Patient persistence

Patience.  It's not something we really prize is it?  We are not good at waiting - at least not unless we are distracted or entertained by some app or social media feed so that the time goes more quickly.  Yet consistently the Bible calls us to be patient, to wait, to have our eyes fixed on something other than just what we can see.  This is especially true in church.  Growth takes time.  Change takes time.  We won't see either unless we are patient.  Sometimes growth in grace in quick, especially for new believers, but often growth is more gradual, sometimes it appears glacially slow - especially in ourselves.  Unless we learn patience, to fix our eyes on God's kingdom and his timing, to pray as we wait, then we will be tempted to be looking always for the next thing, the more exciting, the more dynamic church and so on.  A tendency that is exacerbated in our instant fix culture.  We need to pursue patience.

We also need to pursue persistence.  To be tenacious in the way we love others and in our commitment to the gospel.  To not be quick to give up but to stick at it.  It's true in our relationships, when wronged we need to persist in bearing with, loving and forgiving the offender.  When frustrated we need to persist in prayer and in loving others by grace.  When tempted to despair or despondency we need to persist in faithfulness.  I've been reading my way slowly through Jeremiah recently and one of the things that has struck me is his persistence in preaching the gospel to a people who have no interest in that gospel.  He persists because he is convinced it is God's word to a people in need of it.  I can't help but think that is a model for us in the UK in 2016.  We need to patently persist in holding out the gospel to a community in desperate need of grace, even when they refuse to listen.

Father forgive my limited love for others

I was reading 1 Corinthians 13 again this morning, and yet again I'm struck by the utter contrast between the love God calls us to have for one another in the church and the way the world loves.  But it is easy to deflect a passage away from ourselves and onto others.  It is right that we apply a passage to the world, looking at how far short the world falls of God's purpose and plan even as it thirsts and hungers for what God intended it to enjoy.  But it is never enough to stop there, in fact it is wrong to do so if we never turn the convicting light of God's word onto ourselves.

God calls us to love but that is something we find hard to do.  We have a tendency to love by common denominator, to love those who are like us, share or views, who we feel are of benefit to us, who love us in return, or who we aspire to be like.  But the Bible calls us to love as God loved us in Christ.  To love those who are unlike us, to love the different and the random.  But all too often I find it easier to go for the liquid love that mirrors the world, that is easily washed away by pressure, or tiredness, or stress, or simply someone doing something I don't like.  But God's call is to a love that pursues, that perseveres, that is patient and so much more.

Longsuffering is the way older translations often translate that word patient and I think there is something beautiful about that word, it is descriptive, it speaks of bearing with, it speaks of pain and difficulty, it speaks of long term commitment, it speaks of enduring love not liquid love, a love built on solid foundations not sandy ones.  As I read of God's love I can't help but be amazed and thankful and humbled.  As I see the call to love like that I can't help but throw myself on the mercy of God because I cannot do it, but as I do so I am amazed again that God not only calls me to love like that but fills me with his Spirit so that I love like that.  So that I fight the battle with liquid love and seek to love as I have been loved.

When isn't Christian maturity Christian maturity?

The discussion of what a mature christian is can be either helpful or unhelpful depending on the baggage people come with.  There is no doubting that the bible calls us to grow in maturity.  Ephesians 4:12-14, Philippians 3:15, Col 1:28, Col 4:12, Heb 5:14, James 1:4 are just a few of the passages that aim at or talk about christian maturity.  Christian maturity is vital, it is what enables us not to run from one set of teaching to another set of teaching, it is becoming more like Christ.

But one thing christian maturity is not is impatient or judgmental of others who it feels are not maturing quickly enough.  Because christian maturity does not happen apart from the fruits of the spirit; "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."  The mature follower of Jesus will lovingly want people to change and understand more of what it means to be in Jesus but will joyfully, patiently, faithfully and gently encourage that change in others.  Praying for it, discussing it, building others up and so on.

Yet we are naturally impatient people, we long to see people change and become more like Christ.  But our thoughts on christian maturity must not be divorced from the fruit of the Spirit, they are the fruit of the mature.  If we don't have them we are not mature!

That doesn't mean that we don't encourage people to change, that doesn't mean that we accept that life is the way it is and will never change and give up aiming for change, or that we just allow people to coast.  But it does mean we patiently wait as we aim for change as we teach the bible and apply it to others and ourselves.  It means we model change in light of God's word, we talk about what God is teaching us and how we are struggling to apply it to ours lives as enabled and empowered by the Spirit.

It's interesting how often we are impatient with others because we forget how long change has taken in us.  We expect others to grasp ideas the first time they hear them forgetting that God has graciously, lovingly and slowly taught us, shown us our need and repeatedly prompted us to change at a pace at which we could handle.  We expect people to grasp the big idea of a talk and apply it in their lives when they first hear it whereas we have taken hours in the study thinking it and its implications through.

We need to long for change, to aim for change, to teach for a realisation of the gospel in practice whilst praying that God would work in his time.  We need to do everything we can to foster and encourage growing christian maturity whilst not becoming frustrated at the way in which God works that change.

Psalm 37 -Waiting not fretting

We live in a society that doesn’t like waiting that prizes instant success and results. Samsung recently released a new phone called the Samsung Jet. The advertising campaign picked up on this desire for everything now and carried the tag line ‘impatience is a virtue’. It went on; “impatience got us faster cars, microwaves, remote controls and jets. Impatience is in first, on top, up the front, impatience wants more and more and more…’

It’s a reflection on the way our society works, what it values, and its relentless drive for immediate results.

As we turn to Psalm 37 the call is for God’s people, for us, to be different, it is a call not to judge based on circumstance, not to be impatient but to wait. Specifically this Psalm deals with the problem of injustice in the world – why do the wicked prosper? (35)”I have seen the wicked and ruthless flourishing like a luxuriant native tree.”

Isn’t that refreshing, doesn’t that give us confidence in the Bible as the word of God. It doesn’t duck the hard questions we have. Why is Robert Mugabe still in power? Why do regimes that oppress and persecute Christians grow in strength? Why in the work place do those who cheat, victimise and bully so often seem to be rewarded for it? Why isn’t there a direct correlation between actions and reward? The Bible doesn’t duck the reality of the world we live in.

The Psalmist fear is that seeing that injustice will drive people from faith to fretting(1), from faith to anxiety to anger, to bitterness to resentment. His call is to get our perspective right which will mean we will not fret and that instead we wait full of hope for God.

The Psalms are here for us to sing, we are meant to learn their truths and sing along. It’s not a lyric sheet for us to read over it’s more like a Karaoke machine; they are there for us to learn and sing its songs along with him. But in order to be able to sing this song we need to understand what he has understood.

1. What are we waiting for?
What are you like at waiting? This week sees the advent calendars come out – those instruments of torture for small children that remind them everyday of the too slow pace of the painstaking day-by-day crawl to Christmas. But what makes the waiting bearable? It is the expectation of what is at the end, that it will prove to have been worth waiting for when that day finally arrives.

There is a repeated refrain running through the Psalm, it is what the Psalmist is calling the faithful to live in the light of. It is what will make the waiting bearable. Its there in(9)
“For those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.”
And it is repeated in v10-11, 22, 28-9 and 34. The wicked may look prosperous now but they will face God and be judged, justice will ultimately prevail. And those who live with hope, who live waiting, trusting in, looking to God will inherit the land.

Don’t judge by circumstance live by the promises of God is the Psalmists call.

It’s an interesting phrase when you think about it, because as David writes Israel do possess the land, they are living in it. So what does he mean by they will inherit the land?

The land for Israel was not just somewhere to rest their boots and pitch their tents. The land in the Old Testament was part of the promise God made to Abraham; a promise with three focal points: a. God will make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation, b. God will give them a land, and c. they will enjoy a special relationship with God. They are actually all bound up together.

The inheritance of the land that the Psalmist calls Israel to wait for is nothing less than the Kingdom of God. When they will be God’s people in God’s place living under and enjoying God’s rule.

Jesus picks up on the idea from this Psalm(11) in his sermon on the Mount as he teaches about the kingdom, how his people live with the tension of the now and not yet, as he calls them to be distinctively the people of God.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” He says. The meek person is the one who depends on God, who entrusts themselves to God. They don’t need to justify themselves they have a right view of themselves – they are sinners reliant on the grace of God and their future is secure.

What makes waiting possible amidst all the injustice? It is the conviction that God will do what he has promised and one day he will establish his kingdom where justice reigns, where we will be his people and he will be our God.

Don’t fret look to your future. Just like those in David’s day there is a danger that we look at what is around us rather than live looking to our promised future. Will we sing this song and singing it fix our eyes on God’s promises.

2. What does wise waiting looks like?
This is a wisdom psalm, it doesn’t have a clear developing argument rather it gathers together ideas and then arranges them in a Hebrew alphabetical acrostic. Wisdom is about how to live in the light of God’s revelation, it isn’t theoretical or academic but it is intensely practical. So here having called us to take up the song of waiting the Psalmist also shows us what wise waiting looks like. There are things not to do and things to do.

(1,8)Wise waiting means not fretting, not letting the injustice around about us fray away our faith, it means not becoming envious, or bitter and angry about the injustice we see.

Have you seen the programme ‘Grumpy old men’ basically a group of older TV personalities moan about everything under the sun. I discovered this week that you can now go and watch ‘Grumpy old Women’ on Tour. You sit and listen to either the men or the women and there is not just grumpiness but a bitterness about the way things have changed about perceived injustices.

The psalmist is saying don’t let the world drain away your joy and your hope, live in the light of the promises.

Positively he goes on to say that those who wait wisely will trust in God(3), they will delight in – find their joy in God, and that trust and joy will be seen in their patient waiting(7). But the call to waiting isn’t a call to inactivity, that’s not what he means when he says be still, but the righteous because they trust God are seen to be generous, content and just. Their speech is wise, they do good and they live a life of obedience to the God they are waiting for. In short they give people a glimpse of the kingdoms values now.

The wise live in direct contrast to the wicked because they know God is coming, the kingdom is theirs and that hope affects their thinking and their actions.

Am I waiting wisely? How is our hope seen?

3. How can I wait wisely?
The key to waiting wisely is trust in God. But you can only trust in God if you know him rather than just know of him.

One of our dangers is that our default setting is to think that we need to try harder. We do it on every level don’t we – playing sport if you make a mistake you try harder next time to make up for it. If its dieting and you fail to lose your target wait this week you double your efforts next week. There is a danger that we carry this across into out attitude towards God - I just need to pull my socks up.

But did you notice as we read the Psalm the Psalmist doesn’t exhort his listeners to more effort, instead he calls on them to turn to God, to understanding who God is and what he has done for them.

(39-40)The key to living wisely, to waiting without fretting isn’t our efforts it is God’s character and actions. Only when we know God and he is our delight will we be able to wait wisely.
“The salvation of the righteous comes from the LORD; he is their stronghold in time of trouble. The LORD helps them and delivers them; he delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in him.”

Do you see what we do and what God does?

Just look at the verses again - God provides salvation, God is the stronghold – the place of security - God is the helper, deliverer and Saviour.

What does the righteous person do, what do they contribute? “they take refuge in him.” That’s it, they recognise God is the only one who can save them, that he is the only true security and they look to him not their own efforts.

The way to avoid fretting about the injustices of the world is to remind yourself of the character of God and of what he has done for his people. It is this that will enable us to fix our eyes on the hope of a coming kingdom because we know that justice will be part of that kingdom.

How is your waiting? As we look at the world around us we aren’t meant to be indifferent to the suffering, injustice and pain we see. But neither is it meant to drain us of our joy or eat away and corrode our hope leaving us bitter and angry. Instead the psalmist wants us to join in his song which focuses our gaze on God and on the kingdom which his people will inherit where they will be his people in his place enjoying his rule, where justice will reign.