Trials and temptations

Consider it wholly joyful, my brethren,
whenever you are enveloped in
or encounter trials of any sort or fall into various temptations.

Be assured and understand that the trial and proving of your faith
bring out endurance and steadfastness and patience.

But let endurance and steadfastness and patience
have full play and do a thorough work,
so that you may be [people] perfectly and fully developed [with no defects],
lacking in nothing.

If any of you is deficient in wisdom,
let him ask of the giving God [Who gives] to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly,
without reproaching or faultfinding, and it will be given him.

Only it must be in faith that he asks with no wavering (no hesitating, no doubting).
For the one who wavers (hesitates, doubts) is like the billowing surge out at sea
that is blown hither and thither and tossed by the wind.

For truly, let not such a person imagine that he will receive anything [he asks for] from the Lord,

[For being as he is] a man of two minds (hesitating, dubious, irresolute),
[he is] unstable and unreliable and uncertain about everything [he thinks, feels, decides].

Let the brother in humble circumstances glory in his elevation
[as a Christian, called to the true riches and to be an heir of God],

And the rich [person ought to glory] in being humbled
[by being shown his human frailty], because like the flower of the grass he will pass away.

For the sun comes up with a scorching heat and parches the grass;
its flower falls off and its beauty fades away.
Even so will the rich man wither and die in the midst of his pursuits.

Blessed (happy, to be envied) is the man who is patient under trial
and stands up under temptation,
for when he has stood the test and been approved,
he will receive [the victor’s] crown of life which God has promised
to those who love Him.

Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted from God;
for God is incapable of being tempted by [what is] evil
and He Himself tempts no one.

But every person is tempted when he is drawn away,
enticed and baited by his own evil desire (lust, passions).

Then the evil desire, when it has conceived,
gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully matured,
brings forth death.

Do not be misled, my beloved brethren.

Every good gift and every perfect (free, large, full) gift is from above;
it comes down from the Father of all [that gives] light,
in [the shining of] Whom there can be no variation [rising or setting]
or shadow cast by His turning [as in an eclipse].

And it was of His own [free] will that He gave us birth
[as sons] by [His] Word of Truth,
so that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures
[a sample of what He created to be consecrated to Himself].