Living Patiently
Notes
Transcript
As we get started, we have to acknowledge that there is tremendous irony in the fact that I am preaching on patience.
Patience is an area that God has been growing me in. It doesn’t come naturally to me.
I walk fast, I eat fast, I talk fast. On a road trip, I see the estimated time of arrival on Google Maps and see that as my time to beat, no matter how many stops we make along the way. I have a tendency to hurry discussions along in meetings, rush to get my family in the car so we can go, and generally move too quickly through life.
How we do anything is how we do everything, so that impatience carries itself into the more important issues in my life. I get impatient when I don’t see the growth I want to see in myself or someone I care deeply about. I get impatient when God doesn’t answer my prayer in the way or the timing I want him to. I get impatient when life does not go the way I think it should.
Do you ever find yourself doing the same?
Yet, if you and I are going to live the good life, we need to live patiently.
That’s been our topic in our Sunday morning messages recently–living the good life.
We have spent the last month or so talking about spiritual disciplines, those practices God calls us to incorporate into our daily lives to live it to the fullest with him.
So far, we have talked about resetting our souls and our minds every morning by setting aside time right after we get up to spend with him. We have talked about living in such a way that we are listening for God to speak throughout our days. Last week, we talked about living obediently—responding to what God says with action, doing what he calls us to do.
If you have missed those messages, go back and listen to our podcast because each one has been fruitful.
As we look at God’s word this morning, I want to challenge all of us to live patiently in light of God’s patience with us.
What does living patiently even mean?
nstead of examining one main passage like we typically do, we are going to answer that question by walking through a number of passages in the New Testament that talk about us showing patience.
Let’s start by clarifying what the Bible is talking about when it refers to patience.
One dictionary defines one of the words we translate as “patience” this way:
Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament based on Semantic Domains 25.167 μακροθυμία, ας
“a state of emotional calm in the face of provocation or misfortune and without complaint or irritation…”
Biblical patience is more than a detached stoicism; rather, it is an outworking of the Spirit of God in the life of someone following Jesus.
We see that clearly in:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.
This list highlights some of the ways that those of us who know Jesus should be living. In one sense, it is a picture of the good life that God calls us to.
Patience is one of those character traits that Christians and non-Christians both see as a virtue.
It is one of those things we can show on one level on our own, but to fully express it, we need the Spirit of God to work in us.
Human patience wears out, but God can give us grace to patiently endure far beyond what we would naturally handle.
Patience is also not the same as passivity.
Passivity means we just give up and let life just happen.
Patience, on the other hand, is actively devoting myself to God, to listening, to obeying, and to the other disciplines we will talk about, all the while remaining calm and confident, trusting that God is working through the people and situations that would otherwise cause me to lose my cool.
It is loving people when they are unlovely, remaining calm in the face of problems, and holding on to hope when God seems to be taking a long time to keep his promises.
Patience isn’t passivity; it is actively waiting with a steady faith.
In fact, that is how we can group what the Bible teaches us about living patiently…there are three main areas the New Testament talks about in the way God calls us to living patiently.
Perhaps the most frequent area is:
1) Live patiently with people.
1) Live patiently with people.
One of the most common ways God calls us to live patiently is in relationships with other people.
For example:
Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive.
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,
In both of these passages, “patience” is immediately explained as “bearing with one another.”
Part of living the good life that Christ secured for us is extending patience to other people.
That might push back against our normal understanding of what “the good life” looks like, doesn’t it?
If most of us were asked to say what the good life is, we would describe it as some version of life free from worries or interruptions or annoyances.
Yet the picture God gives us of what it means to live the good life is to love people when they are unlovely and extend patience to them when they are irritating!
In fact, that is the very first marker Paul uses to describe “love” in that beautiful description in 1 Cor 13:
Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant,
Let’s pause and think for a moment: I bet there was someone who came to mind when we first started talking about being patient with people.
Whose face did you see? What would it look like for you to love them patiently?
You see, that’s the good life…that time when the Spirit of God works in you and you extend kindness and grace and bear with someone you would rather brush off or blow up at.
He works in your heart to help you see that person as he sees them, to love them, and to treat them with the same joy and comp
Why, though? Why should I live patiently with people?
Hold on to that question; we will get there in a minute.
You see, because living the good life isn’t just about living patiently with people; it is also…
2) Live patiently with problems.
2) Live patiently with problems.
Earlier this year, we walked through the book of Job and saw that pain and problems are part of life for everyone regardless of whether they are following Christ or not.
Sometimes, those problems just don’t resolve when we want them to.
We aren’t talking about that leaky faucet that we haven’t repaired yet or that paper we haven’t finished.
No, these are the big problems we face.
We find ourselves frustrated that God hasn’t taken the pain away from us yet.
Maybe our problems are related to the person we thought of earlier, or maybe those problems involve our health or something else.
It may even be that the problems are because we are following Jesus. There are times when Christians have been mistreated, persecuted, and even killed for their faith.
The good life God calls us to lives patiently even with those problems:
Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; be persistent in prayer.
Paul is telling persecuted Christians in Rome to be patient while they wait for God to deliver them from persecution.
If they have to be patient while they wait for God to deliver them from that, then shouldn’t we also live patiently while we wait for God to resolve the problems we are struggling with?
Those problems are creating something in us that is closely related to patience: endurance.
If patience is staying calm and not complaining when we face discomfort, endurance is the ability to do that over the long haul.
And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Here’s a truth that can be hard for us to come to grips with: Those painful problems may be the very thing God is using to produce endurance in you that will shape your character.
Unfortunately, there is no way to fast forward through spiritual growth.
There is no super soldier serum in the Christian life that can take you from a puny to Captain America.
There are some lessons you can’t learn quickly, and so living the good life with God is going to involve living patiently with problems.
There are times when he has to break down barriers in our own heart or get us to the point where we recognize that we have no other choice but to surrender, to help us get to a point of desperation so deep that we recognize the reality that we always need him more than we could imagine.
There are other times where we may not have any inkling of why God is allowing these problems to persist, but we have to trust that he knows what he is doing.
Deep, abiding, understanding love and trust take time to develop.
Living the good life means patiently letting God work through pain and problems to form deep, rich character in you that takes a lifetime to form.
That leads up to the third area where the New Testament teaches us to live patiently:
3) Live patiently with promises.
3) Live patiently with promises.
Pain, problems, confusion, and heartache are not going to be a part of our existence forever.
If you know the Bible, you know there are these incredible promises about Jesus coming back and setting everything right and taking away pain and all these wonderful things.
We read part of John 14 last week in Philip’s message, but let’s go back to the beginning of that chapter to see one of these beautiful promises:
“Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also. You know the way to where I am going.”
Jesus said he was coming back for us…why hasn’t he done that yet?
Romans 8 talks about how everything in the world is groaning as we wait for Jesus to come back and reverse the curse and remove the stain of sin from even the natural world itself.
That section wraps up with these verses:
Now in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience.
Part of living the good life is living with the eager anticipation of that time when we get to go be with Jesus forever.
We live with an expectant hope, looking forward to the day when we either die and go be with him or he comes back and sets it all right.
Christians have waited thousands of years for Jesus to come back.
In patience, we have joined the ranks of believers like Abraham and Sarah and others:
These all died in faith, although they had not received the things that were promised. But they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth.
We patiently wait, seeing God’s promises from a distance, confessing that this life isn’t all there is.
We live out a good life that honors Christ in everything while we wait for the day for our hope to become sight.
Why, though?
Why do we treat people with patience? Why do we patiently endure problems? Why do we patiently hold onto a hope that God will one day do what he has promised?
Why? Because God is patient with us.
Why? Because God is patient with us.
From the early days of the church, Christians have wondered why they had to be patient for Jesus to come back.
In 2 Peter, Peter is writing to a group of persecuted Christians who didn’t understand why Jesus hadn’t returned and set everything right. They are having to be patient with people who are causing them major problems while they wait on God’s promise!
They were asking, “Why are we still having to deal with this? Why hasn’t he come back?”
Here was his response:
The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
The reason we need to be patient is because God is being patient with us.
You see, if Jesus had come back in the first century, none of us would have had the chance to exist, and none of us would have had the chance to respond to Christ and follow him.
There will come a time when God fulfills his promises, and from that point forward, there will be no opportunity for people to turn to him.
You see, our patient, long-suffering God extends his patience to us.
Paul recognized that in his own life:
This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them. But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, the worst of them, Christ Jesus might demonstrate his extraordinary patience as an example to those who would believe in him for eternal life.
It is the extraordinary patience of God that holds back the judgment we rightly deserve and offers salvation to us instead.
If you and I could really understand how sinful our hearts are, we would recognize that God should have killed us and taken us out a long time ago.
Yet God, in his infinite mercy and goodness and grace has patiently delayed his judgment, giving us an opportunity to respond to his call to salvation one more time.
On the cross, Jesus died the death that you and I deserved to die and now offers us his life in place of our sin and death.
Won’t you surrender to him today? He has been patient with you. Why not respond to him?
If you have received Jesus’s gift of salvation, then he has given you his Spirit so you can live the joy-filled good life he created you to live.
One of the ways the Spirit works in your life is to help you to be patient with people, problems, and promises, just like God has been patient with you.
What do you need to do in response to this morning’s message?
Change the way you are responding to others?
Trust God’s timing in resolving a problem?
Develop a joy-filled expectation that he will fulfill his promises?
