I know you’ve heard this old line, but I just can’t resist repeating it. It concerns the fellow who had realized that he was impetuous, compulsive, and impatient. And so he decided to ask the Lord to help him settle his personality problem. "Lord," he prayed. “Lord, give me the gift of patience and give it to me right now!"
Patience. Whether or not we are patient people may seem like a small matter. The question of patience may not sound like one of the truly profound spiritual issues of our time. But I hope to show you this morning that the question of patience goes to the very heart of who we are as believers. When we deal with the patience question, we will uncover layer after layer of spiritual sickness. Whether or not we achieve patience is not just a matter of how we are wired or what our temperament may be. Whether or not we achieve patience indicates how spiritually healthy we are and, deeper yet, demonstrates whether our belief in God is just on the surface or whether it goes deep.
Now some forms of patience and impatience we recognize easily. There is plenty of evidence of just ordinary impatience around. In fact, this morning my left thumb still hurts a little from an experience with impatience this week. A church member was preparing to leave the building one day, and said he was having battery trouble and didn’t think his car would start. Well, we are a full service church. We will charge you up either from the pulpit or on the street if we have to. And so I went out to try to help. No sooner had I turned my car around so that I could float over to the left and hook up the cables than some driver came roaring along Aspen Street from behind me and raced past me on that left side of the street. I gave myself a slight sprain jerking my steering wheel to avoid being hit! Plenty of evidence of ordinary impatience!
Was it one of you, by the way? I have on occasion found myself following some of you down the road, and I know that a sermon on patience is right on target!
There is plenty of impatience around, and, in fact, our culture does a lot to reward impatience. We value the get it done spirit, we affirm speed and efficiency, we speak with admiration of people who don’ t procrastinate, we are awed by managers who get lots of work out of their employees. Impatience looks a whole lot better to many of us than patience does.
But I say again, on the basis of Scripture, that the issue of patience reveals a whole lot more than our personality types or our managerial skills. The issue of patience reveals our spiritual health. It reveals whether or not our belief in God is just a set of ideas, out there someplace, or whether our belief in God is a deep and abiding trust.
In the passage we are working with all this month in Galatians, Paul tells us that one of the fruits of the Spirit is patience. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience … " But before he tells us that, he has already given us a long list of what he calls the works of the flesh. That’s in verses 19 through 21. In that list there are really four groups of issues, four clusters of human mistakes. I’m going to ask you to look with me this morning at each one of those four clusters and to see those things as symptoms of the problem of impatience.
If you’ll just stay with your open Bibles and work with me through these three verses, 19 through 21, I think we’ll be able to see that Paul is addressing, first, relational impatience; then, emotional impatience; third, sexual impatience; and finally, spiritual impatience. I see four different kinds of human failings in Paul’s list, and when you put them up against that fruit of the Spirit called patience, you will see relational impatience, emotional impatience, sexual impatience, and spiritual impatience.
I
First is relational impatience. The fruit of the Spirit is patience, the sign of a healthy spirituality is patience. But the sign of an unhealthy spiritual life is impatience in relationships. Relational impatience.
Paul’s list is very long. You know it already. We’ve dealt with it in two previous Sundays. The works of the flesh include "enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy". All of these are signs of an impatient relationship, an anxious relationship.
We find it hard to wait for each other, don’t we? We have such a vested interest in managing one another’s lives, and when we can’t get others to perform for us as we want them too, then patience is the first thing out the window. When somebody doesn’t perform to our timetables, we want to write them off : so enmities, strife, jealousy, anger all the rest.
But listen: the issue is never what other people do or don’t do for us. The issue is how we respond to them. The issue is whether we can manipulate them or trust them. And ultimately it is whether we trust God.
For example, parenting is a tough task. It’s a tough task because children insist on being children! Children are not just miniature adults, they are really children! And so to expect children to feel the same urgency we may feel about school or chores or something else is to misunderstand who that child is. To be impatient because a child does not learn or a child does not grasp our adult priorities is to miss what being a child is. How can anybody want to pick up her room when there is sunshine to be greeted and friends to see and birds to hear?! Parenting is a tough task if we allow relationship impatience to take us over and do not see things from the child’s point of view. And it becomes a spiritual issue, too, if we permit impatience, enmities, factions, strife, the whole long list, to poison our relationship with our children.
Another example. Supervising workers is a tough task. Supervising others at their work is a tough task because they bring their own wants and wishes to the job, they may not always grasp what your objectives are. If you are supervising workers and they are not working well, look first not at their flaws and faults, but at your own. Have you helped them share your vision of what the task is all about? It makes no sense to be impatient with people who work with you if you have not carefully and thoughtfully helped them buy into your priorities.
I heard this week about a pastor in one of the large churches here in the city. The word is that whenever there is a staff meeting, he berates the staff for not carrying out his wishes … that’s a telling phrase in itself, isn’t it? His wishes, not the church’s wishes. But, says one of his associates, he never tells us what his wishes are until after we are supposed to have done them!
Now that’s a spiritual sickness. That’s relational impatience. That’s the work of the flesh, enmities, strife, jealousy, and so on.
But faith says trust God to be God. Trust God to be good. Trust God to speak to the hearts of those you are trying to shape. Trust the God who did not spare His own son, but freely gave Him up for us all; will He not also freely give us all things, in His time? The fruit of such faith, the fruit of the Spirit, is patience.
II
Second, I raise the issue of emotional impatience. Emotional impatience. The unwillingness to wait until the Spirit can form us and give us the happiness and the fulfillment we want. Emotional impatience.
Look at Paul’s list. Can you find a reference to emotional impatience? Here’s what I see: "The works of the flesh are obvious … drunkenness, carousing." Drunkenness and carousing. I believe that what Paul is getting at there is emotional impatience.
Oh, oh, you say. Here comes the old-fashioned Baptist brimstone blast against alcohol. "Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t chew and above all don’t go with girls who do." Well, let me try to surprise you. You see, for me to attack alcohol and other drugs directly would be to worry about the symptom rather than the cause. It would be like complaining about cars because there are too many automobile accidents, but doing nothing about the drivers.
No, the issue is emotional impatience. Among the reasons people drink alcohol or use other drugs is that they are emotionally impatient. They want to escape a reality too painful to wait out; they want to get a buzz on in a quick and easy way, rather than waiting for authentic emotional development. We cannot or will not wait for a natural high or for time to heal our hurts, and so we escape with the cup or the syringe or the pill.
I want you to hear what I am saying. I am not condemning drinkers; I am analyzing drinking. I am not consigning drug addicts to bell; I am suggesting that they are already in a private bell, which I call emotional impatience. Emotional impatience, because it will not wait for God to heal all human hurts. Emotional impatience, because it will not give God’s Spirit time to permeate the personality and produce happiness.
I’m encouraging you today, if you have a dependency on these substances, to ask for some help. I’m urging you to focus on why you feel the need to use alcohol or some other drug. If I can help you or refer you to another counselor, believe me, I will.
Let me tell you how I’ve changed perspectives on this. I used to say, "Don’t drink". Plain and simple, don’t drink. But now I say, let’s focus on why drinking or drugs is important to you, and see if we can substitute positive behavior for negative. I’ve changed because, as a friend of mine did some studies at Johns Hopkins University, he found out that most alcoholics came out of the religious groups, like Baptists, who have been calling drinking a sin. We’ve probably colluded with the liquor industry to create alcoholism, because we did more screaming about the symptom than attempting to fulfill the need.
I am simply calling you today to face what that attraction is all about and to name it for what it is: emotional impatience.
Paul says that drunkenness and carousing are among the works of the flesh. That is, they are spiritual sickness, emotional impatience.
But faith says trust God to be God. Trust God to be good. Trust God, who wants us to be fulfilled, to give us both joy and comfort when we need it. Trust the God who did not spare His own son, but freely gave Him up for us all, will He not also freely give us all things … in His own time? The fruit of such faith, the fruit of the Spirit, is patience.
III
The third form of impatience Paul mentions is sexual impatience. Yes, you did hear that right. Sexual impatience. Don’t tell me you haven’t been sitting on the edge of the pew waiting for this one!
Did you catch it in Paul’s list? He says, "The works of the flesh are … fornication, impurity, licentiousness." Tough stuff. The very words have an ugly, uncomfortable feel to them.
Now please relax. I am not going to get clinical. Nor do I intend to breach the bounds of good taste. But some things are happening in our culture that must be addressed.
I am speaking of sexual impatience, and I am saying that it is a denial of faith. To be sexually promiscuous, to be out of bounds with our sexual identities, is, at its heart, to vote of no confidence in God.
You see, our society says, "If it feels good, do it". "If you want it, go for it." If you are attracted to each other, why wait? Marriage is only a piece of paper issued by the state, they say.
And more than that, I am now hearing the notion that not only do we not have to wait, we can’t wait. I’m hearing a kind of pop psychology that suggests that if you do not express what you feel with sexual behavior, it’s unnatural, unhealthy, and harmful.
Folks, that’s just rubbish. That is not true. Scientifically, that’s nonsense, and spiritually, it’s damaging and destructive. Doing whatever you feel like doing at the moment is the same kind of sickness that led someone to take the life of a fifteen year old he did not even know about a week ago, because, as he said, "I just felt like popping somebody".
Some sexual behavior says, "I just felt like popping somebody." Sexual behavior that says I want you, so I’ll have you, is no different. In its extreme form we call it seduction or rape. But even when it is sex between mutually consenting adults, but outside the covenanted and committed relationship sanctioned by God, it is a symptom of a spiritual sickness. It is sexual impatience, saying I will not wait until God has brought me into a legitimate union.
Now I know that what I am saying is not popular. But I assure you that every week I see the truth of what I am talking about. The work of t he flesh is fornication, impurity, licentiousness, and therefore a lot of heartache. But the fruit of the Spirit is patience, knowing that the same Creator who made us male and female and said this is good, be fruitful and multiply … knowing that that same Creator will be able to honor and bless appropriate sexual behavior.
For faith says trust God to be God. Trust God to be good. Trust the God who said to His creature, "I will make a helper fit for him", and who did so in His own time. Trust the God who did not spare His own son, but freely gave Him up for us all … will He not also freely give us all things … in His time? The fruit of such faith, the fruit of the Spirit, is patience.
IV
And finally, at the very heart of it all, there is the issue of spiritual impatience. Spiritual impatience is really fundamental to everything else I have been saying. Essentially I’ve been arguing that if we are plagued with relational impatience, emotional impatience, or even sexual impatience, every one of these at its core is a sign of spiritual impatience.
The works of the flesh, according to Paul, also include "idolatry and sorcery". Idolatry and sorcery. Sounds rather out of date, doesn’t it? Who among us is guilty of idolatry and sorcery?
Ah, but what are idolatry and sorcery but attempts to manipulate God? They are techniques that people have used in order to try to get God in their corner. We work very hard at getting God to do what we want Him to do. Idolatry and sorcery are just names for spiritual impatience. Our idols are "give me" Gods. Our sorcery is bargaining with God to make Him perform on our terms. And all of that is spiritual impatience.
Spiritua1 impatience means we do not trust God to be God. It means there is no real faith. It means that we have let anxiety take control. It means we have a spiritual sickness.
Think about how we pray. Our prayers are full of "give-mes". Our prayers are cluttered with demands for various problems to be solved and for the Lord to straighten out other people. Our prayers are permeated with anxiety.
Then after we have prayed our anxious and self-centered prayers, we get up off our knees and proceed to do whatever we wanted to do anyway. We are afflicted with spiritual impatience and we will not let God take the time to be God and deal with things in His own way. We insist on being in control. That is idolatry and sorcery. That is spiritual impatience.
But the fruit of the Spirit is patience, and it’s possible. In counseling with someone this week about an issue in his life, he said, you know, I’ve always prided myself on being able to handle anything that came along. In my family, my job, whatever it was, I thought I could handle it. And he concluded, I think rightly, that in his present circumstance, he was being forced to wait for God, forced to exercise spiritual patience. He is not alone in discovering spiritual impatience within himself. But trust can come.
Another member told me that in her long anxiety about the destructive behavior of one of her family members, she had received peace only when she could finally confess to the Lord that she was not capable of managing the problem. She turned that loved one’s problems over to God and let go of them, and that’s when comfort came. That’s dealing with spiritual impatience.
Idolatry and sorcery means we try to corner God into doing what we want Him to do and when we want Him to do it. That’s spiritual impatience.
But faith says trust God to be God. Trust God to be good. Trust the God who did not spare His own son, but freely gave Him up for us all … will He not also freely give us all things … in His time?
In your time, Lord, in your time, which will be on time, grant us the gift of patience.
