Stress Is Paradoxical

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

—James 1:2–4

James insisted we should “count it all joy” when we face stressful trials of many different kinds. Count it what? Joy! And how much joy? All joy! Could this be a misprint? Most of us consider various kinds of trials a taste of hell itself, certainly not joy. We tend to count it all joy when we avoid trials, not when we fall into them. We hear of someone else’s trial and breathe a prayer of joyful thanks that the same fate has not fallen to us. What a paradox then! We’re to counter stress with joy? James’s admonition seems diametrically opposed to the way we tend to look at life’s challenges and difficulties. On the surface, this advice appears strange. Most of us would say, “Count it all joy when you escape trials of various kinds.”

Dr. Peter Hanson, however, wrote a book with a title that captured my attention: The Joy of Stress. The major premise is that stress should not be looked upon as our enemy. We should let go of the misconception that we can avoid stress. We can’t. It’s a part of life. For those of us who believe in the supernatural power of Christ, our times of stress should be times of making sure we are in the will of God. Stress is actually rather neutral. The way we react to it is the issue. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), Jesus preached about the importance of our reactions. Jesus said, for instance, when someone slaps us on the cheek, we are to “turn the other to him also” (Matthew 5:39). Or if someone wants to sue us for a piece of our clothing, we should give him our coat as well (v. 40). These are hard sayings, but dealing with stress is hard as well as counterintuitive and paradoxical. But we can, James insisted, deal with stress by learning to “count it all joy.”

When James wrote these words, he placed the phrase “count it all joy” in a tense that indicates exactly when we are to do that counting: when the trial is in the rearview mirror, we can begin to count it joy. James wasn’t saying the trial itself should be considered a joy. The word consider (sometimes translated count) literally means “to think ahead, to think forward.” This is exactly what Job was doing when he said, “When [God] has tested me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10). Job did not at all consider losing his family, his wealth, and his health a joy, but he did look forward to the joy he knew would follow his trial.

Joseph is another spot-on example: he was always thinking ahead, looking beyond his trials. When revealing his identity to his brothers, he said, “You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day” (Genesis 50:20). Did Joseph “count it all joy” to be abandoned and sold by his own brothers? Did he “count it all joy” when he was falsely accused and put in an Egyptian prison? Of course not. But Joseph trusted in the Lord. He knew God’s hand was in his circumstances, and he was thinking ahead to a better day.

And what about our Lord Himself? He definitely looked beyond His own painful circumstances and intense suffering. Hebrews 12:2 says that “for the joy that was set before Him [He] endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Did Jesus count the cross a joy? Certainly not. But thinking ahead with steadfast hope, He bore up under the stress of the cross.

Can we like Job or Joseph or Jesus think ahead in the midst of our own less-than-ideal circumstances and stressful situations? James was not telling us to try to find some kind of superficial joy during life’s trials. What James told us is to look beyond them, for “joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

The apostle Paul hit the bull’s-eye when he said,

“Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17–18).

In his book Can Stress Heal? Dr. Kenneth Cooper devotes an entire section to the paradoxical nature of stress. He identifies seven steps to what he calls “stress immunization”:

STEP 1: “Assume a paradoxical mind-set.” This is precisely what James said two thousand years ago: “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials.”

STEP 2: “Build a foundation of healthy sleep.”

STEP 3: “Take regular doses of nature’s best tranquilizer . . . physical exercise.”

STEP 4: “Fight stress at the molecular level.” Consult your physician to rule out any chemical imbalances.

STEP 5: “Erect a powerful mind-spirit defense perimeter.” A spiritual dimension is at play here.

STEP 6: “Become an expert in using depressurizing tactics.” Get away. Get alone. Retreat. Jesus did.

STEP 7: “Get regular medical stress checkups.”

Back to James. He was addressing “my brethren” in verse 2, and this is significant. Brethren indicates those people who share values and beliefs. James was writing to his brothers and sisters in the faith. It is folly to tell a man without a spiritual life to count it joy when the trials come. James’s approach to stress is a family secret. As we discovered in The Joshua Code, we who are God’s children have a family secret: “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). The lost world doesn’t know this truth. Note the first phrase of the verse again: “We know . . .”

Every stressful trial can become an opportunity for growing in the likeness of Jesus Christ. Roy Hession once wrote, “Every humiliation, everything that tries and vexes us, is God’s way of cutting a deeper channel in us through which the life of Christ can flow.”^a Yes, stress has a paradoxical nature to it. James went on to say, “Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing” (James 1:3–4).