James 1:4

“Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

Not lacking anything? Like cash or square footage or promotions or health or friends or significance or the latest and greatest of any and all? What a sweet deal! That sounds like my best life now, baby!

Wrong.

Today’s verse is what I like to call a “biblical bomb.” It’s true meaning tends to go off in your life with a great BOOM and makes a mess of whatever worldly or fleshly thinking you have allowed to rule over you. James is finishing off his point regarding trials and building perseverance by showing you the end goal: Maturity as a follower of Christ…Completeness in your Christian character…Not lacking anything that you need to do what He has called you to do.

I think the great preacher Charles Spurgeon exemplifies what this verse can look like when he said…

“If his dark nights are as bright as the world’s days, what will his days be? If even his starlight is more splendid than the sun, what must his sunlight be? If he can praise the Lord in the fires, how will he extol Him before the eternal throne! If evil is good to him now, what will the overflowing goodness of God be to him then? Oh, blessed “afterward”! Who would not be a Christian? Who would not bear the present cross for the crown, which comes afterwards? But herein is work for patience, for the rest is neither for today, nor the triumph for the present, but ‘afterward.’ Wait, soul, and ‘let patience have her perfect work’.”