Patience!
Gal. 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Col. 3:12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
I heard a story about a truck driver who dropped in at an all-night restaurant in Broken Bow, Nebraska.
The waitress had just served him when three, leather-jacketed bikers came in apparently looking for a fight.
One grabbed the hamburger off his plate; another took a handful of his French fries; and the third picked up his coffee and began to drink it.
The trucker just sat there for a couple of minutes, then picked up his check, walked to the front of the room, put the check and his money on the cash register, and went out the door.
The waitress followed him to put the money in the cash register, and stood watching out the door as the big truck drove away into the night.
When she returned, one of the bikers said to her, “Well, he’s not much of a man, is he?”
She replied, “I don’t know about that, but I do know he’s not much of a truck driver. He just ran over three motorcycles out in the parking lot.”
This man knew something of patience, although his patience was short-lived.
Are you a patient person?
How about if I asked your friends, or better yet, your husband or wife or kids.
Would they describe you as patient?
We live in an impatient world, a world in which we expect fast food, fast service, instant communications, an instant breakfast, instant relief from pain, you name it, we expect it now!
We have become an impatient people.
But God makes it clear that we are to be just the opposite, we are to be patient.
Now, the Greek word that Paul uses here, is translated in two ways.
It is translated as “patience” and as “longsuffering”.
Longsuffering is the ability to control your anger and to resist the temptation to retaliate when someone hurts you or harms you in some way.
Patience is the quality which keeps your calm and controlled in the midst of some frustrating or painful circumstances.
In other words, longsuffering has to do with being patient with people,
and patience has to do with being patience with the circumstances of life.
And we are to be both!
For it’s only as we learn patience, that we can become more like God.
That we begin to experience the real joy and happiness that God can and will bring into our life.
I. Be Patient With Our Circumstances!
Being impatience with the circumstances of life cause a great deal of pain and suffering.
Impatient people are moody, depressed, angry, short tempered, irrational, etc.
We see it when we are out driving.
Someone accidently cuts in front of someone in traffic,
or someone is driving a little to slow,
or someone is not paying attention when the light turns green,
and people lose their temper, and begin to honk and yell and scream.
And even goes so far as to pull out a gun and shoot the other person.
Impatience can and often does cause a lot of pain and suffering.
I like the story of the guys car that stalled as the light turned green.
He tried and tried to get it restarted, but he couldn’t.
Behind him were a chorus of honking drivers.
Finally he got out of the car and walked back to the first driver and said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to get my car started. If you’ll go and give it a try, I’ll stay here and continue to honk your horn for you!”
We need to learn patience as we face the difficult circumstances of life.
After all, most of the circumstances are beyond our ability to change.
We can’t make the traffic go away.
We can’t make people drive safely.
We just have to realize, that traffic is going to be bad at times, that some people are going to drive like idiots, and not let it get to us.
We have to be patient!
II Be Patient With Our Problems!
We also need patient as we face the problems of life that come our way.
Two disillusioned college presidents were discussing what they’d do if they had their lives to live over.
One said, “I’d like to run an orphanage--no parents to contend with.”
The other said, “I’d rather run a penitentiary--no alumni pressure groups.”
How about the problems of Chippie the parakeet!
His problems began when Chippie’s owner decided to clean his cage with a vacuum cleaner.
She removed the attachment from the end of the hose and stuck it in the cage.
The phone rang, and she turned to pick it up.
She’d barely said “hello” when “sssopp!” Chippie got sucked in.
The birds owner gasped, put down the phone, turned off the vacuum, and opened the bag.
There was Chippie -- still alive, but stunned.
Since the bird was covered with dust and dirt, she grabbed him and raced to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and held Chippie under the running water.
Then, realizing that Chippie was soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird owner would do ... she reached for the hair dryer and blasted the bird with hot air.
Poor Chippie never knew what hit him.
A few days after the trauma, the reporter who wrote the story contacted Chippie’s owner to see how the bird was doing.
“Well,” she replied, “Chippie doesn’t sing much anymore -- he just sits and stares.”
Vance Havner, a Baptist evangelist, related the story of an elderly lady who was greatly disturbed by her many troubles ,both real and imaginary.
Finally she was told in a kindly way by her family,
“Grandma, we’ve done all we can do for you. You’ll just have to trust God for the rest.”
A look of utter despair spread over her face as she replied,
“Oh, dear, has it come to that?”
Havner commented, “It always comes to that, so we might as well begin with that!”
And he is right!
You see, God allows the problems and troubles to come into our life for a reason.
God is trying to get our attention.
There is something that we need to learn, some area in our spiritual life that needs work.
Quite often, God is simply trying to help us to learn to trust Him more completely.
Trying to help us to grow in our faith in Him.
Why did God allow the lion and the bear to attack the flock that young David looked after?
So that David could learn to trust God.
To learn that God would help him face any danger, any threat, that came his way!
So that one day his faith would be strong enough to face a giant by the name of Goliath and defeat him, with God’s help, when everyone else was cowering in fear!
Corrie ten Boom once said, “God has no problems, only plans.”
The things that we call problems, are really God’s plans.
His plans to help us to grow and mature as a Christian.
So, when you face your next problem, ask God to give you the patience you need,
to see the lesson that God has for you in the midst of the problem.
III. Be Patient With People!
Now, we also need a great deal of patience with people.
How much pain and suffering has been caused,
how many relationships have been destroyed,
how many lives have been destroyed, because of a lack a patience?
The writer of Proverbs has some advice when it comes to patience with people.
Proverbs 14:29 says, “A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly.”
Proverbs 15:18, “A hot-tempered man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel.”
Proverbs 19:11, “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.”
There are several ways that we can learn to deal patiently with others.
1st, we need to realize that the person we are impatient with, may be dealing with some situation we are unaware of, that is causing them to act the way they are.
I heard about the man who got on an a plane that was filled with tired people.
It had been a long flight and most of the passengers were trying to settle down to a sound sleep.
However, at the back of the plane a man was holding a tiny baby, and the baby became restless and began to cry incessantly.
Unable to take it any longer, a big brawny man spoke for the rest of the group.
“Why don’t you take that baby to its mother?”
There was a moment’s pause and then came the reply.
“I’m sorry. I’m doing my best. We’re taking his mother home to be buried.”
We don’t know what is going on in the life of our disgruntled fellow employee.
We don’t know why the cashier at the store is grumpy.
We have no idea what is going on in the families in our neighborhood.
We need to be patient because they may be dealing with major problems in their lives.
2nd, we need to be patient with people, realizing that people don’t change over night!
A preacher quit the ministry after 20 years and became a funeral director.
When asked why he changed, he said: “I spent 3 years trying to straighten out John and John’s still an alcoholic, then I spent 6 months trying to straighten out Susan’s marriage and she filed for divorce, then I spent 2 ½ years trying to straighten out Bob’s drug problem and he’s still an addict. Now at the funeral home, when I straighten them out -- they stay straight!”
People don’t change over night.
Change in a persons life often comes very slowly, but if we will be patient with them, people can and will change.
I can remember when one of our neighbors back home on the farm was not a Christian.
Charlie was a great neighbor and a great friend.
He would do anything to help out a neighbor.
Besides farming, he owned and operated the local feed store, feed mill, and grain terminal.
His wife and family were active in the church, his parents and in-laws were active in the church.
But not Charlie.
I can remember my Dad talking to and inviting Charlie to church for years.
But Charlie would only come on Christmas and Easter, usually because his kids were in some special program.
This went on year after year.
Then it happened.
I was already married and had my own family.
Charlie accepted Christ!
My Dad was tickled to dead.
You see, Dad had never given up on Charlie.
Very patiently, over 20 years, Dad talked to an invited Charlie to church.
Today, Charlie is actively involved in church along with his wife.
We need to be patient with people.
They can change.
Look how long it took for Moses to become the kind of person that God could work with,
that He could use to free His people from Egypt.
It took 80 years.
What patience God has.
What patience we need as we deal with the people around us.
3rd, we need to be patient in our teaching.
It’s so easy for us to become frustrated as we try to teach others in the church.
We often wonder if anyone is listening, if anyone is paying attention, if the message is really getting across.
And it’s so easy to think that we are just wasting our time and efforts, throw in the towel and quit!
A chaplain was ministering to a seriously wounded soldier.
The dying man asked the chaplain to write a letter to his former Sunday school teacher.
“Tell her I died a Christian, because of what she taught me in that class in church. The memory of her earnest pleas and the warmth of her love as she asked us to accept Jesus has stayed with me. Tell her I’ll meet her in Heaven.”
The message was sent, and some time later the chaplain received this reply:
“May God forgive me. Just last month I resigned my position, and abandoned my Sunday school pupils, because I felt my work had been fruitless. How I regret my impatience and lack of faith! I shall ask my preacher to let me go back to teaching. I have learned that when one sows for God, the reaping is both sure and blessed.”
We may think at times that no one is paying attention, no one is listening.
That we are not having any impact on the lives of those we teaching, but we are!
It may take some time, but lives will be changed, if we patiently continue to teach God’s Word!
Conclusion:
Very quickly, let me share with you how you can develop this patience in your life:
First, get a new perspective.
Ask God to help you begin to see things as He does.
Ask Him to help you see the lessons, in the problems and troubles we face in life.
Second, ask God to help you deepen your love for others.
In I Corinthians 13:4, Paul tells us that love is patient.
If we are going to patient with people, we first have to learn to love them as God does.
Third, learn to depend on God.
Patience does not come as a result of our will-power.
Patience comes as the result of an ever deepening dependance on God.
The closer we draw to God, the more we learn to depend on Him, for all that we need in this life and the life to come, and the more patient we become.