(This sermon was preached at Epworth Chapel, Baltimore on 11/25 and is the sixth in a 10-part series on the fruit of the Spirit)
Galatians 5:22-23; Isaiah 40:28-31
“… the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
Of all the spiritual fruit – the spiritual virtues - that we can aspire to in life, I believe that patience is one of the most difficult to achieve. If there is one thing that I admire the most about my parents (both my mother and my father) – now that I am grown - it is their patience. If I could emulate one thing about them (reproduce it in my own life), it would be their patience.
Certainly, a parent’s patience is the epitome of the kind of patience that we would want to develop in our own lives, and exhibit toward each other. In many respects, patience is the lynch-pen and the benchmark of spiritual maturity. The grown-up Christian is the one who demonstrates patience in the most hurried of situations in life. Mature is the person who can tarry, and wait for God’s change to come in her or his life.
Now, indeed learning to be patient is not easy – it’s difficult – even for the Christian. We are living in a world that is becoming more and more hurried. The hustle and bustle of life perpetually threatens to consume us. People everywhere are in a hurry.
Look at what goes on around us on a daily basis. Rush hour seems to be a perpetual reality of our age. Bumper-to-bumper traffic seems to be everywhere, with everybody is in a hurry to get to their destination. The dinner rush seems constant at most restaurants, where everybody is in a hurry to receive their meal, and if the waiter or waitress doesn’t bring our food in a hurry, we complain and hold back on the tip. Deadlines on the job seem to never go away, the work never stops, and the report was always due yesterday.
We are in a hurry. We microwave our food. We consume much too much fast food as a way of life. We drive through the bank… use the one-our dry cleaner, and too often shop at the convenience store.
We’re in a hurry. We want all of life, and we want it now. .. the house… the new car… the latest phone and computer… we are in a hurry.
Ours is similar to the societal context in which the apostle Paul writes to the Galatian church, and shares with them that one of the fruit of the Spirit is patience. We recall that Paul’s overall concern in this part of his letter to the Galatian church is to share some of the specific characteristics – some of the fruit - that would become evident in their lives as they walked in the Spirit of Christ.
Paul said that the “fruit the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” And here, we are reminded that the fourth of the fruit of the Spirit is patience.
Patience. Now mind you, Paul was talking about patience within the context of some people who had heard about some other people who had been patient in the past:
*They had heard about Sarah, Abraham’s wife – who was ninety years old and barren, as she had not yet bore the child that God had promised. As Sarah waited on the Lord, God blessed her with a son named Isaac in her old age.
* They had heard about the three Hebrew boys – Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who were placed in the midst of a fiery furnace one day. They could have run, and given in to their troubles. But the three Hebrew boys decided to hang in there and wait on God. And the Lord showed up and delivered them from the fiery furnace.
* They had heard about Jesus who bore a cup in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus asked God, his father, to take the cup – the burden from him. But in the midst of his burden, the Lord waited and prayed.
And the questions for us are so how might we attain to such patience in our lives? And once we have attained it, how do we continue to live it out on a daily basis? I want to suggest that each of us might look at three dimensions of patience as we seek to become more patient in our own lives.
First, patience manifests itself through persistent prayer. The psalmist wrote in Psalm 40:1 that I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined to me and heard my cry.”
It is apparent here that the psalmist was not just waiting, but he was waiting and praying. Jesus told his disciples in Mark 14:38 to “watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation.”
Too many people are pretty good at watching, but they have not learned how to pray while they watch. We may pretty good at waiting, but in order for our waiting to really start to become effective in our lives we must also pray.
Wise is the person who learns how to watch and pray… pray while you wait on the Lord to bless your life. Pray trusting and believing that your change is about to come. Pray even when it doesn’t seem that God is listening, trusting even as difficult as the wait for us might be, that God is always an on-time God. Pray while you wait.
Second, patience manifests itself through us being content with where we are. We need to be content with where God has us in life right now. The apostle Paul wrote to the Philippian church (4:11), “I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty.”
In other words, Paul was saying, ‘Whatever state I am in, I have learned to be content.” I won’t complain. I’ve learned to make the best of whatever the situation it is in which I find myself - whether it be good or bad – whether I am up or down. I’ve learned how to wait on the Lord, and make the best of whatever situation I am now in, for I know that God is the God of the more – and that as good or bad as things might be right now, the better and the best is yet to come. So I’m going to be content while I wait on the Lord.
Third, patience ultimately manifests itself in expecting God to do something great in your life. I am reminded of Job, who many consider the most patient person in the history of the world. Job had it all… but one day he lost everything he had. Job lost his family, he lost his possessions, and he lost his friends. His relationship with God was even broken and tattered.
Job found himself in the midst of trouble. What did he do? Job was a faithful man, so he did not sit around having a pity party while he waited for a change to come in his life. The word says that Job went searching after God – expecting God to bless his life.
Job said, “O that I might find God, O that I might come into the presence of the Lord.” Job looked to the east, and he looked to the west, but he could not find God. But Job kept expecting God to bless his life. And as Job waited and kept searching for God, the Lord blessed him.
Wait and be patient expecting God to bless.
This is what Isaiah was trying to help us with when he wrote in Isaiah the 49th chapter in verses 29-31:
“God gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and grow weary,
And even the young will fall exhausted;
But they that wait on the Lord (those who are patient)
Shall renew their strength,
They shall mount on with wings as eagles,
They shall run, and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.
The fruit of the Spirit is patience. The word today is to be patient, trusting God. Be patient – praying while you wait, and being content where you are, and expecting that God will show up and do great things in your life.
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