Perhaps The Rarest of The Graces - Certainly My Greatest Challenge

Patience is Art Within Created Daily

Working with women and children, in a  community that houses as many as 36 you are faced with many, many opportunities to practice God's level of the grace we call patience.

No one at The Kingdom Center Oxnard (www.tkcoxnard.org) believe's a simple prayer provides you with the amount of patience you will need for that day. This is true of the staff, our volunteers and the women and children in our transitional living facility (From Homelessness to Hope!). 

Perhaps you've uttered that simple prayer. It is what I call "The American's Prayer." Perhaps you have quoted it often...it goes: 

Lord, give me patience and Father I want it right now!

Patience is elevated in the Scriptures in what my friend Chuck Swindoll calls the and-so-forth section of Galatians 5. You know how we quote that passage . . . "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, and-so-forth." That lazy habit has caused a very important series of virtues to become forgotten. 

Allow me to quote Galatians 5:22-24 in its entirety:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.  And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Notice, please, the fourth on the list. Long-suffering is, in our language, patience. If we look at the original greek term used here it is MAKROTHUMIA. It is a compound word. MAKROS means "long or far," and THUMOS means "hot, anger, or wrath." Putting it together, we come up with "long-anger." You've heard the English expression, "short-tempered"? Well, I suppose we could coin an expression for patience, long-tempered. That would be pretty accurate based on what the Apostle Paul was attempting to express. 

This Greek term isn't used of patience in regard to things or events It's about people. The Christian patriarch Chrysostom defined MAKROTHUMIA as the spirit which could take revenge if it liked, but utterly refuses to do so. I find that this characteristic is a needed quality for the pastor of a flock. Listen to the Lord's counsel to me as a Christian minister:

Giving no cause for offense in anything, so that the ministry will not be discredited, but in everything commending ourselves as servants of God, in much endurance, . . . in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness. - 2 Corinthians 6:3-4, 6

If you attempt to lead people and lack this characteristic, this grace,  you are driven to frustration, irritability, and severity. The result in a workplace is that everyone works in fear of forms of retribution and begin to acclimate their own management styles to mirror those of the boss. In a home there is little peace and virtually no joy without God's amazing gift, patience. 

But there is more. 

Jesus modeled patience and through the power of the Holy Spirit we are to emulate it as His finished work on the Cross empowered us to do so.  Without that work, you cannot walk in a manner worthy of your calling (Ephesians 4:1-2; Colossians 3:12). And you are to demonstrate it wherever you go and whatever you do (1 Thessalonians 5:14). Patience, as it turns out, is a by-product of  the love we have at our disposal (1 Corinthians 13:4).

In the Bible the character Job gets the nod as the great man of patience. He didn't, I am sure, come into patience instantly. Though I do not have the verses to validate this I am dead sure that he learned typically not to bargain with God for the gift of patience. I'm pretty confident that this is a 20th/21st Century construction.  

What's funny is that the word patience doesn't appear in the book of Job - check for yourself. James 5:11, however, makes a remark about the "patience (endurance and steadfastness in other versions) of Job" and we know from that comment that he was one who was patient.

Well, all of this does beg the question as to just how did Job obtain patience? The secret is found in the original term in James 5:11, which is HUPOMONE. It means "to abide under." Ah! Job rested and endured under his personal load of suffering. He determined that he would "abide under" the weight of his mountain of affliction.  The result was patience. As the multiple coatings of self-will, phony pride, stubbornness, and resentment were worn off, patience formed - like the purifying process of raw gold. 

Job was the example of the New Testament teaching of Paul who said trials and tribulations bring about patience and perseverance within us (Romans 5:3-4).

Today, rather than view all that life tosses your way as bad luck; instead of resenting someone else's good fortune and mocking God in your trials, see how it is that God removes the dross from your life through it all. On the other side you become a powerful, faith-filled, Child of the Great King and can love as He loved and as long as He loved. 

I remain...

InHISGrip,

     ~J~