On Tuesday mornings at 7 a.m., I meet with a group of six men where we offer each other support, encouragement and accountability as each of us seek to live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved. Last Tuesday one of the men in the group asked us all to pray for him to be more patient. The minute he said that every head in the room began to nod. All of us said we needed those same prayers. And I remembered my lack of patience last Saturday morning.
We had arranged to do a Habitat for Humanity fund raising event with KCKL radio at Groom and Sons in Mabank. The radio station was to start their remote broadcast at 10 o’clock but we had planned to arrive a Grooms at 9 to get everything ready. Grooms had agreed to set up at tent and to stack up 120 sheets of sheet rock which we hoped to sell to donors. When I arrive a little before nine there was no tent and no sheetrock. When I went inside the store to see what was going on, I could find no one who knew anything about the event. After about 15 minutes I finally found a nice lady who agreed to call the woman which whom I had made arrangements. I went back outside and all our volunteers had arrived and immediately asked me where was the tent and sheetrock. I marched back inside and the lady said that the woman who was in charge was running a little late but was on her way. You can imagine that my patience was about exhausted by this time. I went back outside and began to rant and rave about incompetence and irresponsibility and people who didn’t follow through. Ken Beasley, my wise spiritual counselor, was listening to my tirade and walked up to me and very calmly and quietly said, “You need to chill out. It’s going to be alright!”
So when I left the group on Tuesday morning I decided that I would write a sermon on patience for today. Boy do I regret that decision.
The story is told of a young Christian who went to an older Christian for help. "Will you please pray for me that I may be more patient?" he asked. So they knelt together & the old man began to pray. "Lord, send this young man tribulation in the morning; send him tribulation in the afternoon; send this young man..." At that point the young Christian blurted out, "No, no, I didn’t ask you to pray for tribulation. I wanted you to pray for patience." "Ah," responded the wise old Christian, "it’s through tribulation that we learn patience." When we ask God to help us be more patient, it seems God sends us opportunities to be more patient.
That’s certainly what happened to me this week after I foolishly decided to write a sermon on patience. When I got to church after my group that Tuesday morning, the computer crashed. Nothing I could do resurrected it. And Paul May wasn’t home. Later, I decided to call the phone company to see if we could get DSL service here at the church. They said no. Then they said yes. Two days later when the modem they had promised to send me still had not arrived, they said no again. Our copy machine has been out of service for almost three weeks. The company we have used for years tried to fix it the first week but failed. Since then they have not returned my daily calls. Even though I left a message on their voice mail warning them that they would spend an extra year in hell for every week they left the church without a computer. Maybe that is why they didn’t return my calls. They finally called Friday morning when I was working at the Habitat house. They agreed to come to fix it later that morning. I ran home, took a shower to hurry over to the church so they would not have the excuse that they were there and I was not. At 3:30 that afternoon, they showed up. But they have to come back Monday because the part they brought to fix it was broken when they took it out of the box. And did I mentioned that our kitchen sink at home decided to stop up? “Lord, give me patience. And give it to me NOW!”
I do a lot of things better than I do patience. It ranks right up there with forgiveness on my list of potential growth areas. One definition of patience certainly confirms my inadequacy. If you define patience as the ability to accept delay or disappointment graciously, I would have to plead not guilty. Just check me out on Christmas morning when the rest of the family is dragging their feet and I am ready to see what Santa brought me. It is not a pretty sight.
My family would probably say I just haven’t ever grown up. Still a big baby in the patience arena. When a baby wakes up in the middle of the night & is hungry, or its diaper is wet, it doesn’t lie there & think, "I know Mom & Dad are tired. So I’ll just wait until a more convenient time to let them know that I need something to eat or my diaper changed." No! That baby cries impatiently & continues to cry until it receives the attention it demands. We children aren’t very patient. That’s one of the reasons it is so much fun to travel with a child.
Like the little 4-year-old boy who was traveling with his mother & constantly asking the same questions over & over again? "Are we there yet? How much further? When are we going to get there?” Finally, his mother’s patience ran out and she yelled, "We still have 90 more miles to go. So don’t ask me again when we’re going to get there." Well, the boy was wisely silent for a long time. Then he timidly asked, "Mom, will I still be four years old when we get there?"
No, you won’t be finding my picture in the encyclopedia beside Job under the heading of “patient”. Maybe under “Impatient.” But you know I discovered that Job’s patience wasn’t exactly what it was cracked up to be either. I went back and read the book of Job this week to learn how he did it. I don’t know who his spin doctor was but all of us have heard of the “patience of Job.” Yet in the forty two chapters which make up the book of Job, his patience runs out in chapter three and he spends most of the rest of the book ranting and raving at his friends and at God. If Job’s behavior is the standard for patience, I might not be doing so bad after all.
Kind of like that truck driver who sat down to eat at an all-night restaurant. The waitress had just served him his meal when three guys riding Harley’s showed up and swaggered into the diner. One grabbed the man’s hamburger; another took a fistful of his French Fries; and the third picked up his coffee and began to drink it. The trucker responded with great patience. He calmly got up from the table, picked up his check, walked to the front of the restaurant, put his money on the cash register, and headed out the door.
The waitress watched as the big truck drove off into the night.
When she returned, one of the bikers said to her, “He wasn’t much of a man, was he?” To which she replied, “He’s not much of a truck driver either. He just ran over three motorcycles on his way out of the parking lot.” I guess you’d call that “the don’t get mad, get even” variety of patience. Maybe that’s why Ulrike Ruffert said that “Patience is the ability to put up with people you’d like to put down.”
But I have a feeling that is not exactly what the author of Proverbs meant when he wrote “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.” (Proverbs 19:11) Not what Paul had in mind when he encouraged the people who were the church in Thessalonica to “be patient with everyone.” 1 Thessalonians 5: 14) Or when he wrote those famous words, “Love is patient and kind…” in the thirteenth chapter in his first letter to the people who were the church in Corinth. You see those of us who claim Jesus as our Savior and our Lord have been commanded to love ourselves and each other just like God has loved us. And God’s love is nothing if it is not patient.
From the earliest chapters of the Hebrew Scriptures we read of God’s patience with men and women over and over again. I found it interesting to learn that the man who first translated the Bible into English had to come up with a new word for this attribute of God. In 1535 when Miles Coverdale translated the Bible he had to invent the word “longsuffering” to convey the meaning of the Hebrew and the Greek works for God’s unlimited patience. It was such a good rendering that the translators of the King James Version used the same word in 1611. A patient person has the ability to suffer for a long time. So Exodus 34:6 reads this way: “The LORD God is merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth … .”
And the 86th psalm says “But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, gracious, long suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth.” And Cloverdale translated the fourth verse of the 13th chapter of I Corinthians, not “love is patient,” but “charity suffereth long.” I "kinda" like that. It gives me such of feeling of self righteousness. I can certainly identify with suffering long when I have to be patient with someone or something. Like the guy whose car quit just as the light turned green right in the middle of four lanes of rush hour traffic. All his efforts to start the engine failed. You know what happened. While he was trying frantically to start the car, a hundred other cars behind him were laying on their horns. In spite of his best efforts the car wouldn’t start through the entire time the light was green. The people behind him never slacked off the horn. When the light finally turned red, he patiently got out of his car and walked back to the driver right behind him who had been laying on the horn even though he could hear the man trying to start the engine. He politely said to the man, "I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to get my car started. Would you mind trying to start my car and I’ll sit in your seat and blow the horn for you." Patience as “long suffering.” That makes sense doesn’t it.
Later translators were a little more specific about the behavior of the patient person under stress like that. Instead of “long suffering,” the Revised Standard version says that God is “slow to anger.” Psalm 86:15 “But you, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faith-fulness.” Biblical scholars tell us that the word for “patience” literally means “wrath that is put far away.” If an impatient person can be described a one who has a short fuse and a long memory, a patient person would have a long fuse and a short memory. That’s the kind of person Proverbs 14:9 is talking about:
NRSV: Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but one who has a hasty temper exalts folly.
The Message: Slowness to anger makes for deep understanding; a quick-tempered person stockpiles stupidity.
Good News Translation: If you stay calm, you are wise, but if you have a quick temper, you only show how stupid you are.
Contemporary English Version: It’s smart to be patient, but it’s stupid to lose your temper.
A man noticed a lady with a long fuse in the grocery store with her four year-old in her cart. The child asked for cookies. Her mother said no. The little girl began to cry loudly. The mother patiently said, "Now Missy, we’re half way done, it won’t be long." The same thing happened in the candy aisle. This time the little girl kicked and screamed. The mother said, "There, there, Missy, only two more aisles and then we’ll be done." At the checkout counter, the child reached for the gum. When her mom said no she began to scream louder than ever. The mother said patiently, "Missy, we’ll be through this checkout stand in five minutes and then we can go home and both have a nice nap." The man followed them out to the parking lot and complimented the woman. "I couldn’t help noticing how patient you were with little Missy." The mother replied, "Thank you, but, my little girl is Francine... Uh, I’m Missy."
We all know that patience is a wonderful virtue. There are lots of good reasons to be patient. The medical field has determined that all us impatient, Type A personalities are more prone to heart attacks, strokes and ulcers. That’s why one philosopher wrote: “It is better to be patient than to be a patient.” It’s not a new idea. Cato the Elder, a Roman Statesman who lived a century before Jesus wrote: “A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.” But how do we get this sort of attitude. Where does patience come from?
Our text for this morning explains that. The Apostle Paul writes “11We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul--not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy…” Patience is the strength to endure the unendurable and it is a gift that God gives. Interesting. It’s not a discipline that each individual must develop, but “a gift that God gives.” Not something I must work at, but a gift. So if I have no patience, it’s God’s fault. God hasn’t given me patience so I am impatient. WRONG! Anyone who has received the gift of God’s gracious love has also been given patience. It is one of the fruits of the Spirit given to each one who receives the gracious love of God when they accept Jesus as their Savior and their Lord. Remember how Paul puts it in the fifth chapter of Galatians. “22… the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control.”
I think of this gift like one of those Christmas presents full of surprises. You know the feeling. It is the biggest present under the tree and it has your name on it. You have picked it up and shaken it and it is real heavy. What could it be? Who got it for you? You just can’t wait to open it. And when you finally tear off the beautiful paper and look inside you find another beautifully wrapped present. And you open that one to find another…and another….and another.
In truth, the fruits of the spirit are a Christmas present. God gave each of us this incredible gift on the first Christmas in the form of a tiny baby born in a manger. And when we open this very first Christmas present we first of all unwrapped God’s amazing grace, the love of God for each of us. A love that forgives our every sin, a love that is steadfast, that can never be turned away. A love that says, “You are my whole complete and perfect child and I will always treasure you. You don’t have to do anything to earn my love and there is nothing you can ever do that would make me withhold my love. I will always be with you, supporting and encouraging you, giving you patience, the strength to endure the unendurable.”
And when you open that most wonderful gift, you discover another one: the gift of joy. A warm feeling of fullness deep within your heart that makes you want to sing and dance and show everyone what God got you for Christmas. And when you open the gift of joy, you discover the gift of peace, the peace that passes understanding. The peace that comes when you realize you don’t have to try to earn God’s love. You don’t have to be perfect or successful or smart and rich or famous. You don’t have to be better than someone else. You don’t have to struggle and strain and work to be good enough to deserve God’s love. What an incredible relief that is. (SIGH) So amazing that it makes you sigh. You can relax, take it easy, chill out.
And with that gift of peace opened, the next package contains “patience.” Because the burden has been lifted from your shoulders, you no longer have to feel responsible for making everything right. You can do your part and let go and let God take care of the rest. And you know God will. And if things don’t go perfectly, that’s okay too. Not your problem. In the end, everything is in the hands of the one who has given you the gifts of love and joy and peace and patience.
And with this gift of patience comes your ability to be kind to others, to be understanding of others, to be forgiving of others….to give them the same gifts you have received. It’s like discovering a bunch of tiny little boxes so many that you have enough to give away. And when you start giving them away, there is even more in your box…even more joy for you, and even more little boxes of kindness to share with others. Boxes of goodness, and gentleness. And those around you learn that they can trust you to be faithful because of the gift of self control that you unwrap as well.
That gift of self control is there because you are no longer afraid that you aren’t good enough. You no longer feel the pressure of meeting other people’s expectations, or the expectations of that judgmental demon in your own head. And you no longer have to fear that you’ll be abandoned or left alone. Because the one who sent you that first Christmas present is “slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”
So how would my Saturday morning and the Saturday morning of those around me have been different if I had opened the gifts God had given me? Well, I would have started that day by opening that enormous present and remembering how much the one whom Jesus called “Abba,” “Papa,” loves me. I would have spoken to God and said “Thank you for your gracious generosity. Thank you for the chance to try again to love as you have loved me. I know that this day may have frustrations in store for me, but I also know that nothing can separate me from your love….nothing except my own forgetting. Nothing except my own fears. Help me to remember that all I have to do is hold your hand, do what I can do and let you take care of the rest. (SIGH) Thank you for the peace that comes to my heart when I open your gift.” Had I started the day that way, I would not have been so uptight, so impatient. Ken would not have had to tell me to “chill out!” After all, even on that day, when things did not start off the way I thought they should have, we had a very successful fund raiser. We sold all 120 sheets of sheet rock and had over $350 dollars to apply toward siding.
An 18th century Englishman named Edmund Burke observed: “It is very strange that our years teach us patience - that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.” Truth is, if we open the gifts God has prepared for us each day, we don’t have to wait. We can be patience with ourselves and others today. We would discover that God has indeed answered our prayer. “Give me patience, and give it to me NOW!” I’m going to ask Emily and Abbey to help me start off my days that way, by giving me the best news I can ever hear. Ladies, would you please tell your formerly impatient father, “Hey, Dad, you don’t have to wait! Go ahead and open your gifts!”
