Faith Works Even When Life Goes off Script | Book of James | Rachel Dotzler

Hey, church.

Wow.

All right.

Fine.

Hey, so good to be here with you.

I want to describe a perfect day to you, or one of what I would consider one of a perfect day.

So it was specifically February 28th, 2026.

It was a Saturday.

And um I Saturdays are really coveted days for me and my family, my husband, my little girl, because it's the only day that me and my husband have off work together.

So I have Friday, Saturday off, he has Saturday, Sunday off.

So you get it.

So Saturday, it's like, all right, fam, like what are we doing today?

And sometimes we do big things, we make like a whole plan, we go out somewhere, we run errands, you know, whatever, and we just spend time together.

But there's some Saturdays, which was this one specifically, where um we just like existed um in our home together.

You just have those days where you're just like, we're together, um, but we're all just like doing our own thing, um, which is still like really special.

And it was a great day.

I was sat in my favorite chair in my house reading a book.

That's where you can find me.

Um, if I'm nowhere else in the house, they can they can go.

My daughter and my husband can go to that chair and you'll find me there.

Um reading a book.

So I was there, my husband was off doing husband things, men thing, I don't know, tinkering with cars and tools and yard work, you know, whatever, whatever you guys do at home.

And uh, and then my daughter was doing some solo playtime.

For those of you parents that have littles, when they have like solo playtime and just on their own, you're like, yes, child, like go, go, go and be uh for hours.

And so she was off playing with her Barbies.

And so we were just existing together in a house, and it was a really great day.

Um, and then uh my phone was next to me, and I get interrupted by my phone, which phones are normally an interruption in life.

Amen.

Amen.

Yep.

Uh, and uh I it was an incoming text.

Buzz went off.

I like looked down, grabbed my phone, and uh I got a text um from my oldest brother to my sister and me.

And all it said was Noah is really hurt.

I'm following the ambulance now, not telling mom and dad yet.

I called Christina.

My Saturday night went completely off script.

I'm the youngest of five siblings, and Noah is the middle child.

Uh, and he's uh his his wife is Christina.

Noah and his wife own um a ton of horses um just outside of Telluride.

Um they own a business called Telluride Wranglers, uh, where they have they run this business.

It's a beautiful business, a lot of important and really hard uh work.

But you can go and like take trail rides and overpack rides and sleigh rides in the wintertime, and it's just an incredible business that they run.

Again, a lot of hard work.

And Noah on the side, for fun, he does something called ski joring.

Does anyone know what ski joring is?

Have you heard of it?

No, you live in Arizona, so you probably wouldn't.

Um but ski joring is where you're riding a horse, and the horse and the rider are pulling a skier on a rope.

Um, and it's usually in like a small town, Leadville.

Um, Colorado is really big for it.

Um they pull a skier down, like they close down the main road and they make this little course and the skier's like doing these little hops.

And uh imagine like on a lake, right?

When you're like pulling a tube like thing, it's the same thing, but it's on snow and a horse is driving it.

Um it's crazy.

Um and the skier's like catching these like rings, and the fastest time wins.

It's like it's just fun competition.

Noah has been doing it forever.

There's actually a picture of him.

I'm like, guys, doesn't he look so cool?

I'm like, man, Noah, you're like the coolest person I know.

He's not posing for that.

That's like real life Noah.

It's awesome.

Anyway, um, so that's like what ski juring is.

That is Noah.

He does this for fun, he's been doing it for years.

And this is one of those days that he was doing it, and my oldest brother was there watching him.

He lives in Denver, so they see each other a lot.

But I look down at this text, and immediately my heart is just racing.

My mind is going nuts.

If you've ever received a text or a phone call like this, you know this feeling.

Me and my sister immediately start texting him back.

Like, Rue, what do you what do you know?

Like, where is he?

What's happening?

What happened?

And all my brother texts back.

He says, the horse flipped and it landed on Noah.

I remember in this moment just closing my eyes.

Um, again, I was sat in my chair and I just started crying.

You know those like desperate pleasure when you just cry out to God and you don't know what to say, but you just know, like, God, I just I He needs you.

I don't know what's happening.

Will you protect him?

Will you hold his body together?

These were literally my prayers.

My brother's life just went completely off script.

What he planned for in this competition obviously did not go the way he wanted it to go.

He was left with fighting for his life and trying to find God in the darkest moments of his life, desperate for answers, desperate for meaning, desperate for healing.

Maybe you can relate to him.

One thing he was not looking for and didn't expect to find was joy.

In these moments of waiting, in these moments of patience, in these moments of experiencing a trial or something that's really difficult for you or someone else that is close to you, what is your response?

Because what's happening in those moments is your faith is being tested.

But let's not get that confused with God wanting these things to happen to you.

He doesn't.

That's not really his MO.

But what do we do when our life goes off script?

It's a good thing James has some answers for us, and that's where we're gonna be.

James chapter 1, verse 2.

James 1:2

Last week, Cal introduced us to the guy, James, who is the brother of who?

Jesus, well done.

You listened.

Great.

Brother of Jesus and the book of James, where we're going to be hanging out in for six weeks, which unfortunately or fortunately is gonna be a wild roller coaster.

You know when you interact with someone or you're part of like a situation of something really awkward.

I don't know about you, but uh, my eyes like go big, you kind of like hold your breath for a minute, you like brace your core, and you're like like waiting for someone to break the ice because it's like really awkward and you just want a moment of relief.

Yeah, that's how you do that.

That's how I read the book of James.

Just constantly, like every line, like is this what he means?

Is this truly what he means?

He throws some gut punches.

So brace yourself because, like Cal said last week, it's going to move you to take action.

It's a faith that works.

James 1, 2 through 4 says this consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Wait, consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds, like no offense, James, but that's not really what I want or need to hear, or anything that I want to feel when I'm going through it.

James made a statement here by literally saying when, not if, but when trials are inevitable.

We know this, right?

When Jesus says follow me, he promises a good life.

But he does not say it's gonna be easy.

We are part of a broken world where broken things happen all the time to us, to people around us, we experience grief and loss and pain and hiccups in the road that take our life off script.

Now, if you had to write out your life in a script of how it's gonna go, I don't think you would write in things about sickness, loved ones passing, a miscarriage, not going to your dream college, friendships changing, losing a job, going through a divorce, right?

We don't plan for these things to happen, they just do, because that's life.

And then we're left to react and to respond when they do happen.

And what James is saying here is hey, when that stuff happens, because it will, consider it joy.

Now, what does joy mean?

And is it the same as happiness?

Not at all.

You see, happiness changes when your situation changes.

I'm happy now that I don't have to go to work today.

Oh man, today work was really hard.

I'm happy because I get free Chipotle today.

Oh man, yes, that's right.

Yes.

But oh man, Chipotle burritos went up$2 again.

Bummer.

I'm happy because my daughter loves school.

Oh man, my daughter is now being bullied at school.

You see, happiness changes when situations change.

But joy?

Man, there's nothing like it.

Joy stays steady when life is hard.

Joy is a fruit of the spirit.

There is a reason joy is a fruit of the spirit and not happiness.

Joy is a lasting inner peace, comfort, and gladness that comes from God rather than temporary life events.

So consider it that when you face trials.

Why?

James answered that for us too.

Because you know the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Faith is tested through trials, not produced by trials.

Trials reveal what faith we do or don't have, not because God doesn't know.

He does, He knows, He's quite aware of your faith.

It is revealed so that our faith will be evident to ourselves and to people around us.

It shows that faith is important and precious because only precious things get tested so thoroughly.

If trials do not produce faith, what does?

Now here's the thing: James did not want anyone to think that God sends trials to break down or destroy our faith.

I'm gonna give you one of those awkward moments where you're gonna like go big eyes, brace yourself.

This is awkward.

For some of you, maybe not for all of you, but I think something that can be really damaging in this kind of conversation is when we say to someone, hey, hang in there.

Everything happens for a reason.

To me, it implies that God wants or even caused these terrible things to happen to you.

My uh my grandma um died almost 15 years ago, but she died 15 years ago on my wedding day.

I was a roller coaster of emotions all those years ago.

But I had someone say to me just a few days after, hey Rachel, hope you're doing okay.

Hang in there.

I mean, everything happens for a reason, right?

And I was like, what?

Sorry, what'd you say?

Like, go pound sand, dude.

Like, that's not the right words to say in this moment.

Here's the thing though: instead of that phrase, I think what we can lean on, what helps us experience joy, true joy, something that is constant and peaceful and helps us focus on God amidst the trials, that no matter what happens in this life, God can and will be glorified through all of it.

And that is where joy is found, knowing God is going to use whatever it is you are going through for his good.

Now, this producing perseverance thing, the word perseverance appears differently in other translations.

You can find it as steadfastness, patience, endurance.

Trials don't produce faith, but when trials are received with faith, it produces perseverance and patience and steadfastness.

If difficulties are received with unbelief or grumbling, trials can produce bitterness and discouragement and hopelessness.

I left you on a cliffhanger with Noah's story.

My brother.

My brother suffered breaks in his L5 vertebrae and his sacrum.

He folded his pelvis in half and completely shattered the left half.

In surgery, they were digging out pieces of his left and his right pelvic cavity.

His sacrum break was a spiral fracture.

Your sacrum has all these tiny little holes where your spinal column comes out of connecting to your legs.

The break was like connect the dots, just spiraling all the way through down, connecting each hole.

Meaning, if there was even a millimeter of movement, he would have severed his spinal column and been paralyzed.

The complexity of this is just insane.

The surgeons with said with how much the bone scattered, you should have had organs that were punctured because of the bone pieces that were everywhere.

He couldn't move his legs because there was no bone to hold it together.

He doesn't understand how Noah survived this, especially without being paralyzed and the trauma his spine took, it should have severed it.

And now you can actually see just for visual, he's uh got a bunch of metal just sitting in his pelvis area, connecting and holding everything together.

Noah has always had a sense of humor, even in really dark moments.

And he told his uh his surgeon in this moment, he goes, Man, I'm just a dumb cowboy that doesn't know how to die.

But he began to grasp these words because he knew deep down it could have only been God.

Noah was in the hospital for six weeks.

The trauma from the incident is one thing, but it doesn't stop there.

Because when he got home, a lot of things happened.

Addiction to opioids, depression, suicidal thoughts, ideation, his wife and two little kids not having his help while he sat in a wheelchair, not being able to be on a horse, his wife carrying the weight of the business on her shoulders.

He's also a firefighter that had to step away from that work.

The list goes on.

My sweet brother realized something that this has slowed his life down, but not in the way that he thought.

Yes, the really sucky parts of literally slowing your life down as he begins to try and walk again and do physical therapy and has to take each day really, really slow.

And just on a side note, this is a picture of Noah walking again.

Literally in August, our family got together and we were hiking.

Yeah, you absolutely praise God.

He's the best.

We were hiking through a canyon, and I just had a moment where I was like, that's my brother walking behind me, and I wanted to savor that moment.

But life slowed down on a personal level.

Noah told me he realized some things about his life that needed attention.

His kids barely saw him with the work that he was doing.

He didn't slow down enough to enjoy them or his wife.

His faith was weakened because he never felt God, probably because he didn't spend any time with God.

And yet now he realized God never abandoned him.

And now his life has become more rich with the time that he's spending with them, and the priorities have changed, and the love that God has shown them, shown him through just being alive, man, how we take for granted just living and taking breath.

His he and God and his community that showed up for him and the family, and he realized how much his family needed him.

He's on a journey that's really, really hard.

But there is hope.

This last part of these verses, James 1, 4.

It says, Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

My brother told me this in a text.

He says, Man, I think God is perseverance.

He is a lot of things, but for me right now, he is perseverance, because as long as we have him, we truly lack nothing.

I just forgot I had him and I lacked everything.

I reread that verse and I replaced perseverance with God.

Let God finish his work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Man, I don't know about you, but that gives me a lot of hope.

Almost as if James is just saying, hey, God is not finished with you yet.

He is working for your good.

He is working to make you complete.

And do not forget that when you experience trials of many kinds.

And knowing this, this is where the joy comes from.

And I want to consider it joy when the trials come, not thinking that God wants these things to happen to me or wanted this to happen to Noah, or it's for the greater good.

No, joy comes from knowing that God somehow, in some way, is going to be glorified, and the world cannot take that away from you ever.

One of my favorite theologians of all time is C.S.

Lewis.

He changed my life and pointed it to God when I was 20 years old, and I've forever loved this quote.

He said, This God whispers to us in our pleasures, he speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.

It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Is God shouting at you right now?

Is he begging you for your attention?

Here's the thing, church.

I think we need to normalize lament.

What does lament mean to lament with God?

It refers to bringing grief and anger and confusion and pain honestly before God.

Rather than suppressing those feelings or approaching God only with praise and gratitude?

Why can't it be both?

It's a practice found in the Bible.

We see it especially in the Psalms.

How do you be with God in pain?

Can joy and pain coexist?

I want to read a Psalm to you, Psalm 13, 1 through 6.

It says this.

How long, Lord?

Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, Lord my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, I have overcome him.

And my foes will rejoice when I fall.

My heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing the Lord's praise, for he has been good to me.

Let me ask you again: can joy and pain coexist?

Yeah, they can.

It's not pretty, it doesn't have a cute pretty bow on it, but man, is it real?

And that's all God ever wants from you is to just be real.

They exist together because God can hold both of those things.

He is one of them, and he understands the other one.

He is joy.

But man, does he understand pain emotionally, physically, mentally?

But you need to be with him and lament with him to experience it.

And when we understand to be with him and all emotions and all that we're going through, something really interesting happens.

We uh refer to faith a lot of times in church worlds.

Like, are you on a mountaintop or are you like in a valley, right?

To describe like where we're at in our faith journey.

And a mountaintop, like, how is your faith today?

Are you on a mountaintop?

Are you just like living your best life?

God has been good to you.

God is in all the things.

You're on fire for God.

You just can't wait to talk about Him.

We use that phrase on fire for God a lot in youth ministry when uh kids and students come back from camp.

Man, there is just a fire ignited in them where they just want to take on the world for Jesus and tell everyone about him.

But what happens?

Fires can go out.

Things come up that dim the fire, that distract the fire.

Fires are temporary.

We tend to forget about God.

And man, let me remind us of what James did say.

He said, when you face trials, not if.

Church, if you are on a mountaintop faith and maybe you haven't experienced trials and pain and grief and heartache, fill in the blank, let me be the one to tell you that it is coming.

That's not supposed to be a discouragement, but an encouragement.

Scripture isn't going to tell you what you want to hear, it's going to tell you what you need to hear.

And that's when it happens to remember to consider it joy because God has not abandoned you.

Now maybe you're sitting there and you're like, man, I'm my faith, I'm in a valley right now.

It's really hard to see God.

To know God, your life has gone off script.

Financially, you're struggling, your marriage is struggling, parenting is really hard.

You're failing already in school and it's two months in.

You're asking, God, God, where are you?

And joy is few and far between.

And actually, your fire is out.

You've just been wading through the ashes that are left.

And every day is a struggle to see or be close with God.

But sometimes what happens circumstances change.

Things are looking up, you've turned some things around in your life.

You find some sense of happiness or healing.

And you think, man, things are getting better because X, Y, and Z.

Here's the point Valleys and mountaintops are temporary places.

Ashes and fires are temporary things.

So then where's the in-between?

What does that look like?

Let me paint a visual for you of an ember.

You think I I think joy looks like an ember.

Embers come from coals, right?

They're created in coals.

When they get really hot, they are embers.

They're the most powerful part of a fire.

Like imagine sitting around a campfire.

It is almost campfire season, y'all.

Amen.

I'm so ready to roast some marshmallows.

Yes, thank you.

Praise God.

I'm so tired of this heat.

But anyway, sitting around a campfire, roasting marshmallows.

You put a marshmallow on a stick, you stick it in the fire.

If you're a crazy person and you stick that right into the flame of the fire, what happens?

It burns, it gets black on the outside, and the inside is cold.

And if you like your marshmallows that way, you will not find any joy in your life.

Because that is not how you roast a marshmallow.

All right.

There's a few of you out there.

But for the rest of us who are normal, uh, we're just gonna put a marshmallow in, you put it underneath a fire.

You stick it close to the embers and the coals, you turn the stick slowly, and what happens?

That ember starts turning the marshmallow this golden brown, and then the inside gets soft and gooey, and it's the perfect marshmallow.

If you're a sane person, it is the perfect marshmallow.

It gives off incredibly powerful heat.

Embers can light a spark that can cause forest fires, and they can make it through by just sitting in the ashes.

I want to give another visual to you.

This is actually pretty incredible.

My brother actually shared this story with me just like last Tuesday.

I was like, Noah, you want to just come teach this message for me?

Because it's pretty much about you.

Um, but he told me the story.

I told you he's a firefighter as well.

He's one of the reserves, uh, reserve firefighter for the town of Telluride and the town of Cortez.

But over the summer, obviously he didn't get to be there, but something insane happened.

There was a um a lightning strike just outside of Telluride, and it struck through the trees, and at first nothing happened.

The forest ground is covered in something called duff, which is a mixture of soil and decomposing material mostly made up of pine needles.

The ember created by the strike was underneath the ground and stayed alive for several feet under the ground after this lightning strike.

And it started slowly burning the duff through all the roots of the trees.

Catch this.

Nine days later.

Nine days later, it ignited a flame and it started a forest fire.

After nine days, there's a picture here of the aftermath you sent me.

This was like after they put out the fire.

But if that firefighter stepped into that hole next to him, you wouldn't be able to see his legs.

That's how deep down these embers were burning.

My brother said his chief had never seen anything like it, and it was a disaster to put out.

But that is the power of an ember.

Here's the thing I think an ember looks a lot like joy.

An ember persists without external fuel.

It glows faintly under ash.

It's not a bonfire raging in good weather.

Joy is not circumstantial.

An ember is quiet, it's not showy.

It doesn't consume your attention like a fire, like happiness.

An ember is subtle.

You might miss it if you're not looking.

Joy can be missed if you're not looking, if you are consumed by emotions.

An ember isn't dead.

It can remain dormant, just waiting to be ignited to breathe on it, add some wood, and it flares back up.

During grief, it's there.

During mountaintops, it's there, and valleys, it is there.

Joy is the ember it leaves behind.

Quieter, harder to put out, and carrying within it the possibility of fire again.

Even when trials come, even when the happy moments in life happen or gone again, joy never leaves.

It's just knowing God and being with God.

Joy is knowing God never leaves and is doing a work in you when the pain or trials happen.

Second Corinthians 4, 16 through 18 says this.

Since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Church, there's another story I want to share with you from a young adult in our church.

I've noticed since she was 12 years old, she came into our student ministry.

Got to do life with her as a student, and she graduated and she's now on our core lead team at our young adults' ministry.

And um, so much of Jesus' teachings were told in stories because it does something when we hear uh a story and seeing God work and move.

So I want you to go ahead and uh check out Bailey's story.

We all like to write our own scripts.

Step one, figure things out.

Step two, stay reasonably healthy.

Step three, live happily ever after.

But whether you're 15, 45, or 85, we all know the moment when life decides to tear up the script.

Growing up soccer was a huge part of my life.

I had a team, friends, and a future I could picture.

But silently, I was struggling.

There was a season when panic attacks were happening almost every day.

I was hiding my depression that was impacting my day-to-day.

I lost interest in playing soccer, spending time with my friends, and doing simple tasks.

I could be sitting in the front seat listening to music, surrounded by people, and still feel completely alone.

I definitely wasn't thinking about joy when my own life went off script.

I was given a number of mental health diagnoses, all under the age of 18.

The search for the right medication was overwhelming.

I felt so alone.

So I had attempted suicide.

When you're a teenager, a success story is just being good.

He does his deepest work in the hardest season to use it for his glory.

I can see the pure joy I had in God throughout all those times because he was working and will continue to do so.

Bailey said, I found that joy's stubborn optimism anchored in the fact that life is gonna go off script.

But God will not abandon your story when it does.

Bailey's been through hell and back.

She's an ember that even when she wanted to go out, God was working to keep her light burning so that he could use her pain, her grief, her trials for his glory.

And I just want to stop and take a moment that man, if if you are struggling, don't leave this place without talking to someone.

There's a prayer team, there's pastors.

You're not meant to carry this alone.

And a word of encouragement to those of you that are sitting there and you're saying, Man, Rachel, my my life is my life is good.

Like God has been so good to me.

I'm all on a mountaintop.

Let me say this: you have a story.

And there are people around you just extending an arm or a hand out, waiting for someone to just grasp it and to pull them out.

There are people that need to hear God is doing a thing in their life despite their circumstance.

And I think God wants to use you just like He uses Bailey to bring hope into people's lives.

So maybe it's time to start asking God, God, how do you want me to use my mountaintop faith for your glory?

Maybe it's time to start walking down that mountain and find someone that's in the valley and walk back up with them.

So, church, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Jesus lacked nothing when he went to the cross, and yet he suffered for the sake of you, so that you may experience his work in your life, so that you may know what it is to be complete with the Father through the cross.

So that when trials and hardship come, you would know that he will never leave you, and joy can be found there.

Just one.

Please don't go anywhere.

There's more important things in football.

Just hang in there.

It says this: the verse in the song that I want to read to you, it says this.

And how how fast would you come running if just to shadow me through the night, trace my steps through all my failure, and walk me out the other side?

For who could dare ascend that mountain, that vallied hill called Calvary?

But for the one I call good shepherd, who like a lamb was slain for me.

He is running to you always.

He is in your footsteps, even in the failures.

He is with you always, but he understands what you've gone through, what you currently go through, and what you will go through, because he went through a valley himself when he was crucified on the cross.

And guess what?

Because of what happened on the cross, because of the body that was broken and the blood that was spilled, he's going to walk you out on the other side.

So you can and will experience joy with him, because that is where joy is found, is with him.

And then uh you can take those elements of communion.

We take that bread that represents the body that was broken.

We drink the juice that represents the blood that was spilled for you and me.

Because of the love that he has for you.

So that we may know what joy is.

Let's pray, church, and then you can take those elements and we'll sing a song together.

God, we uh God, man, just thank you for who you are.

God, thank you for the hope and the joy that we can find in Scripture.

God, even when it's so hard.

But we know that joy and pain can exist together because you can hold those things for us.

God, we thank you for the cross.

Because of that day and what happened, that we can even have a relationship with you so that we truly know what joy is.

And God, may we remember that through the trials that we face, knowing that you're always working and you won't ever stop, because you will not abandon us ever.

So, God, we give you these moments.

God, whether we need to stand and raise our hands to you in worship, God, whether we just need to be on our knees before you or God to just sit and be in your presence.

It is all for you, it is all for your glory, and we give you this time and this space.

We love you so much.

In your name we pray.

Everyone said, Amen.