Patience

2 Peter 3:15 NIV

 Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation…

What Is It You Really Need?

There is one day that every parent dreads from the moment a child is born.  It is more feared than the first discussion on “the birds and the bees”, produces greater anxiety than the anticipation of going into debt to pay for college tuition and makes parents cringe more than the start of music lessons.  It is that first day a parent starts teaching her child how to drive.  It is then that all those times when you caused your parent grief comes back to haunt you.  One friend of mine told me that her sister took her out to learn how to drive using her mom’s car without permission before she got a permit and she sideswiped a telephone pole and broke off the mirror.  They quietly returned the car to its parking spot and it took them thirty years before they had the courage to tell their mom what they did.  My dad broke into a sweat the day he taught me how to drive and his face was white as a sheet when we got finished.  The parent who patiently endures this traumatizing day of reckoning is superhuman.  You find out quickly just what sort of placidity you actually have when you sit in the passenger seat the first time your teenager pulls out of the driveway and careens off into traffic.  I am certain even the Buddha screamed “watch out!” the first time he took his daughter driving.

On a scale of 1-10, what level of patience do you maintain when you are driving…when you are cooking for your mother-in-law…when someone makes you late…when your children start fighting…when your family members leave the dishes in the sink for you to wash…when you spend an hour teaching a co-worker how to do something and you realize she hasn’t paid attention to you…when the sales clerk forgets to put in your bag the one item you went to the store to get…when the person sitting next to you on the metro sneezes in your face…when you lose your keys…when your sister loses your keys…when someone eats the food you saved in the refrigerator for lunch…  Do others see you as patient or easily perturbed?  Is patience one of your strengths or a weakness of yours? 

The New Testament of the Bible insists on patience as a critical component of a healthy personality.  Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. (Colossians 3:12 NIV)  Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. (Ephesians 4:2 NIV)  In the Old Testament, patience is the sign of one having wisdom.  A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly. (Proverbs 14:29 NIV)  The first characteristic of love is patience.  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. (1 Corinthians 13:4 NIV)

Patience does not stand alone as a virtue though.  It requires resistance; a force acting against it to bring it to life.  To know you have patience, you must face something trying, something that pushes you.  Patience does not come into existence until it goes up against an adversary.  When you are humiliated or ignored or mistreated or disappointed or kept from asserting your will then there can be patience but otherwise it is just an idea, a concept or an idealization grounded in myth.  You can say you are patient but until you “come up against it”, you don’t really know.

The ancient account of Job and his troubles is a classic example of someone who really did come up against it.  What makes the documentation of his personal experience so crucial for our study of patience is the clear delineation of what we all face in a world dominated by spiritual forces that are too often ignored or discounted.  The Bible insists that there is a literal spiritual being that has great power in this universe.  Satan is not a metaphor for evil; Satan is the force behind evil.  What we learn from the documentation found in Job is that Satan has access to God and can go to Him and ask permission to try and wreck people.  In Job’s case, Satan was given permission to attack Job physically and psychologically.  Satan killed Job’s children, ruined him financially and then made him endure terrible sores that were painful and debilitating.  The terrible suffering of Job continued until God finally put a halt to it.

There is no patience without suffering of some sort, whether it is psychological or physical.  Some suffering we bring on ourselves but clearly there is suffering that Satan has been given permission to inflict on us.  When that suffering hits us, we can either be patient or not. It is up to us.  Do we think the same sort of activity is happening today as it did in Job’s case?  Of course it is.  Satan is making life hard on us, putting us in situations that make it painful and distressing.  But we can stand up against them with patience.  Patience is the capacity to weather the storm, to be bent under the force of the wind but not broken by it.  The New Testament term translated patience is literally “long soul” or “long to passion”.  In other words, one who is patient does not let the passions take over the personality.  Wisdom remains in control.

There are two levels of patience.  The first is just what you can deal with in your own strength.  Some have more patience than others because of the experiences they have had, the role models they emulate and just the basic make-up of how they are put together.  There is a limit though to the patience any of us have and when Satan pushes us too far, we fall apart.  We get angry, we become depressed, we isolate ourselves, we use alcohol or drugs to mask the pain, we strike out in revenge, we engage in sexual immorality or perversion, we abandon our careers, those who love us and/or the faith we once had.  When our patience is shattered, we come apart in some way that hurts us or others.

The Bible tells us that one of the psychological benefits of having God a part of you is that He produces in you patience.  But the fruit of the Spirit is … patience... (Galatians 5:22-23 NIV)  This means there is a certain level of patience that only God can produce; different than what you will ever naturally possess.  It is supernatural patience that belongs to God that you can have.  His patience, which is available to you is the same patience that enabled Him to endure the Cross without lashing out at those mocking Him, that allowed Him to speak kindly to the thief on the cross who had before ridiculed Him, the same patience that upheld Him when He faced His death.

Only the Holy Spirit can give you God’s patience so that you aren’t rattled by the sorts of things that shatter the best of human beings.  I once had a friend who was wrecked by the fire that ruined her house and she took out her anger on her husband.  Her anger destroyed his affection for her and he left his wife for another woman.  Some things are just too big for you and only God can see you through them.  Go to Christ right now if you wish and ask Him to anoint you with the Holy Spirit.  He will pour His patience into you if you give yourself over to Him.  The great storms will not overwhelm you; the earth shattering quakes that topple others will not make you fall.  When Christ died to take your sin from you, He said that you could have the Holy Spirit as a part of you.  When our Lord bought you out of your slavery to sin and the forces of evil in this world, He did so that you would not be alone to face all this.  He comes to you now.  Invite Him to join you.  Ask for the Holy Spirit to make His home in you.  Have God’s patience; let the strength of His personality get you through every trial and difficulty you face both today…and tomorrow.

Passions

Hosea 7:6 NIV

Their hearts are like an oven; they approach him with intrigue.  Their passion smolders all night; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

What Is The Source Of Your Passion?

A few weeks ago I was coming out of the church parking lot and traffic on my side of the road was packed.  Two lanes merge into one right at the driveway of the parking lot and no one was moving due to the stop light at the cross street on the next block.  Normally I just inch into the traffic and drivers let me through.  After all, they aren’t going anywhere and I am not trying to get ahead of them.  I just want to cross into the lane going the other way.  As I began to work my way into the traffic, the first car waved for me to come through and so I started but then all of a sudden, the driver in the car in the second lane quickly lurched forward to block my way through her lane.  At first I could not believe what I had just seen.  Why did she do that?  What good did it do her to not let me through?  Was she crazy?  I did not recognize her and when I stared into her head, she would not look my way.  There I sat in my little car, blocking one lane of traffic but unable to let that lane move forward because I was prevented from going on into the other side of the road.  As soon as the traffic light turned green and the woman was able to move forward and clear the way for me, I wondered at my temper.  What had happened to it?  Why didn’t I get mad at the woman for being rude to me?  More importantly, what if I did get angry and try to retaliate.  What would I have done?

Unless you are a robot, you have passion.  It could be blocked or stymied by your will but you have access to passion, a treasure trove of it.  What you do about your passion is up to you.  It can be poisoned by sin and become a source of tremendous turmoil for you or it can be transformed by God into a valuable part of your personality.  Many are afraid of the passion they possess and try to keep it in check by either fighting against it or attempting to dismantle it.  Others are controlled by their passions and like Legion with his many demons, find themselves taken captive by their passions and made a slave of them.  Perhaps you have known people who showed no emotions and although they seem passionless, it is more likely that they live in constant fear of being dominated by passions that scare them.  Shows like Star Trek romanticize the passionless person and yet that is a mistake.  Passion is a critical part of who we are and how we have been made.  To discount or discredit your passion is like rejecting your lungs or hating your blood vessels.  What we need is an approach to our passions that is not only reasonable but even beneficial.  That is what we shall consider today.

Passions can be defined psychologically as the ruling forces within the heart that drive our actions. They are the powerhouse motors we possess that get us going.  They push us into actions that our will alone can’t initiate.  Without passion we live and act mechanically; just going through the motions of daily life without ever leaving our comfort zone.  Biblically, the heart is the center of who we are.  It is the root of our thinking, our will and our passions.  Sometimes in the Old Testament a term which in the Hebrew is translated kidneys or “reins” is used but it is essentially the same as the heart.  When you read the term heart in the Bible, don’t think of it as the pumping muscle in your chest but as the idea of you and who you are internally.  The heart however, which is the source of the passions, is broken by sin.  As we see in Jeremiah 17: 9, The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it? (NIV)

The question of course is rhetorical.  Our hearts are a great mystery to us and nearly unfathomable.  Sin has corrupted them to the core and whether it is the damage brought about by the sins we commit or the sins committed against us, they are a wreck of what God intended them to be.  Each of us is stymied by the heart we have.  We may change a certain behavior or alter some habits, but in the end, there are depths to the heart that make a mess of our “good intentions”.  Paul, in speaking of the heart and its warping of passion said, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7: 15 NIV)  This a universal experience.  Whether you are from Asia or Africa or Australia, you have acted in ways that were unfathomable to you and maybe even embarrassing.  Why is that?  It is because your heart is warped and unpredictable.

Jesus has a strong take on how damaged your heart is.  For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. (Matthew 15:19 NIV)   You cannot count on a heart that is so unstable and wrecked.  Any sin imaginable can come out of you and without warning.  Out of this pot come your passions; unpredictable and unreliable.  It is possible though to not be dominated by the passions coming out of your sin damaged and corrupted heart.  The Bible says, So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. (Galatians 5:16 NIV) “Desires” is nothing more than your passions as they flow out of the sin percolating in your heart.  There is nothing laughable about what is possible with a heart such as the one you and I possess.  The worst that humanity has to offer is there in your heart and my heart and the passions can drive them out of us like dynamite.

Before we have been born again with Christ living through us, all we have to rein in our corrupted passions is the conscience.  Depending on how strong or weak our conscience is morally and how developed it is will determine what our passions drive us to do.  Of course, as is hinted in Romans 7, the law also can constrain our passions.  But when we have been transformed by the power of Christ crucified into Christians, there is a new force working in us.  For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. (Galatians 5:17 NIV)  The Holy Spirit wages war with the corruption in the heart and this can have tremendous psychological ramifications.

Some of the most anxious and depressed individuals are often Christians who struggle to accept the changes God wants to make in them.  Anger and stress manifest themselves in believers who don’t want Christ to change everything in the heart.  Galatians 5:19-21 provides an ugly picture of what comes out of the heart that is not converted fully by Christ.  The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. (NIV)  The only curb other than conscience against such behavior is the fear of being caught for doing something bad.  We can hold back some of this ugliness but eventually anything we see in this list of fruit produced by corrupted passions can come out of us without warning.  We find we are angry or bitter or jealous and we say that isn’t us but it is us.  All of this is floating about in the heart unchanged by the work of Christ.  This is the fruit of passion developed in a sin corrupted heart.

We discover in Galatians 5: 22 what God can do with our passions when He remakes them.  They can produce a lifestyle straight out of heaven.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23 NIV)  How can our passion begin to develop these qualities?  Romans 5: 5 gives us a hint at the mechanism God utilizes for the transformation of our passions.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (NIV)  How can the passion in your heart be changed into something that generates the goodness of God in you?  It can only happen when God’s own love is poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit. 

Heart

Romans 5:5 NIV

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

What Is The State Of Your Heart?

You often hear people say, “Just follow your heart!”  But what if your heart isn’t right, if it isn’t operating properly?  The other day I got angry with one of the members of my family and I said some things I shouldn’t have said, some harsh things, some critical things.  Now, at the time, I was speaking from my heart.  It didn’t come from our neighbor’s heart or from President Obama’s heart or from Billy Graham’s heart.  It came from my heart and I am glad it wasn’t videotaped and posted on YouTube.  There is nothing about my outburst that I am proud to have produced and yet I have to admit it came from my heart, it came from me.  Now whenever someone issues an apology and they say, “It wasn’t me, that’s not who I am”, that person is lying.  It came from within that person and just like my anger came out of me and my mean words came out of me, whatever we say or do is from within us, not some pseudo self.  Our problem and it is a perplexing problem when something comes from out of us that we don’t like is that the confusion we have is due to our lack of understanding of our heart…we don’t know what is actually in our own heart.

If I were to ask you what the state of your heart is, what would you say?  Would you describe it as contented or frustrated?  Could it be said that your heart is full of joy or miserable?  Is it somewhat confused, disturbed, or pleased?  Would you speak of your heart as a mixture of a number of characteristics, some of which please you and others a bit troubling?  Your heart is your own; it is for better or worse you and if we are to know who we are, we must take a look at the heart we have.

Jesus made a disturbing statement about the heart that needs to be considered.  He said, “For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.” (Mark 7:21-22 NIV)  There is a lot of filth in the list and it would be humiliating if others could see this in us.  What must be noted is that we all have within our hearts the building blocks for the most grotesque forms of evil.  Jesus understood human personality better than any of us and He said that our hearts contain qualities we have at one time or another disregarded, dismissed or defended.  It seems if Jesus is right, that each human heart is corrupted and capable of generating tremendous amounts of evil.  Yet few of us are monsters so what is the problem?  The New Testament has some interesting insight into the heart and it is worth examining.

In Acts 8: 21, the Apostle Peter, aggravated that a new Christian who had been a pagan magician wanted to buy from Peter the ability to lay hands on others and give them the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, rebuked the man strongly, "May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money!  You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God.” (Acts 8:20-21 NIV)  It is within the heart that corruption, greed and the lust for power are developed and nurtured.  The heart is the factory that produces every sin that comes out of us.  Peter did not concern himself with the act on the man’s part of trying to buy the power of the Holy Spirit; the attempt to gain by human effort the might of the Holy Spirit was to Peter the sign of the real issue which was the corruption of the man’s heart.  That was where Peter directed his stern rebuke.

We gain tremendous insight from Acts 5:3 and the strange decision of Ananias and Sapphira to sell their land and then pretend that they were giving the full proceeds of the sale to the Church when in fact they were holding part back.  The Apostle Peter’s rebuke of Ananias provides us with critical information regarding the heart.  Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? (Acts 5:3 NIV)  Our question was in regard to how the Christian’s heart can be filled with corruption and not be right with God and we see that the answer is simple.  Satan can fill the heart even when the heart has the Holy Spirit living within it.  We may not understand how this might be possible, that God and Satan can coexist within the human heart but it is clear from this verse that it happens.  Now, did Ananias intentionally give Satan influence over his heart or believe that was happening?  Probably not!  He most likely believed everything was well in his life and that he made a rational and intelligent decision to claim he had donated all the proceeds of the sale of his land to the Church when in fact he had not.  He may have not given a moment’s thought to the possibility that Satan had “filled” his heart.  Yet that is precisely what the Scripture indicates took place.   A human heart that had the Holy Spirit was filled by Satan.

Jesus did something, as described in John 20: 22, that is often overlooked.  He gave to the disciples the gift of having the Holy Spirit but before He became a part of them, they were told to receive the Holy Spirit.  Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."  And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit.”  (John 20:21-22 NIV)  What is not realized is that this was a command of Jesus, not a statement on His part of what He had done.  The disciples had to decide to receive the Holy Spirit and Jesus told them to do it.  The point is that we are not machines that God reprograms by dumping the Holy Spirit into us.  We decide if we will receive or take into ourselves the Holy Spirit.  He is not pushed into us and that implies we have power to decide how much of an impact we will let the Holy Spirit have within us.  This is a profound consideration.  If both the Holy Spirit and Satan can be a part of our hearts, it is we who decide how much influence either has in our hearts.  Our Lord says, “Receive the Holy Spirit”.  Should we?  Do we?

The Bible tells us what it means for the heart when the Holy Spirit is received and allowed to change it.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.  Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. (Galatians 5:22-24 NIV)  Remember that within the heart is what Jesus described: greed, malice, lewdness, deceit, folly!  What happens when the Holy Spirit begins to produce within the heart joy, peace patience and self-control?  Do the other parts of the heart just disappear? We must never forget what exactly takes place through the Cross of Jesus Christ.  Not only does Jesus through His death eliminate the ability of Sin to condemn us before God, the life of Christ resurrected through the Holy Spirit also begins to rework the heart so that we develop the characteristics of God within the heart.  Satan cannot control the heart if the Holy Spirit is ruling there but if the Holy Spirit is not received, then Satan can do as he wishes within the heart.

You decide if you are going to receive the Holy Spirit or let Satan rule over your heart.  Satan’s most effective strategy is to convince you that what is wrong for you is that God has wrecked you.  As long as you have even a little bit of conviction that God has damaged your life and cannot be completely trusted, you will hold part of your heart from God and not receive the Holy Spirit fully.  You are the gatekeeper of your heart.  There is a magnificent account in the Bible of what happens if the Holy Spirit is given permission to rework the heart.  When Saul came to Damascus as a representative of the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem, he came to find Jewish Christians so that he could take them captive back to Jerusalem for trial and execution.  Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. (Acts 9:1-2 NIV)  As Saul marched with his armed guards up to Damascus, the Lord spoke to a loyal Christian named Ananias through a vision.  The Lord told him, "Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying.  In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight."  "Lord," Ananias answered, "I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem.  And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name." (Acts 9:11-14 NIV)

Ananias had no love for Saul.  Although Saul had been struck blind by the Lord, Ananias did not pity him.  Every Christian in Damascus had heard how evil Saul was and the atrocities he committed in the name of religion.  What God was asking of Ananias was too much for his heart.  Why would he reveal to Saul his identity as a Christian and for what reason should he help him?  There was not a rational argument that could be made for following the Lord’s command to go to Saul and let the healing of God come to Saul through Ananias’s hands.  Ananias could not have made this decision on his own.  He would not have chosen to risk his life helping a murderer and persecutor of the Christian Church.  It was the Holy Spirit that made Ananias willing to go to Saul and reveal his Christian faith to him by praying for him.  In the book of Hebrews we are warned against doubting God in our hearts.  See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. (Hebrews 3:12 NIV)  With the Holy Spirit controlling your heart, all that Satan has worked into you including fear, selfishness, lust, bitterness, depression, jealousy and discontent gets worked out of you by God.  What God develops in you through His resurrected life is a heart braced by courage and overflowing with faith, kindness, purity and love.  The love of God is so great that He has gone to the fullest extent possible to remove all the wrong from you and replace it with His perfect goodness. Never resist the Holy Spirit as the love of Christ is worked in you each hour of every day.  Like Ananias, trust God in whatever He tells you to do!