Today in the Word Daily Devotional

Life is not easy. Things break. People disappoint us. Sickness comes in. James makes an unusual statement to Christians facing hard times. He writes, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance” (James 1:2).

The hardest sermon to hear is often the one we have already heard, but not for the reason you think. The problem is not that we are bored (although that may be true). It is that we do not listen as carefully as we should. We can be complacent about the familiar truths of the faith, thinking we know them better than we really do. We neglect the familiar and favor the new. The job of the church’s teachers is not to come up with new things to say but to reinforce truths that the church has already received (1 Cor. 11:23; 15:3; Gal. 1:12).