James 1:2–3 (CSB)
Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
Kingdom Grit: courage and resolve; strength of character; the Holy Spirit's empowerment to hang on past your normal quitting points
A few years ago, I developed a pain in my left shoulder. The pain was constant; there wasn't anything I could do to make it go away or relieve it. The most discouraging aspect was when I would try to sleep. The pain would radiate down my shoulder into my arm and keep me awake at night. As a result, I was suffering from sleep deprivation, and it was affecting every aspect of my life. I couldn't concentrate; it was draining the Kingdom joy out of my life, and the pain had in one way or another hindered pretty much every aspect of my life. Instead of going to the doctor, I went to YouTube videos and diagnosed myself. According to my self-diagnosis, I had an impingement in my left shoulder. The impingement was due to the fact that the muscle from the scapula to my spine had weakened, allowing the shoulder socket to rotate out of place, and the nerve between the shoulder blade and ball and socket was getting pinched, causing the pain.
Pain can reveal weaknesses in your life that you're not aware of and motivate you to do things that you normally wouldn't do.
Every morning when I would wake up, I would take resistance bands and exercise my weakened scapula muscles. The first few movements were extraordinarily painful. But the more I exercised my back muscles, the less pain I would have in my shoulder. And I understood that if I didn't endure those agonizing, painful movements in the morning, I would find it impossible to fall asleep at night. I also believed that if I strung together enough days of working through those painful exercises, there would finally come a day where I would no longer have pain in my shoulder. I'm there today. But as preventative measures, I still use resistance bands for my shoulders daily.
The Greek word for endure in James 1:3 is hypomonē. The prefix “hypo” is where we get our word hyper. “Menō” means “to remain” or “to stand” or “to endure.” James is saying that the trials you're going through are testing your faith, and the testing of your faith is designed to cause you to do something spiritually that you normally wouldn't do, giving you the strength to hyper-stand.
Is there pain in your life right now? It might just be that the Holy Spirit is revealing a weakness that He is wanting to work out and strengthen. The initial corrective exercise of your faith is going to be painful, possibly even excruciatingly painful, as it always is at the beginning. True grit only comes through pain. As Paul was praying for the church in Colossians, he used the same word that James uses about having the ability to hyper-stand. Look at how he says it in Colossians 1:11 (CSB), “being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance (hypomonē) and patience.” It's the Holy Spirit's power working in you that's going to strengthen your weaknesses and give you the ability to hyper-stand.
You might feel like the pain you're going through right now is about to break you. It's possible that God is allowing this to happen because there's something in your life that needs to be broken so the Holy Spirit can strengthen and rebuild you to be stronger in your faith than you ever have been before. As you work out your faith with fear and trembling, it might hurt; it might even be grueling, but remember, dear reader, that God is building within you gospel grit, the ability to hyper-stand. So don't let go; lean into the Holy Spirit's power to keep enduring, keep standing, and keep allowing the Holy Spirit to fortify your ability to push through your normal quitting places. So, press on, because you're positioned in Christ Jesus, and He's never failed, and He never will, and He won't fail you now.