Persistently Patient Series

All our lives we are being tested on our ability to wait. Those

who fail to learn early become candidates for insanity. Nothing is

more frustrating than to have an impatient mind in a world where

you cannot control all that is necessary to fulfill all your desires and

dreams. Gutzon Borglum, who craved the Mount Rushmore

Memorial, was asked if the faces he had craved were perfect in

detail? He replied that the nose of George Washington was an inch

too long, but that it would erode to exactly the right length in about

10 thousand years. If he had been a perfectionist without patience,

he would have worried himself to death over this detail, but he had

the wisdom to accept his limitations, and leave perfection to the

patient working of nature.

Those who do not learn this lesson, and who just cannot accept

their limitations, can never become mature adults, let alone mature

Christians. Maturity is directly dependent upon one's patience.

When a baby cries the mother usually goes immediately to satisfy

it's need. As the child gets older there are longer intervals between

its wishes and the fulfillment. Parents ought to make sure of this by

design. When we say a child is spoiled it really boils down to the fact

that they have not been taught patience. Their wishes have always

been fulfilled with only short intervals between. They have not been

discipline to wait. They expect the world to jump when they say

frog. They are demanding, and they expect to get what they want

right now. They are intolerant of anyone or anything that stands

between them and fulfillment of their wishes. Immaturity is largely

a matter of impatience, just as maturity is largely a matter of

patience. Mature people have the ability to endure the

postponement of wish fulfillment.

A child is usually by nature impatient, and so also immature. If it

wants a piece of candy before supper and you say they have to wait

until after supper, there can be quite a storm stirred up in them.

The child can act as if the world has lost all meaning, and there is

nothing more to live for. They can fall on the floor, kick and cry,

and be uttering crushed by this denial. This is all a part of the

process of becoming mature. The child must deliberately be made to

endure the trials of being denied. This is the only way they can

learn that wishes are not automatically and immediately fulfilled in

life. Parents do their children a great injustice when they send them

into the world unprepared for trial and denial. They must be

taught how to suffer and endure postponement.

God is not so unwise in raising His children. James is saying to

Christians that they are to rejoice in the trials that come into their

lives, for only by these can they learn patience, and only through

patience can they ever be perfect or mature. The Christian who is

raised in a sheltered situation, and who is never allowed to wrestle

with the problems of life, and the problems of faith, and who is

never made to confront the challenge of unbelief, is not prepared to

live in the world as it is. Such Christians are forced to withdraw

from the battle into their own shell, and live in fear lest something

makes them lose their faith. This is not what a Christian is to be.

He is to be a soldier of the cross. He is to be out on the front lines

confronting problems greater than his ability to solve, for only there

will he learn to be patient, and to trust that God can work even

where the Christian's limitations make him unable to work.

To learn patience is identical with becoming Christlike. Jesus

submitted to the limitations of the flesh, and to the slow but sure

way of success through patience. Paul in Rom. 15:5 calls God the

God of patience. If God was not patient history would have ended

long ago. All through the Old Testament we see His patience and

long suffering with Israel. Even before that we see His patience with

Adam and Eve. Instead of striking them dead for their sin, He let

them continue to live, and He promised them redemption. After a

multitude of failures on the part of Israel, God persisted in being

their God, and He patiently worked and waited for the fullness of

time to send forth His Son.

Jesus was not created like Adam. He was not ready to go to work

as soon as the breathe of life was breathed into Him. He had to go

through the process of growth. He patiently worked as a carpenter

until he was 30 years old, even though at age 12 He sensed the call to