The Crown Of Life (James 1:12)

               In 1952, Florence May Chadwick was the first woman to attempt to swim the 26 miles between Catalina Island and the California coastline. As she began, she was flanked by small boats that watched for sharks and were prepared to help her if she got hurt or grew tired. After about 15 hours a thick fog set in. Florence began to doubt her ability, and she told her mother, who was in one of the boats, that she didn’t think she could make it. She swam for another hour before asking to be pulled out, unable to see the coastline due to the fog. As she sat in the boat, she found out she had stopped swimming just one mile away from her destination.
               I love how beautifully this story about Florence Chadwick illustrates how when we loose sight of our final destination we quickly loose motivation to get there and quite frankly often doubt the actual existence of that destination no matter how real or close it actually is to us. And as I reflect on my life as a Christian and the various trials that have come and gone in my life, I am quite astonished at how little faith I have today in the truth of gospel and the fact that God keeps his promises in Scripture. I forget so often how my confidence and faith in the truth of God's word, and the promises he makes in it, directly relates to every single trial that I experience everyday, no matter how insignificant I may think it is. I so quickly forget my eternal destination.
               So what is our destination, and from what are we to draw our confidence in it? This is a question that I hear often in secular circles and to be honest don't always take advantage of like I should. It's as if people are begging at times to hear the gospel, they honestly realize that they have no eternal hope, sure they may have a temporal hope of getting to go home and watch TV after work, or that great summer vacation, maybe it's even that they can go get drunk on the weekends and have sex. Bottom line though, none of these things make any claim to satisfy for eternity, there is no ETERNAL hope found in the pleasures or things of this world. But we as Christians have been given the promise of eternal life thru Christ, and it is precisely this eternal hope that we are called to share with those who are lost. We know this thru the promises that we can see God has made in Scripture: Our eternal destination is with Jesus and we must fix our focus on this truth during the trials of life.
               James 1:12 opens with the word "Blessed" which is the same word that Jesus used when listing out the beatitudes in Matt. 5 and has the meaning of a deep rooted joy that is the fruit of the faith and hope we have in the gospel and the love we have for God. So with that definition in mind we can see why James would state the following "Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial". There is a direct connection between the gospel and enduring trials, because basically if there is no gospel then what's the point of enduring through all the trials in this life? There would be none, but thankfully the gospel is real and we do have hope in the gospel to endure through these trials.
               Later on in verse 12 it says "for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life". This is the hope that I am talking about, the phrase "crown of life" is referring to the promise of ETERNAL life that we have in the gospel because of what Jesus did for us. The type of crown that James is using as an example is the kind that athletes would receive after winning a race, but to be accurate this is not a crown that we earn by running, on the contrary our enduring of the race is a sign that we have been assured of and promised this "crown of life". As James goes on to say "which God has promised to those who love him." God has made massive promises to us (Eternal life) and it should be our delight to dwell on these promises day after day as they are revealed in scripture.
               In the end of it all, the ones who are "Blessed" and the ones who will "endure" are the ones who first and foremost "love him". The reality is that when I choose to not believe in the promises that God has made in scripture, I am calling Him a liar. I am unintentionally saying that I don't believe the gospel, and I don't believe that God will fulfill his promise of giving me "the crown of life" because my circumstances are not what I think they ought to be or any of the other ridiculous excuses we come up with to excuse our disbelief. But there is hope as the Holy Spirit (who also was promised to be given to us) is working in our hearts producing a sincere love for God that grows faith in the promises of His word that then leads to a firm ETERNAL hope and fixed focus on the person and work of Jesus Christ. After this happens we WILL remain steadfast and receive "the crown of life".