Patience - Fruit of the Spirit
July 20, 2003 AM, - Danny L. Williams
Gal. 5:22 -
Are you a patient person? Maybe we should ask your wife, or your husband or children, are you a patient person?
I really believed I was a patient person, up until this week, I guess I got tested early, My wife went out of town for three days, for a women’s conference and left me with our three girls.
Boy, Did I need patience
But, the bible say’s in Gal 5 that the fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace and Longsuffering.
And the word long suffering means patience.
Are you a patient person
Let’s take a test.
Lets look at five areas quickly,
How do you do with Interruptions? When you are busy doing something and it has to be done and some one interrupts you.
How do you react? Proverbs 10:11 The mouth of a righteous [man is] a well of life: but violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
How do you deal with irritations? Any thing bug you, irritate you? Cold food, Loud music? Long lines, traffic jams, lost keys, flat tires
How about inconveniences? schedule changes, late starts, long endings
How many of you know we live in the micro-wave generation?
Right now----
But did you know in normal life you will wait 6 months waiting on red lights.
You know if you are waiting at one of those red lights and the light turns green and you don’t move in 3 sec. The guy behind you turns red.
Let’s get more series
How do you deal with incapacities? A situation with your health, or your family,
You find you self-saying I would give all I have to change this but I do not have the capacity. There is nothing you can do about it. How do you react?
How do you deal with imponderables?
Not only is there nothing you can do about it, an (Incapacity) but you can’t even understand it.
It doesn’t make senses.
How are you doing on this checklist?
Do you know why these things come to us?
Romans 5:3 says that tribulation works patience.
See: God allows these not only to reveille impatience’s,
but God allows them to Grow patience in your life.
Now,
Understand that these irritations, are not Obstacles, but opportunities.
Lets Go deeper
1. What is patience? What King James calls Longsuffering…
It is not the ability to put up with something.
Let’s define it:
1 : the ability to bear pains, trials and calmly or without complaint.
2 : the capacity, habit, of being steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity
Listen: If you don’t learn this, you will never learn anything else.
I guarantee you if you don’t have patience in life you will be a failure.
Your not a failure until you quit, but if you quit you’re a failure.
This is vital?
So much so that
Luke 21:19 say’s ---- In your patience possess ye your souls.
Do you know what that means?
Your mind, will and emotions are subject to patience.
That’s what patience’s is for.
How do I become patience?
How can I be a full-grown Christian?
Turn with me to James
James 1: 1-5
Let me tell you something Church
suffering is purposeful: " . . .
How do we know
Vs. 3 knowing this, that the testing of your faith produces patience.
And let patience have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."
, that the testing of your faith produces patience.
Your Faith is being put to the test
The only way you will ever have patience is for your faith to be tested
Ever heard someone say your testing my Patience?
The three results of Patience
To be Perfect
To be complete
Lacking nothing
The word LET (1:4) - The key word is "let" The word let refers to a "surrendered will."
The adversity is not what stops us.
We draw up short of the objective because we refuse to allow the complete work to be done.
In other words don’t stop the Process of Patience:
How many careers ended or relationships because they ran from growing pains.
------------The process begins with suffering,
The word "perfect" means mature;
God wants you to be a full grown Christian.
There is no maturity with out patience and no patience with out a trial
Question?
Are Children patience?
Of course not,
Look at the next word
the word "complete" refers to all our component parts.
Your emotions, your will,
God’s goal is to make you perfect and complete, mature in every part,
lacking in nothing.
What a strong expression -- lacking nothing!
God wants you to be a complete person who is able to face any situation.
He wants to make you mature and complete.
And there is only one way he can get you there: through the route of suffering.
See: suffering will do one of two things:
Suffering will drive you to God,
or Suffering will drive you to despair.
See Church:
God looks at your life and mine, and he sees inadequacies and areas of conformity
So he moves, to complete us in those areas.
And he does so by bringing suffering into the very area that he wants to build.
EXAMPLES:
Suppose he sees loveless ness there.
Do you know what he will do?
He will bring you into contact with the most irritable, unloving, difficult person you ever met.
And you will learn to love them
Or suppose there is an area of defensiveness,
or maybe there is jealousy, or an unforgiving spirit.
He will bring something into your life that will reveal what you’re really like, and you’ll have almost no choice but to lay hold of the resources of Jesus Christ.
By so doing you will become mature in that area.
The Lord will go right through your life
from A to Z, and he will mature you in every area.
The only thing that impairs the process is our refusal to yield.
If we do not allow endurance to have its perfect work, if we resist and struggle against God, then he can’t achieve his desired end and we fail to mature.
You see Church, Jesus wants to make us into good wine.
So he takes the grape and squeezes it between his fingers.
And if we be come unyielding and resist his fingers, then he cannot do his work.
But if we yield, he makes us sweet wine.
The problem is that we do not like the fingers that God uses.
Do you realize that the people who are squeezing you right now, the circumstances that are pressing in on you, are the fingers of God?
They are simply extensions of the hand of God.
That is why Peter says, "Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time."
God is behind those fingers.
A person that Never learns patience is Incomplete and open to destruction
Proverbs 25:28 He that [hath] no rule over his own spirit [is like] a city [that is] broken down, [and] without walls.
The suffering you are experiencing now was determined from eternity to perfect you.
And so James says, "If you let patience have its full effect, you will be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."
That expression is so encouraging to me.
Lacking in nothing.
Gal. 6:9 - In due season we will reap if we faint not
James 1:5---
What is it God that I’m suppose to learn?
If it’s a test, pray to God to help you pass the test.
And don’t say You don’t know how to do that……….
When I was in school,
Believe me I would pray before a test…….. AMEN?
Church listen God won’t flunk you, he will just reenroll you.
IV. ASK (1:5-8) - Ask for wisdom, not a way out.
When you suffer and don’t know what to do--ask God, and he will give you wisdom.
Ask God,
Listen If you ask God, he will give you wisdom,
If you ask me the first thing I will ask is (Did you pray about it?)
In other words did you ask God?
What are we asking God for?
Wisdom
What is wisdom
Wisdom is applied knowledge; it is knowledge put to use.
Ask in Faith ------------
But most people Stop here:
Look at Hebrews 10:35 Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.
Hebrews 10:36 For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.
Hebrews 10:37 For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.
Patience is enduring Trials while trusting in the Lord
Patience is needed only as long as the affliction or trouble is present
Hebrews 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset [us], and let us run with patience (endurance) the race that is set before us,
Patience is a Permanent inner quality, of strength, which increases each time a trial is endured.
That means you get stronger the more you go through
Endure till you mature
