Becoming Like Jesus Hurts

Mission Focused Men for Christ

Summary: As irritations, frustrations and trials crowd into our lives bringing out our bad attitudes, we are hit in the face with James’ almost impossible command, “Count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:3). “Be joyful,” says James, “because when it hurts, God is building in you the Christ-like quality of steadfastness.” This same, priceless, attribute of Christ-like character, steadfastness, is identified by Peter as one of the eight in the golden chain of Christ-like virtues we’re studying. This episode examines how on our terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days, we can exhibit the inner toughness of character that responds as Jesus would—with steadfastness, instead of giving in to lousy, self-absorbed, wrong attitudes. We then go on to examine how to build the remaining three virtues in Peter’s golden chain that go beyond steadfastness.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Why does becoming like Jesus hurt?
2. Character is not having the right attitude once in a while but consistently enough so that such an attitude is characteristic of you. How is this truth related to the quality of steadfastness?
3. How would you answer a Christ-follower who said, “When I was a younger Christian I needed to be connected in the Body of Christ because I was so screwed up, but now that I am stronger, I’m handling things on my own okay?”
4. As you look back upon the 3-step process for accessing divine power to build the golden chain of virtues that rest upon one another, where would you say is the biggest breakdown in your life?

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