Writing to encourage and challenge his readers, James infamously (to our ears) writes, “Count it all joy, my brothers, as 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 nothing.”

Paul hints at the stream that nourishes such a perspective when he says in Romans, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” He continues, as though to underscore the intensity of anticipation with which he speaks, “For [even] the creation waits with eager longing for the [full/complete] revealing of the sons of God.”

Paul and James are not simply whistling Dixie while Atlanta burns, but are following the very pattern of Christ himself who said to his disciples on the night of his betrayal, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.”

And what Jesus declared and what Paul and James echo, God, by his generous grace, reveals to John as Encouragement to his children living in a fallen world: “Then I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain; and when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb [and worshipped, singing], ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.’”

As we gather, may we gather together rejoicing in the historical fact that our Lord has overcome the world that so persistently presses us and threatens to break us; may we rejoice as we see one another, recognizing by faith that each one stands as a monument of the living Lord’s one-time and continued victory over the power of the world in us, among us, and around us by the powerful working of his Spirit through his Word.

File: Order of Worship for March 11, 2007