Well, let's open our Bibles tonight to James. And I want us to look again at chapter 1 verses 2 through 12 and I do not assume that we will be able to cover all of this section. I want to take my time with these truths because they're so rich and so wonderful. I want to read again James 1:2 through 12.

            My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing this that the trial or the testing of your faith works endurance. And let endurance have her perfect work that you may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all men liberally and abraideth not and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavers is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything from the Lord. A double‑minded man is unstable in all his ways. Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted, but the rich in that he is made low because as the flower of the grass, he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen with the burning heat but it withereth the grass and its flower falleth and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth. So also shall the rich man fade away in his ways. Blessed is the man that endures trials, for when he is tried he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to them that love Him.

            Now we kind of ended our message last time with the phrase "them that love Him," and I want to begin this time picking up that same phrase. Loving God is without question the key to enduring all the trials of life. Perhaps it is the single most decisive evidence of a regenerate soul. If anything is true of a regenerate person, it is that they love God. That seems to me to be the bottom line. True Christians here then are designated as them that love Him. That is a title for Christians. What a lovely title it is indeed. And that is why they endure. They endure because they have a strong love for God. And no matter what the trial, no matter what the struggle, what the difficulty, they endure because love holds them fast.

            I think you can see that in any relationship. Any relationship even on a human level where the bond of love is very strong will sustain all kinds of adversity. And in those trials and tribulations and testings and difficulty that comes into the life of a Christian, the thing that holds us to the Lord, that keeps our faith firm is this strong bond of love.

            Some years ago, Gardner Spring was a pastor in New York City. And he wrote of the persevering power of love. And these are his words, "There is a vast difference between such an affection and that selfish and unhallowed friendship to God which terminates on our own happiness as its supreme motive and end. If a man in his supposed love to God has no ultimate regard except to his own happiness, if he delights in God not for what He is but for what He is to him, in such a sentiment there is no moral virtue. There is indeed great love of self but no true love of God. But where the enmity of the carnal mind is slain, the soul is reconciled to the divine character as it is. God Himself in the fullness of His manifested glory becomes the object of devout and delighted contemplation. In his more favored hours, the views of a good man are in a great measure diverted from himself. As his thoughts glance toward the varied excellence of the deity, he scarcely stops to inquire whether the being whose character fills his mind and in comparison of whose dignity and beauty all things are atoms and vanity will extend his mercy to him. His soul cleaves to God and in the warmth and fervor of devout affection, he can often say, `Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none on the earth that I desire beside Thee, as the hart pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after Thee, O God.'"

            Now what he means to say by all of that, of course, is that the bond that ties a man or a woman to God is the bond of love, not just superficial affection, not just sentiment that is basically selfish, that is to say as long as I get from you what I want, I'll stick around, but a true bond of love that can endure any trial.

            Gardner Spring then poses a personal examination series of questions. And I think they're helpful. He asks the reader this, "Do you love God for what you imagine Him to be or for what He is? Are you pleased with His character and do you love every part of it? Do you love His holiness as well as His grace and His justice as well as His mercy? Do you love Him merely on account of His love to you, or do you love Him because He is in Himself lovely? Do you love Him merely because you hope He will save you, or do you think you should love Him if you supposed He would damn you? Is your love to God supreme? Whom do you love more than God? In whose character do you behold more beauty? Whose blessedness is the object of warmer desir