And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:4
Can you ever be perfect and complete? Can you ever lack nothing? According to James 1:4, you can! What does it take? It takes patience through trials.* The patience that may be seen as a virtue is actually a means to a greater end: maturity.* The perfection and completion to which James refers can actually be understood as maturity.*
Said another way, patience through trials brings you to a place of maturity.* Perfection will be obtained one day, through the coming of Christ as we receive new bodies, free of this world.* In the mean time, we move toward this perfection, growing into a place of maturity.* What does this maturity look like?
A baby tree looks like a shrub worth mowing with a lawn mower - little roots and not much height or width. An immature tree looks like a tree, but has no fruit. A mature tree has deep roots, a strong trunk, and produces fruit… it lacks nothing. It’s doing what it was created to do.
The maturity and lacking in nothing to which James refers is a full equipping to do and be who God created you to be.* Want to be who God created you to be? He made you to be more like Him. The maturity that He seeks for you is becoming more and more like the character of God.*
Who doesn’t want that?! Absent of impatience, impulsiveness, laziness, jealousy, selfishness, or self-pity, your soul will one day cling so close to the person of God that you will be complete.* Intimacy with God does not have to wait for Heaven, however. God has freedom in mind for you today!
God wants to seal up the cracks in who you are, making things as they should be: integrous (uniform throughout).* This is the completeness God promises through Jesus, and wants you to receive today. He wants to see your roots deep, your trunk thick, and your fruit plentiful.
Today, take a step.
Maybe today the one step God wants you to take is to have patience through your trial, knowing that you will become more like the character of God in the end. Perhaps today God wants you to take one more step, even when you don’t feel like it any more. Maybe today God wants you to look through the trial and set your eyes on Him.
Whatever the step, ask God to direct it. Take a moment to take that step. Invite Him to speak. He will.
Life is a long road. Walk it with Jesus.
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*Blomberg, C. L., & Kamell, M. J. (2008). James (Vol. 16, pp. 50). Zondervan.
McCartney, D. G. (2009). James (pp. 87–88). Baker Academic.
Stulac, G. M. (1993). James (Jas 1:2–4). IVP Academic.
Guthrie, G. H. (2006). James. In T. Longman III & D. E. Garland (Eds.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Hebrews–Revelation (Revised Edition) (Vol. 13, p. 213). Zondervan.
Nystrom, D. P. (1997). James (pp. 48–50). Zondervan Publishing House.