How Patient or Impatient are You?

“Patience is a virtue, hardly a woman and nary a man has it” goes the ancient vintage commenting on the vagaries of our race. It is been enlarged for many generations to include all youth and workers without end. I think Will Rogers or some other phrased it so that it came out as, “I finally began to gain a little patience in my old age, then I died”. Too late to apply it, and perhaps too soon to realize it. It all fits into the story of my typical marriage. Early on, my wife dubbed me “Mr. Patience”, because I didn’t have any. It may be a disease that is communicable, because we observe it all around us. What shall we call it? Perhaps ‘patientitis’ will do. It is most noticeable when trials and tribulation at any time and distance beyond the norm move into my little world. It immediately spreads to family, friends and neighbors by actions or comments. After all, “Misery loves company”. Let’s just spread it around. Woe is me!

But do trials and tribulation have a purpose? If you have been called into the family of the Living God, and seek relief by understanding His purposes and plans as Sovereign God instead of descending into self-pity, you will seek that which He has revealed in the Scriptures. The book of James describes several things for each of us to be aware of. James is concerned with behavior. His conviction is that saving faith transforms the life and is evident in conduct. Saving faith is alive and evident in the life a person lives. So it is really about faith, but faith as it is lived out in the life. We must manifest our faith in our actions! He gives 54 imperatives in the 108 verses of the letter!

Indeed one of the most difficult areas for all of us to deal with is the matter of testing and trials, and it is at this very point that James begins his letter. What is our response to trials and pressures that test our patience? Pressure does two things: it reveals character and it produces character. What kind of character? It can only be godly character in the face of trials while we appreciate the importance of those trials in producing that godly character. There are three areas of importance in regard to these trials and are covered in verses 2-4 of James 1: our necessary response, the reason for trials, and the results of those trials.

Our response is to acknowledge that God has a purpose in all things, whether we are just irritated or overwhelmed. James’ firmness is coupled with warmth and is very personal about trials that press upon a person from the outside. Trials are not something we seek or look for, but when we fall into them we are to function biblically. He indicates that these trials will come and there is nothing we can do to avoid them. The picture is one of falling into and being surrounded by trials, which threaten to overwhelm him. These are not his fault and there is nothing that could have been done to avoid them. God brings them for the accomplishing of His purposes.

Foundational to responding properly to trials is understanding what God is accomplishing in our lives through trials:
The knowledge that God imparts in His Word tells us why we can count it all joy when we fall into trials.

The testing of our faith is like gold that is revealed by the test of fire. Trials prove our faith, revealing its true character. And not only that but it produces endurance--Endurance is a compound word, hupo (under) and meno (to stay, abide, remain). It pictures someone being under a great load and resolutely staying there. Our faith, being purified by trials, produces a staying power, which enables us to live under pressure. There is an active character about this word. It is not a passive resignation to a situation but a confident stand when surrounded with overwhelming pressures so that we do not swerve from the course. It is a tenacity of spirit while awaiting God’s time for reward or dismissal. When James says it produces endurance, he is referring to a process that is in view, not an instant accomplishment. Don’t expect to be relieved in the next hour. Some trials can last a lifetime!

Finally, we need to realize that we cannot speed up the process by ourselves that God sovereignly uses to produce endurance in each one of us. The danger is that we begin looking for a way out of the trial rather than appreciating what God is doing with the trial. James therefore gives a command to allow endurance to have its perfect work. The producing of endurance in the life is not the end but part of what God uses to accomplish His purpose in the life of the believer. The ‘perfect result’ is working on the perfect or mature character that God intends to develop in each of His children.

God is in the process of making us everything we should be as His children. He intends for us to be mature, functioning in every part of our being exactly as He intends. For this to be accomplished, trials are necessary. They build in us an endurance, a steadfastness under pressure, which will develop us as mature men in Christ. What a tragedy that trials often become the occasion for complaining and discouragement. We become obsessed with getting out from under the pressure rather than from learning to stand firm and thus becoming everything that God intends us to be. Do you have these problems too?