Steward's Portion

PATIENCE. Perhaps when you read that word, you feel a little like I once felt: fearful and desperate to circumvent long delays!  As I have walked with the Lord I have found that He feels very differently about patience, and in the process my feelings have changed too!

In our Christian walk we often find ourselves waiting for something; waiting for direction, waiting for provision, waiting to get married, waiting nine months for a child to be born, or just even waiting for our next vacation.  It can be easy to learn to think of Jesus as the “God of the last minute” since many times the thing we have so long waited for seems to arrive just in time.

I confess that early in my Christian walk that many of the more seasoned Christians around me seemed to have lost the joy of  their salvation simply because of how long they had waited for an answer to such and such a prayer.  It seemed they were winking at me knowing that soon enough I’d realize on my own that being a Christian would mean the initial zeal and joy would wear off and be replaced by a stern endurance as I learned through experience that my first batch of prayers wouldn’t all be answered by next Sunday.  I remember the excitement in knowing that God was real, God was listening and God had all the power in the Universe at his fingertips to answer prayer.  God did answer a number of my prayers very quickly, but others I have yet to see fulfilled.  I believe God has a perfect time for everything (Ecc 3:1), and that He cares just as much about the moments in between our prayers and their fulfillment as He does about the end result.

In the eyes of God, seeing the character of Christ formed inside of a believer is a top priority.  Have you considered that God is patient?   Romans 15:5 declares that God is in fact “the God of patience”!   And James 1:4 admonishes us that we should endeavor to “let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” That is an amazing statement; that if we have patience, we will lack nothing! Jesus Himself praises three of the seven Churches in the book of Revelation for their patience; Ephesus, Thyatira & Philadelphia.

Patience is not simply waiting. By default, if you don’t have what you want you are waiting.  Patience is a heart posture that is defined by cheerful endurance. The Greek word most commonly translated patience is: hupomonē (pronounced hoop-om-on-ay’) and means “a cheerful (or hopeful) endurance, constancy.”

A few years ago I was encouraging a friend to be patient.  She responded that she didn’t want to take that route because “it just takes too long”.  She also expressed a common fear “what if God never answers me?”  It was at that moment that the Holy Spirit spoke to me and explained that patience is not about something taking a long time, it is about an attitude of cheerfulness knowing that God knows what is best and delights in answering us.   In essence, patience happens the moment your heart has adopted a cheerful waiting with peace.  No more do we fret, worry, or get depressed, but instead we wait in a state of contentment.  In moments when patience is needed I like to imagine myself standing before God’s throne.  I know He knows my need and He sees me, and I am happy to be in His presence until He gets around to me, after all He is a King and I am just a woman, I remember that I am just dust before Him.  By choosing patience I lift my hands and give an offering of joyful praise, even in the midst of needing something.  God places a lot of value on our patience.   I believe it moves His heart.

In my own life this was most dramatically experienced when I decided not to date.  As an 18 year old newly minted Christian, it occurred to me that if I could trust God with my eternal soul, I should be able to trust Him to find me a husband.  I made the decision to stop dating entirely, expecting full well that this probably meant I would actually never get married, after all, how do you go from friends to spouses without dating?  ( Seeing that I did experience exactly that, I can proclaim that nothing is impossible with God…. but that is a wonderful story which I will save for another time!) I prayed and asked God to select a husband for me since I no longer wanted to be in charge of that area of my life.  Within a few weeks of having prayed that prayer, something unusual happened.  Three separate men that had caught my eye suddenly came hunting for me.  I had roses being delivered, invitations for fancy dinners, one man even wanted me to spend a weekend with his family, it was overwhelming.  I stood fast though, God would do a better than job than me at picking a husband!  I declined every invitation.  I actually started to like it.  I rejoiced knowing that one day God would pick a man for me who would suit me perfectly, so I could sit out all the heartbreak that my friends were experiencing.  So how long did a woman who didn’t date have to wait to get married? I didn’t even have to wait 2 years!  18 months later I was married to my husband who had also never dated and lived in a different country!  God did indeed work quickly, and 12 years later I am still rejoicing that I let God choose my husband.

There have been many times since then that I have turned to patience.  I have come to believe that patience is a combination of three of the fruits of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians chapter 5, namely: joy, peace and longsuffering.  Just like fruit which ripens in a season, I believe patience is something that can be achieved in a short period of time… of course you will end up using it for the rest of your life!

Of all the sacrifices we give to God, I believe He treasures our patience in a special way.  By choosing the route of patience we declare that we are happy to wait for His perfect timing and have set aside our own machinations.  We have taken a huge step in becoming more like Christ.  My husband once told me that “sin is an irony: it’s the unrighteous pursuit of what God wants to give us through a righteous pursuit.”  When we forfeit patience we do one of two things: we either sit around depressed and unhappy until the timer runs out, or we start seeing how our grabby little fingers can take what we want without waiting for God.  Neither of those heart attitudes is pleasing to God. I would encourage you to study patience and ask God to help it grow in your life.