Dealing with the Tough Stuff

 

Last night we heard the testimony of a man who turned from his former religion to faith in Christ. His family disowned him. His father and other relatives severely beat him and tried to kill him. He eventually escaped his homeland to live as a refugee in another country that did not want him either. He married, had a child and lived in hiding. After several years, he obtained official refugee status, then was adopted by a church in Canada, and finally, after much suffering, he and his family are living in freedom.

This man is soft-spoken, calm, with great patience. He needs it even yet. Their child had not been outside or interacted with others. He can now enjoy the world and meet people but without knowing how to behave. He is super energetic, runs everywhere, yet cannot focus. His parents have been patient in their suffering. Now they need a different kind of patience — as parents!

God is patient, a word that is also translated LONGSUFFERING, the same Hebrew word but in English carries different connotations. Patience seems more like waiting with understanding, or able to calm quarrels and persuade kings, much like a farmer waiting for his crop to ripen, or like a parent with a growing child.

Our God is like that. The OT says, “The Lord, is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”  

The NT describes His longsuffering with verses like, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” and “I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.”

This word is also translated as longsuffering, which is also patience, but suggests that when someone is patiently holding on to a reaction rather than expressing it, they are feeling some pain or suffering in regard to whatever is happening. It is like tolerating verbal abuse from someone you respect, or waiting for deliverance from extreme illness. Longsuffering describes God as He watches His children sin and waits for their repentance, feeling pain not for Himself but for us because sin is blocking His blessings in our lives. But His patience is not about being stoic and without feeling:

“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.” (Psalm 103:8–10)

“What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction . . . .” (Romans 9:22)

When God tells me to be patient, He could mean that same kind of longsuffering. The OT prophets had to endure the disobedience of God’s people. James 5:10 says, “As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.”

This longsuffering is a fruit of the Spirit. That is, if I am filled with God’s Spirit, I will be patient, which could include a long time of enduring something unpleasant, not out of a stoic endurance but because of love . . .

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness . . . .” (Galatians 5:22)

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant . . . .” (1 Corinthians 13:4)

Some say patience is a virtue, yet patience begins with and requires a focus on others who need help, not on any ‘feel good’ that longsuffering might give me. 1 Thessalonians 5:14 says: “And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. Whatever it is called, patience and longsuffering are attitudes I cannot attain without the Lord. Colossians 1:11 calls me to be “strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” and Romans 12:12 says I need to “Rejoice in hope, be (longsuffering) in tribulation, be constant in prayer.”

James calls it the virtue of completeness and because of that, adds, “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.” (James 5:7–8) The OT offers further motivation in Proverbs 19:11 by saying, “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” I have no claim to glory unless it is to trust the Lord of glory with anything that tempts me to be impatient.

 

Patience does not grow on trees . . .

When they discover I make quilts, a few people say, “I don’t have the patience.” That remark puzzled me. A dictionary says patience means “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.” I wondered why would anyone assume that making quilts involves delay, trouble or suffering any more than other endeavors? I now realize the answer to this puzzle, but first need to review the Bible’s thoughts on PATIENCE.

In the OT, ʾerek ʾappayim is the Hebrew expression for “patience” — an idiom that translates literally as “long of nose.” It is also translated as “slow to anger” and “longsuffering” while conversely, a person “short of nose” (qebar ʾappayim) is impatient or quick-tempered. We might say “hothead” or “short-fused” but I’ve never seen a quilter display those attributes!

Most often, ʾerek ʾappayim describes a characteristic of God. The first example is Exodus 34:6: “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”

God’s patience must not be taken lightly. Because He is patient with us and does not treat us as we deserve, we do not perish. As the psalmist writes in Psalm 103:8–10, “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.”

There are a few words in the NT that are translated patience. The one that is used for God’s patience is makrothymia. My Bible dictionary says this word is rare in Greek usage as it describes resigned submission to a situation which cannot be fixed. In the Bible, this word has a more positive meaning — the makrothymia of God is his long-suffering or forbearance, standing between the extremes of wrath and grace. One definition is patient endurance of pain or unhappiness, a hint of how God sees us when we are wallowing in sin instead of walking with Him.

Walking with Him requires repentance, or to change one’s way of life as the result of a complete change of thought and attitude toward sin and righteousness. Clearly this is not going to happen without the saving work of God, a work that mysteriously calls on us to change yet that change is done by a merciful and gracious act of God. In the process, God waits. Does He wait for the right time to illuminate our hearts? Is it for us to respond? Whatever it is, we cannot use His patience as an excuse to keep on with sin . . .

Romans 2:4. “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”

Romans 9:22. “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction . . . .”

God gives an example in the life of Paul who said in 1 Timothy 1:15–16, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.”

An OT example is that God waited “patiently” for the ark to be built despite the world’s sin (see 1 Peter 3:18–20). All of Scripture shows that “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

He adds (2 Peter 3:14–16) that I am to wait for Him with diligence to be without spot or blemish and at peace. I’m to count His patience as salvation and GAZE INTO HIS GLORY with the realization that if God were not patient, I would not last long.

Back to making quilts. I’m working on several large consignments and realize that making baby quilts is much quicker to produce satisfaction. The time it takes to produce a queen-size bed quilt makes me impatient. Each day I need to tell myself that if I am not patient, the person who the quilt is for will not receive it. Patience is listed as a fruit of the Holy Spirit. I need the power of God to both start and finish this work, just as He needs patience to finish His work in me. Now I understand the people who say they have no patience. And now I have good news for them about where to find it!