Good morning everyone and welcome back to another morning with the masters where we devote

ourselves to the Lord daily with you. Good morning you guys. We are picking up with day four

of our Cultivate Joy devotional in the Bible app. There's a link to that in the description

of the podcast if you guys want to follow along with us and we've really been enjoying this one.

So if you miss the weekend's devotional, be sure to go listen to those because it's fire.

Absolutely. Anyways, I'm going to read the scripture and then Tori's going to pick it with

the divo. Let's do it. The scripture is James chapter one versus two through four and it says this.

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity

for great joy. For you know that when your faith is being tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.

So let it grow for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete

needing nothing. The devotional says, even though joy is a fruit of the spirit, at times the

tree can seem a little bare. Where do we find joy when it seems there's no joy to be had?

These are the times when the difference between joy and happiness becomes clear. Consider the

irony of James one versus two through four when it comes to having joy. James tells us that we

should think of trials as joy. Really? Are these the words of someone who has lost touch with reality,

someone who has a warp sense of what joy is all about? Hardly. As someone who gave his life for

the gospel, James knows a thing or two about trials. And yet he encourages his readers to regard

them as joy. Why? What is the connection? According to James, trials bring joy because they test

our faith. What is joyful about that? Isn't there a more pleasant way to find joy?

In James's mind, it's not the testing that's joyful. It's the steadfastness that results.

This brings us back to the prayer we prayed earlier for deep roots. Ironically, the same forces

that threaten to uproot us are also the ones that drive us deeper. The key is in how we respond.

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