"Consider it all joy...."

"Consider it all joy" James writes, "when you fall into temptation, for temptation works patience, and patience will have its own fruits."

What does this mean when we're "dead to the world"?

We are at once, spiritually separated, but also in fellowship with believers, and then, sometimes at our own peril, reaching to others with the Good News.  

St Anthony was one that completely separated himself from the world, taking to a cave in the desert.  One would think he might become bored or discouraged, but no.  He found variety, and even alone in a remote cave, there were temptations that assailed him.

You see that he removed himself from the world, stuck out alone, and could work in no way for others.  That's the different with some of us, that some are more busy in their own sandbox, while yet others take to the field: as the Bible points out, we all have our own unique talents, some for reaching out, and some for other things.

In removing himself from the world, St Anthony made a difficult decision, and indeed, history doesn't inform us as to why he made that choice.  Only Anthony knew what difficulties came to him in his regular life, what he had to flee when he chose to go into complete solitude.

But for us?

"Consider it joy."

The rewards of patience mean that we've played the game and seen how the world comes at us, and to an extent, we learn to be unflapped, unphased, by so much of the world's trickery, we become partly sullen and strong in the face of some of Satan's wiles.

The work of patience is a kind of spiritual armor that the believer takes up, a toolkit or a defensive weapon that we use to protect ourselves from the temptations and trials of the world around us.