Where Maturity Gets Made — A Sunday Worth Staying For

Somewhere in your kitchen — or your mom's, or your grandmother's — there's a black cast-iron skillet. It's been there longer than most of the marriages in your family. It's heavy. It's got that dark, almost greasy shine to it. And it cooks better than anything else in the cabinet.

Here's the thing about that skillet. It didn't start out that way.

When you pull a new one off the shelf at the store, it's dull. Grey. Sticks to everything. Almost useless. The only way it becomes the heirloom your grandmother passes down is through a process called seasoning. And seasoning isn't gentle. You rub it with oil. You put it in a five-hundred-degree oven. You bake it. You cool it. You do it again. And again. And again.

The heat doesn't ruin the skillet. The heat is what makes the skillet.

Hold onto that picture this Sunday, because the passage we're going to read tells us something almost shocking about the heat in our own lives.

This is week three of our May series. We started the month asking whether we're still on milk. Last Sunday Paul taught us that the mature aren't the ones who've arrived — they're the ones who know they haven't, and keep pressing on. Beautiful word. But there was a question Paul didn't quite answer: where does that pressing actually happen? Where does growth get made?

James answers.

James 1:2–4 says count it all joy when you fall into various trials, because the testing of your faith is producing endurance — and endurance, allowed to finish its work, leaves you mature and complete, lacking nothing. That's almost offensive at first read. Joy, in the middle of the trial I would never have chosen? Yes. Not because the pain is joyful, but because the project God is working through the pain is.

The trials you would never choose are exactly where God is doing the work you would never make time for otherwise.

This Sunday we'll sit in three verses and three pictures: the joy underneath the pain, the endurance God is building like reaction wood in a tree that's been bent by the wind, and the maturity that only shows up on the other side of staying put.

Maybe you're in the heat right now. The biopsy. The phone call. The kid who isn't coming home. The slow grind of a marriage or a job or a body that won't cooperate. This passage was written for you. Don't bolt. Come hungry. Come honest. The forge is doing what the forge does — and God is the one running the clock.

Sunday, May 17 · 10:30 AM · Cornerstone Church of Christ · Centerville, OH

1. James says “consider it joy.” How is that different from pretending you’re fine? Where does the line between joy and denial run in your own life right now?
2. “Various trials” — bittersweet ones we’d choose, bitter ones we’d never choose. Which kind is harder for you to call a trial out loud, and why?
3. Cast-iron skillet. Tree in the wind. Reaction wood. Which picture lands hardest for you, and what season in your life has that picture been about?
4. “Faith is what’s being tested.” When you’ve taken a trial without faith, what did you get instead of endurance? Bitterness? Numbness? Withdrawal?
5. Verse 4 says “let endurance have its full effect.” Where have you been tempted to call yourself done before God’s done? What does staying look like there this week

Those Serving
CALL TO WORSHIP/PRAYER
Paul Braden
SONG LEADER
Titus Sullivan
LEAD LORD'S SUPPER
Russ Robins
ASSIST LORD’S SUPPER
Daniel Spargo
Drew Triplett
Gary Stewart
James Passmore
SCRIPTURE READING
Dylan Schofield
Ephesians 2:8-10
PREACHING
Matthew Allen
CLOSING PRAYER
Jason Schofield
CLOSING COMMENTS
Boyd Hastings
WELCOME CENTER
Richard and Tina Jacobs
USHERS
Roger Robins // Roy Pyle
COMMUNION PREP
Yvonna Robins
CLOSING THE BUILDING
Benjamin Baker