Patience:
Without It You Pay A High Price Kelly
Durant 8-14-16
Luke 21:19
In your patience possess ye your souls James 1:3 Knowing this, that the trying of
your faith worketh patience. 4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye
may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
2. Have you
ever known people without any patience? We see them all the time in Miami! I
was at a gas station a few days ago and the clerk was counting money with the
door locked and I waited outside 10 minutes, along with about 8 others but 3
people took off mad and in a hurry! So the implication is those folks will
waste 10 or 20 minutes more driving to another gas station. Impatient people lose
more time and have to repeat things again and again all the time!
We live in
times that make too many people too comfortable and it is not realistic to
expect things to happen instantly all the time. God takes his time to grow a
flower, 9 months to make a baby, and season changes happen but slowly. But as
humans we lose patience all the time when God is trying to teach us patience.
All things must happen in God’s time!
Information
and communication happen almost instantly in the news channels. Computers and
fast food have us spoiled you and me so we race through the day doing dozens of
things asking where did the time go?
3. So today,
I want to ask you, how much patience do you have? The reality is we need to
work on that, don’t we? Within the context of Jesus message of a future world
in tribulation Jesus said, “In your patience possess ye your souls”. When you
do a word search in the Bible on “patience” you find dozens of references so
you and I must consider it important! We must ask God to cultivate it in us!
Everyone
knows about the life of Job, that no matter all of the things that happened to
him, he still had the patience to trust God and to believe that his
faithfulness to God was going to pay off, and it did. He got back all of what
he lost, even double! But at the time he did not know that! He thought it was
the end!
James 5:11 Behold, we count them
happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end
of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.
In the New
Testament we see the need for patience not just for getting us through the coming
persecution and tribulation, but for our own spiritual day to day development.
Patience in the Bible is within the context of putting up with terrible trials
and conditions, putting up with each other, and putting up with what God is
doing in your life to teach you lessons you don’t really want to learn! Few
people ask God to teach them patience because they do not want the trials that
go with it to learn it!
4. Here is
what I observe about patience: you are going to learn it or else! God often
will allow you to pass over the same trial over and over until you learn to be
more humble and more patient. Compare patience to some of the students I had
when I taught English. Some would do good for 3 months and then right before
the exam they would quit! They did not have the patience to prepare just a
little bit more for what they already had learned for the test. So what would
happen? They would end up repeating Level 1 two, three and sometimes even five
times! It is like an old movie, ‘Groundhog Day’! In the movie at 6:00 am the
day would be the same day over and over until one day love broke the curse. To
repeat and repeat leads nowhere because the lesson is not learned due to
impatience!
Church
members, be they here in the Salvation Army or in some other Christian work on
the other side of the globe have the same challenge, to learn to let God do the
work He is doing in your life and not get impatient about it. The lesson is to
not lose patience and have to start all over again! Some people with a lack of
patience appear like a child in a grown up body making mistake after mistake and
it is embarrassing to watch. Without patience we are losing time and progress.
2
Corinthians 6:4-5 But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of
God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, In
stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings.
5. So in the
scripture of today where we read that when we are in a major crisis with no
food or money, being in jail, or being persecuted we must keep on with the
faith in patience fasting if we need to. That is extreme and that was 2,000
years ago but even today millions of Christians live lacking in necessities and
in terrible affliction! In today’s world a knock on the door by some anti-christ
officials (atheists or religious) could mean imprisonment, death, or the permanent
loss of contact with their beloved family members! Cubans, many Latinos, Chinese,
Russians and Arab countries live with this horrible injustice! Being unjustly imprisoned,
beaten up and being destitute and miserable up until death is what tries the
patience of millions of Christians! Never forget to pray for them!
Comparing
how cozy, comfortable, and how (only for this moment) non-life-threatened we
live in the USA, we must have appreciate how having ‘patience’ here compared
with how the early church and other nations have to have it, puts us into a
diminished perspective. In our modern day world I have heard of people not
having patience for little things and leaving the church over their inability
to resolve trivialities. For example in our day of whiners, spoiled so called
Christians may leave the church over simple things such as a change of pastors,
over a change of paint color in the building, over a brother they do not like,
or over not getting to hear the music they want to hear.
How pampered
and impatient are many Christians! This
immaturity is a scourge! We live in a shamefully spoiled generation that is
going to have a rude awakening when it comes time to having real patience in
tribulations. Not practicing patience now over small things could mean the loss
of one’s soul, because with no purification, with no maturing, all can be lost.
6. Impatient
people are hell to put up with! They expect to receive perfection without
giving it. Like a few old girlfriends I had for just a few days back in High
School who would say they expected their man to bring them flowers, and their
man had better have money, and their man must have this and have that. How is
it some people want to demand perfection and yet they are very imperfect,
demanding, and selfish their selves incapable of offering perfection? With patience
we learn to purge ourselves of our faults!
James 1:3
Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. 4 But let
patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting
nothing.
We must note
here that in the world nothing will ever be perfect, and due to that fact, we
will always be faced with the need to have patience. And we must let patience
remold, rewire, and remake us into a humble patient loving servant of God! What
needs to become perfect according to the scripture is God’s love in you and me,
as you and I will never make the world and everyone else perfect!
7. And
lately people have commented that we must not expect to have the perfect church
either but we must learn to have patience with all the normal trials of life.
Was it German that said that one time he went to the perfect church and all was
perfect until he started going there! Perfection in people does not exist, but
on our path to holiness we do strive for it, but only God’s love practiced in
our life will make it happen. What is repeated is that we are to be perfect in
love!
Put into
perspective I feel honored by God and blessed to not have to go through more
trails than what I have to in this Corps (church)! Believe me putting up with
people and their imperfections is not near as hard as being in situations where
you have no rent money, no food, and you fear that the government will imprison
you deport you for preaching the gospel. And yes, I have survived those
situations I just described and millions of other brothers and sisters face
these trials and much worse on a daily basis! Again, pray for those in trials around
the world!
8. We must
keep things in perspective and never allow ourselves to go crazy lacking in
patience. What is madness? It is being obsessive and impatient! Obsessiveness
is when a person makes a huge mountain over a mole hill. I recall in Georgia
one time on the news a high ranking government official was trying to get fired
a grocery store clerk who would lick her finger to get the plastic bags open
for packing. This person was uncomfortable by this and demanded the person be
fired and a war over nothing was started! Why didn’t she just shop at another
store!? Why do we as viewers have to put up with abusive people in power
inventing squabbles to distract us from the real issues of poverty, addiction,
and violence? News outlets love to exalt those with issues and impatience! Don’t
be a fool to play into their games of hypocritical accusations.
This is the
world we live in today. A world where a bunch of impatient whiners want to make
miserable an entire group of people over their preferences and ways of doing
things! The abuse of power is killing us! Spoiled politicians turn into
murderous despots because they have no patience to listen to those who come to
them with legitimate grievances.
A lack of
patience and love is making our world become a hell! The lack of patience with
others is dividing and destroying societies worldwide. The love of many, and the
patience we should be showing one to another, is becoming cold.
How sad it
is that too few people in the world know the Word of God and practice it to the
best they can. Jesus commanded us to ‘forgive others as we want to be forgiven’.
Now that is an extreme example for an emphasis on the practice of patience if I
ever heard one!
9. Ask God
for patience! Without it you will be a failure at everything and be an angry,
hot-headed, reckless, destructive, frustrated, stressed out soul! And we see
too many of those kinds all around this city!
So the
future of your soul is determined by your dominion over your spirit, whether
you can make it learn patience and love or not when you are faced with a trial,
confrontation, or persecution. Romans 5:3 “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing
that tribulation worketh patience. 4 And patience, experience; and experience,
hope:” We want faith, hope, and love, but they all are learned by having
patience!
Pray to
learn patience because the need to practice it our day to day experiences (and
trials) is a must! People, will try your patience, but so will the weather,
things that break, traffic and many other things! Our whole life sort of
revolves around processes, and some go slow, so the need for patience in your
and my life is imperative! The main process we should be concerned about is our
spiritual growth and imagine how patient God has been with you! Prayer…
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