08 How Trials Strengthen Your Faith

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the eighth episode in the companion series to my book, Start Strong: A New Believer's Guide to Christianity. Today we'll be studying James chapter 1, verses 1 through 8, which is one of the book's See-For-Yourself passages from chapter 8. If you're reading along, read chapter 8 before you listen. But if you don't have the book, don't worry, just keep listening anyway. Do you ever feel like a trial has you cornered? Like you have to choose between trusting God or taking matters into your own hands? James says you should rejoice in that hot water kind of moment. In this episode, you'll learn why. Why does God use trials to mature our faith? What it means to ask for wisdom, and why you need to stop living with one foot in God's promises and one foot on a backup plan. Thanks for listening today. Well, we will be in the book of James this week, and first let's go over some background to help us understand the book. The author of the book is James, the brother of Jesus. He is another son of Mary and Joseph. The evidence suggests that James was not a believer during Jesus' earthly ministry, but church history clearly and unambiguously records that James was definitely a believer after the resurrection. James held a very significant role in the early Jerusalem church. What caused the change from non-believer to believer? In 1 Corinthians 15 7, Paul records that after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to James his brother. Many scholars think that Jesus came to James in the same way he came to Paul and to Peter and commissioned them into service. We know about Paul's experience on the road to Damascus because Luke wrote about it in Acts, and Paul talks about it in his letters. Likewise, we know about Peter's experience. It's also recorded in Scripture. After the resurrection, Christ appeared to Peter, served him breakfast on the beach, and called Peter to feed his sheep. I think James had the same kind of experience where Jesus appeared to him after the resurrection and commissioned him into service, but we don't know the details because no one wrote it down. Paul tells us only that Jesus appeared to James, and it's likely that James had the same kind of dramatic conversion experience that Paul had, and Jesus commissioned him for a role, which turned out to be the leader of the church in Jerusalem. So James is unique among the New Testament authors because James knew more about Jesus than almost any other human being at the time. As his brother, James was raised in the same home in Nazareth and grew up with Jesus and saw him through all those what we call the silent years before his public ministry, years that we have no record of. So now let's look at who James is writing this letter to and why he's writing it. This is James 1.1. James, the servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion. Greetings. Notice James describes himself as a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. He doesn't mention his other credentials, that he is the brother of Jesus and one of the leaders in the Jerusalem church. Instead, he humbly mentions that he serves Jesus, the Lord and the Messiah. He addresses this letter to the 12 tribes of the dispersion, so we have to know who they are. Following the persecution of Stephen, which is recorded in the book of Acts, a general persecution of Jewish Christians in Palestine began. Jews who believed in Jesus began fleeing their homeland and they were scattered throughout the Gentile world. This dispersion refers to the historical scattering of the Jews around the Mediterranean. So he's writing to Jewish believers who have left Palestine because of the persecution. Now, in the Roman Empire at the time, the persecution of Christians was also rapidly increasing. And James is writing to people who are either undergoing persecution now or about to undergo serious persecution just for claiming to follow Jesus. And that's the first thing he addresses in this letter is how to handle those kinds of trials, how to understand the place of trials in the Christian life. And that's what we're going to look at. Let's look at the first four verses of James chapter one. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, greetings. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. All right, so James jumps right into the body of the letter. There's no prayer. He just says greetings, and he starts right off by saying, Be joyful when you encounter trials and testing. And the first question we need to answer is, well, what does James mean by trials? The word in verse 2 that's translated trials is a kind of a stress test. It has the idea of putting pressure on something or testing it to see whether it's true or false. So you put pressure on something to see what it's made of. A trial is any situation that tests something to show what it's made of. You can think of trials like hot water to a tea bag. If you have an unlabeled tea bag, you can't tell what's inside by looking at it. To see what kind of tea is inside, you have to drop it in hot water. And the heat of the water releases the flavor, the color, and the aroma of the tea, and then you can taste it and see what it is. The hot water doesn't create the flavor, the hot water draws the flavor out. Well, the same is true of trials in our life. Trials don't create faith, they reveal what kind of faith is there, because when life gets hard, what's inside us starts to show. And verse 3 tells us that what is being tested is our faith. A trial puts our faith under pressure to reveal the nature of it or the quality of it. It's easy to say we believe in Jesus when we're sitting quietly on our comfy couch and life is good. But when life gets hard, we have to start making choices about how to respond. And those choices reveal who we're really trusting and what we're really counting on. When things don't go our way, we're forced to ask ourselves: do I really trust God here? Do I still believe he's good even when it feels like life is out of control? Will I still trust him to take care of me when it seems like humanly speaking, there's no way out of this situation? That's a trial. Trials press in and force us to act. They reveal how strong our faith is, what kind of faith we have. Is it shallow? Is it deep? Is it borrowed or personal? Is it tied to our circumstances, or is it anchored in God and Scripture? And notice that's where James goes next. In verse 4, he talks about what the trial produces. This phrase, the testing of your faith, points us to the outcome, the proof. When a trial comes, it doesn't just show what our faith looks like, it strengthens and refines it. The trial becomes a proving ground, a way God uses to shape and grow and mature our faith. Now notice what is not being tested here. The trial is not testing whether or not I am worthy of salvation. It is not a test of my character. It is not a test to determine how nice I am or how patient or how good a person I am. The results of that test are already in. We are sinners, and our characters are flawed and selfish, and every corner of our being is marked by sin. As Paul says in Romans, we all fall short of the glory of God. We are broken sinners, trapped by our sin and unable to change ourselves. Apart from the blood of Christ and the grace of God, we have no hope of escaping sin entirely. So the test is not, am I worthy of salvation? That test is over, the results are in. None of us is worthy of salvation because we are good enough or because we keep the law well enough. The question being tested is do we have real, genuine, saving faith or not? Now that raises the question, well, why would God test our faith at all? Here we are, counting on God to save us, and he puts us through all these hardships. Well, why would he do that? Why would the God I'm counting on to save me and rescue me put me in a position where my very faith is under pressure? Why would he do that? And James tells us, because of what a strong, mature faith gains us. James says we should rejoice in these trials because we know that the process of testing our faith brings about steadfastness or perseverance. And gaining perseverance is so valuable that it is worth putting us through hard times to gain it. Perseverance or steadfastness is just the idea of continuing, of not giving up, of enduring to the very end. And God uses the trials to confront us with the question: what does the gospel mean to me? Do I trust God enough that I will choose to follow Him even when life gets hard? Is the gospel worth what it costs me to embrace it? If following God means I have to go through X, whatever the situation is, do I value following God so much that I want to continue? Now, James continues to spell out the value of perseverance as he goes through the letter. Here in the opening, he gives us two things. First, perseverance gives us proof that our faith is real. That's in verse three. And second, perseverance leads to wisdom and maturity. That's in verse four. Here's one way to picture the concept. On a calm day, a tiny baby sapling tree might look healthy, but just by looking at it, we can't tell how strong its roots are. The tiny tree is just happily standing there upright in the sunshine. But on a stormy day, the wind and the rain lash at it and test its roots. The storm pulls at the tree and threatens to rip it right out of the ground. And if the tree stands firm through the storm, then you know its roots go deep down in the ground. Well, that's what trials do for us. They pull and tug at our roots. And our job is to resist that pull and to remain standing firm. When we're still standing, when we persevere or we're steadfast, and at the end of the trial we're still clinging to Christ, we have tangible, visible, physical evidence that our faith is firmly grounded. That's why remaining steadfast through trials answers one of the most haunting questions we all face. At some point, we all ask ourselves, well, how do I know I'm really saved? How do I know I'm not just fooling myself and one of these days I'm going to wake up and give it all up? Well, James, Paul, and Peter all give the same answer. They say, you know you have real faith when your real faith has been tested and endured through the test. God doesn't need proof that we have faith. He already knows right where we stand. You and I are the ones that need the proof, and trials give us that proof. And that's no small thing. It's one of the ways God reassures us that we belong to Him. And that brings us to our next question. Is James serious about joy? Can I really be joyful in the midst of trials and tribulations? Well, the promise of the gospel is not that with maturity our lives will get easier. That is not a given. Life may remain hard and continue to get harder after you become a Christian. Trials may and often do grow more challenging. But God is not asking us to feel happy or be excited about hard times. The joy comes from knowing where the trials are taking us. Enduring through them proves to us that we have saving faith. And if we have saving faith, we stand to inherit eternal life in the kingdom of God. So even though life is hard now, we can rejoice because we stand to inherit so great a treasure. That is the most important gift we can ever receive. Because if we have that, we have everything. Without saving faith, without a place in the kingdom of heaven, we may have an easy life now, but we really have nothing, nothing of eternal value. So to be able to rejoice in our trials is to be in a place where we understand the value of the gospel in a very real and practical way. We rejoice because we know that the trial is taking us someplace we really want to go. So our joy is not in the trial itself, but in what the trial proves we stand to gain. Imagine you've had knee surgery and now you're in physical therapy. The therapy isn't very fun. It can be tiring, frustrating, and sometimes it hurts. But you can rejoice in your physical therapy because you know this trial is building strength and getting you back to walking, running, and living normally again. So you're not celebrating the exercises themselves, and you may not feel happy when you're walking down the hall to physical therapy, but you can celebrate where that therapy is taking you. You're healing, you're progressing, and you're headed someplace you really want to go. Well, trials in our life are kind of like physical therapy. It's not random misery, it's part of the path to a promised, joyful, wonderful outcome. Now, I just want to be clear. James is not saying that you need to feel happy when life knocks you down. You are allowed to suffer in your suffering. When you go through difficulties, it is normal to acknowledge this is hard, this is painful, and it's no fun. You don't have to feel happy about it. Joy and happiness are two different emotions. Happiness is the feeling of euphoria that results when something good or exciting happens, but joy is a deeper sense of satisfaction of knowing good things are coming my way. Good will result out of all of this. It's not a bubbly feeling so much as it is a confident response that this will be worth it. So the joy comes not from the circumstances, but from our hope in the promises of God. We don't have to be happy in the midst of our sufferings, but we can be hopeful and joyful. Faced with trials, most of us begin to wish that God would just change them, just change our circumstances. We wish that He would intervene with more money, improved health, a new lifestyle, maybe a different boss, new friends, better car, whatever. We think our problems are all about having those obstacles that are in our path removed. But if James is right, and I think he is, the most important thing about any trial I face is not when will it end. The most important thing is figuring out how am I going to respond to God in the midst of this? What am I supposed to be learning in this situation? Removing the immediate obstacle to happiness misses that bigger picture. And the bigger picture is what God is teaching us and doing in our lives because of the obstacle. See, God loves us too much to change our circumstances without changing our hearts. It would be awful if He gave us an easy, smooth life, but left us without faith. The gospel tells us that we have a bigger problem than the obstacles standing between us and earthly happiness. We are sinful, we are guilty, and we are under God's wrath. Apart from the blood of Jesus Christ, one day we will have to face judgment and we will fail. But our loving, merciful Father offers us mercy through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ. And it is crucially important that we have faith, because without faith, we lose eternity. Well, trials are part of the process of maturing, strengthening, and growing our faith. There really is no way around that. Almost every New Testament letter teaches that trials are the path to maturity. Thus, we can consider the result of the trial, knowing where it's taking us, and rejoice knowing what we stand to gain. Now James continues in verses four and five, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. There are three important words here in this section that we want to understand to understand what James is saying. The first is perfect in verse 4. The phrase have its full effect also in verse 4, and wisdom in verse 5. Let's look at perfect first. Most often in biblical usage, something is perfect when it has arrived at its intended goal. So for example, an acorn has the potential to be an oak tree, but it has not arrived at that goal yet. Once the acorn has become a mature oak tree, it is perfect. It was created to be an oak tree, and it has arrived at the goal of being an oak tree. So it is now perfect and complete. It has grown into that which it was intended to be. Sometimes you'll see this word translated mature. It's the same idea. It has become that which it was supposed to be. So just like sunshine and rain and time turn an acorn into an oak tree, trials grow our faith into what it is supposed to be: strong, mature, and complete. Next, this verb translated effect or have its full effect in verse 4. Most likely your translation doesn't use the word work here, but that actually is the word for work. It is more literally let steadfastness work. It's the Greek word ergon, which is where we get our word ergonomics from. The basic idea of work is action, something I do. And James's primary concern in this letter, if we studied the whole thing, is that our actions reflect what we say and believe. Well, the idea here. Is to let endurance do its work. Let standing firm through trials produce what it is designed to produce, that your faith may be perfect and complete and everything God intends it to be. The picture James is painting for us is that our faith starts out as this inner conviction. It is real, but it is young and immature. The trials go to work on it and force it out in the open. And in the process, it grows and matures into what God intends it to be. And we're going to talk more about that in a minute. Now let's look at wisdom. Wisdom is the skill of living life well. It's having a godly perspective on life. It's the skill to live life well because I have an accurate and true understanding of reality. I see life the way God sees it, and I make good choices based on that understanding. To lack wisdom is not to be unsure about which job to take or which college to go to or what person to marry. To lack wisdom is to be a fool. If I lack wisdom, I am immature and foolish. I do not value the things that God values, and I do not see reality the way God sees it. There's a very popular way of taking James 1.5 as a prescription for how you find God's specific will for a particular choice that you have to make. For example, if I have to choose between two good jobs that will take me down different paths, well, God knows which one I should take. So James says, ask him, and God will tell me what I ought to do if I really, really, really believe him. And that comes from bringing in the next verses. But I think the context suggests that James has something different in mind. He's just been talking about how trials test our faith, such that our faith grows into maturity. It becomes what it was intended to be, complete and lacking in nothing. And then he says in verse 5, but if you lack wisdom. Well, what's the connection between four and five? How does four lead to five? Perseverance is meant to perfect or mature our faith, to make our faith so that it lacks nothing. Wisdom is what we gain through persevering in faith. If I look at my life and I see, you know, my faith is really kind of weak, as evidenced by the fact that I lack wisdom, that I'm not responding well to trials and hardships, that I don't see the world the way God sees it, that I don't really want what he wants or value what he values, then what should I do? I should ask, and God will give generously. Well, that's not really guidance on a specific choice. This is a perspective on life, a way of seeing the world the way God sees it. If we lack wisdom, we should ask God who gives generously without reproach. And I think that word reproach is another clue to what James has in mind. Why add that? If the issue is which job should I take or should I retire or how many children should I have, why would I fear God's reproach? I don't think God could reproach me or scold me for not knowing the future. God wouldn't reproach me for not knowing which of several good choices is the best one. But if we're talking about being foolish, if we're talking about lacking a godly, wise perspective on life, then it's very likely God could reproach me. Lacking a godly perspective means I'm a fool, and God could reproach me for being a fool. Let me give you an analogy. My family often enjoys role-playing games together, and we play two different systems. The older I get, the more trouble I have keeping those different systems straight. And sometimes I fear asking our game master for clarification because he often is rightly exasperated with me. When he answers, his tone indicates, you know, you should really know this by now. So he can legitimately reproach me for still being foolish and not getting it. And I might fear asking him. We could be in a similar place with God. We might fear asking him for wisdom because we know we're being foolish and we fear how he might respond. But James is saying, you don't need to worry about that. You don't need to refrain from asking for wisdom because you fear that God will scold you or reproach you. You have nothing to fear. God gives wisdom generously, without reproach, to fools like us. We can go to him in our immaturity, in our childishness, and our confusion, and we can expect him to answer generously. So let's put all this together with trials and testing. Let me give you an analogy about the situation that James is describing here, about trials and how trials lead to wisdom. Suppose you have a good job that pays you very well, and you like this job a lot. You're good at it, and you need to keep it. You want to keep it. But one of your coworkers sits down one day and lays out considerable evidence that your boss is doing something completely illegal and immoral. Your coworker has the facts, the figures, the examples, and he can point to specific discrepancies in the books and a paper trail. Your coworker convinces you and you say you believe it's true, but you don't do anything about it. You'd like to keep doing your job and believe at the same time that your boss is a crook and hope it will all work out. But then one day your boss crosses a line. It gets so bad that your coworker stands up at a staff meeting and confronts the boss with his actions. He calls the boss a thief and a liar and asks him to resign. In response, the boss says, That's ridiculous. Who else believes what this fool is saying? Take a stand now. You're either for me or you're against me. And he looks around the room. Well, now you have to choose. You have said that you believe your boss is a crook, but until now, it never made a difference. Now the pressure is on, and you have a choice. Do you believe it enough to act on it? You have to act, and your actions will reveal what you really value, what you think is true and important. You can either act in a way that confirms what you say you believe, or you can act in a way that denies what you claim to believe. Up to that point, your belief was real, but untested, it was invisible. Now the test has come and your belief is forced out into the open. Up to that point, you were trying to live in two incompatible worlds. You believed the boss was a crook, but you were trying to live as if that wasn't true. But now you have to act. So you stand up and you say, I'm with him, you're a crook. And you both get fired. But your beliefs have been proven true and you have gained wisdom. On your next job, you're going to be a different kind of employee. You now know that some things are more important than keeping your job, and you've learned, you know what, I can lose my job and life goes on. God will still take care of me. You may even have a new level of respect among your new coworkers because your judgment has been shown to be trustworthy, and you have been shown to be a person of integrity. So you've gained some wisdom and you've gained a new level of maturity. Well, that's how trials work on our faith. Now I set up a work situation with my analogy, but the test could be anything. Maybe I've always loved money and God brings me to a place where I must choose between loving money and loving God. Or maybe I've always valued the opinion of others, and now I must act in such a way that others may think I'm a fool. Maybe God is withholding something I really want and I must trust Him that He knows what's best, even if He never gives it to me. Trials can take a lot of shapes and forms, but the results are always the same. The trial forces me to ask the question, what do I really believe is true? Am I counting on the promises of God or not? Now notice maturity does not mean that I will always be perfectly obedient. There are times when I might fail to do the right thing, I might continue to sin, I might back down and deny what I believe is true. Having wisdom does not mean that we're without sin and that we can live without making mistakes. In fact, I'd say part of wisdom is being able to clearly see your own mistakes and your sin for what they are. As we grow in wisdom, we may still have the same struggles, but our perspective on them changes. We begin to see the sin more clearly as sin, maybe repentance comes quicker, humility comes sooner, and our excuses and justifications just seem weak and flimsy in a way they didn't before. Neither is maturity the same thing as having a stiff upper lip. God is not testing how courageous we are, he's testing our faith. So having wisdom doesn't mean I can brush off the tragedies of life without breaking a sweat. Mature faith is not being tough. Rather, wisdom means we have an anchor that gets us through the suffering. Wisdom means we hold more loosely to the things of this world and more tightly to the things of God. And we have an increasing measure of joyful hope even in the face of hardships. When our faith is tested, when we're put in a situation where we wonder if God is truly God, and we have to act as if God is in control and not us, that's not a question of being tough. That's a question of what do I believe so much that it changes the way I live my life. A key part of God's agenda for our lives is that we grow in faith. And God is working on our faith because eternity is at stake. The most important goal, the most important thing He can give us in this earthly life is not the end of the trial, but a strong, mature, saving faith. It's important to know what God has and has not promised. God has not promised us an easy, smooth, prosperous life, but He has promised to answer our prayers for faith and wisdom. He has promised to give us a mature, saving faith if we ask for it and to teach us how to live life well, knowing what he values and what he claims to be true. We can confidently call out to God for wisdom and maturity, and he will grant it. We are weak and foolish people, but God is able and quite willing to bring us out of that foolishness into wisdom and maturity. Now, having given an encouragement, James goes on to give a warning. This is verses 5 through 8. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting. For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man and stable in all his ways. Now, when I first heard this taught, I heard it taught as, when you ask, you have to make sure that you really, really, really, really want it, and you can't have a shred of doubt in your mind or God won't answer you. I don't think that's what James is saying. In this context, doubt is wavering between two options and being unable to commit to one or the other. Sometimes this word is used to translate it as to judge or discern between two options. And in the process of judging, I'm impartially considering both sides. To doubt is to continue to consider both options when there is a good reason to pick one. So to doubt is to sit on the fence. To doubt when it comes to faith is to waver in whether I believe in God or not, to be undecided as to whether I believe the promises He's made and I'm counting on them or not. And James gives a vivid analogy here to explain this idea of doubting. The one who doubts is like the waves driven and tossed by the wind. The wave goes whichever way the wind blows. It's not like that tree that stands straight and tall even when the hurricane force winds blow on it. Rather, the doubter just goes every which way, whichever way public opinion, popular theory, and current philosophy takes him. And we can be like that in life. As long as life is going my way, I'm happy to believe in God. But when I'm tempted or tried or I have to make a choice, then I have to land somewhere. To continue to attempt to straddle both choices is doubting. I think that's why James calls it being double-minded. It's being hypocritical. I say I believe one thing, but I don't really. We give it lip service, but when it's time to act, I say, oh, maybe I'll head to my bets. So James says the person who plays both sides of the table, the person who asks God, but then also has plan B in his pocket just in case God doesn't do what he wants or he doesn't like what God does, that person will not receive anything. So the person who trusts in God and himself and astrology and Buddhism and whatever else, that person will not receive from God. Either you trust God or you don't. Either you submit your life to him and you have real saving faith or you don't. And if you do have real saving faith and submit your life to him, then God will give you generously without reproach. But if you're just looking for fire insurance, trying to play both sides of the table and get all the goodies you can get from God without really trusting him, then you will receive nothing. You can't trust him halfway, you can't trust him only on Sundays or when life is easy. That's not how it works. Everyone who recognizes that they have a weak or immature faith can call out to God for wisdom and maturity and have absolute confidence that God will grant the request. He will give them faith, wisdom, and maturity. We can go to God with a weak and foolish heart and say, I want to believe, help me believe. Honest doubt, which is confusion or fear, is okay, but doubt that is hostility toward God is a problem. Most every Christian goes through a period of confusion where God doesn't seem to make sense, or they can't figure out what following him looks like or who he is. I don't think that's the kind of person James is describing here when he talks about the doubter or the double-minded. Those kinds of struggles are the struggles of faith that is growing and working itself out, and they can come from a heart that is open, eager, and expected and longs to know God. The doubter is the fool. The doubter is the one who holds back from God. The double-minded man acts like a Christian on the outside when it suits him and gets him what he wants, but then he goes right back to his lifestyle and doing what he wants as if God doesn't exist. The double-minded man keeps all his options open so he acts like a believer on Sunday and acts like the world the rest of the time. James is contrasting the doubter with people who recognize their faith as weak and humbly ask God for wisdom and maturity, and then trust that God will do what he says he will do. So James is not saying, well, if you ask God which job you should take and you have a little bit of doubt in the back of your mind that he's going to answer, he won't tell you anything. James is not saying that. Neither is James saying that the reason the hardship continues is because you haven't yet found the right way to ask God. That is, you haven't yet asked him with 100% doubt-free faith. Instead, James is saying, God puts trials and hardships in your life to take your weak, immature faith and grow it into everything he wants it to be. Trials take you from being a foolish, unwise person into being a wise person so that you become everything God intends. If you look at your life now and you say, you know, I'm not there yet. I'm still weak. I'm still immature. I lack that kind of wisdom. What should I do? James says, you should call out to God because he is generous and capable and he will do what he promises. The warning he gives is not that you can never have any doubts at all whatsoever. The warning he gives is you have to be all in. You can't hedge your bets and take God for granted and only seek him when you need something. You have to decide, I believe God, I trust God, and I'm going to follow and obey him. God will accept even the most foolish, immature person who humbly asks for mercy. You don't have to get your act together first. You can just go to him and ask. And the best news is you can ask for saving faith. You don't have to muster it up first. God will give it to you if you ask. Ask and you shall receive. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. You'll find the blog version of this episode, including links and resources, at Wednesdayintheword.com slash start strong podcast 8. You can listen to all the episodes in this series at WednesdayInTheWord.com as well as find more information about how to get the book. There's no charge, no spam, and no ads. Just free, trustworthy resources to help you grow in your understanding of scripture. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. If you're reading along in the Start Strong book, read chapter 9 before the next episode. And if you're reading the book, please consider leaving me a positive rating or review on Amazon or Goodreads. I would be most grateful. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coast. You can hear more of Reggie's music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you so much for listening today. I'm Kristan Morata, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.