy, with plenty of food, they don’t make many flowers.  So all summer long, in beautiful weather and healthy growing conditions, the vines gave lots of good growth and pleasant heart-shaped leaves.  It wasn’t until things cooled off in October that the plants finally felt threatened enough to bloom.

                So, sometimes a bit of adversity is a good thing.

                According to James 1:2-4, the same can be said of my faith journey.  That sometimes, adversity is a good thing.  In fact, the author says when trouble comes, I should “consider it an opportunity for great joy.”

                How could this possibly be true?  In difficult times I should rejoice?  But James goes on to explain.  “When your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow,” he says.  Trials and difficulties and troubles are exactly the times when God draws closest to me.  It is in times of trouble that I cling closer to God, and my relationship with him grows even deeper.  When I don’t have enough fertilizer, I have to sink my roots deeper into God in order to grow and bloom.

                Faith grows in adversity; it grows when we are tested, when we struggle, just as Morning Glories bloom in adversity.

               So, rejoice in trouble; lean on God for guidance and help, and know that through it he is with you.  When the trouble is over, your faith will be deeper and God will be closer than ever he was before.    Sink your roots in and wait to bloom when the storm passes.