Is patience a gene? I have always been impatient. Overcoming this failing is part of my personal climb. I have read the biblical verses relating to this subject many times over and some have been helpful, but trying to be patient when you’re feeling impatient is a bit like trying to be well when you are feeling sick. It’s a nice try, but it usually doesn’t go far, and I know I still have a ways to go. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit of God, of course, but that doesn’t mean that God makes us instantly patient if we ask for his help with it. As someone wryly observed, if you ask God for patience, don’t expect a quick reply. But seriously, we have to develop patience with the help we are given. That’s why I was particularly happy with something I was reading in the Book of Ephesians recently. As I read in the New International Version, I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. Paul writes:
“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4: 1-2).
Now I just happened to look at these verses again in the King James version and noticed something different in the last part of the verse: “…with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love.”
The difference is small, but it triggered a thought in my mind: The semicolon used in the NIV directly before “be patient” makes it look like there are two separate thoughts (being humble and gentle on the one hand and patient and bearing with people on the other), whereas the series of commas in the KJV looks more like a continuous, connected thought. The original Greek of the New Testament doesn’t have punctuation, of course; but as I looked at it, it seemed to me that the sense of the verse really is one continuous subject and thought – with humility, gentleness, and patience seeming to be grouped together as related qualities.
Then when I looked at what Paul says in Colossians 3:12-13, I saw the same pattern: “… clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another…” Here we have compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience grouped together – the same qualities we see in Ephesians 4 with a couple more added.
What struck me about these verses is that the qualities Paul is talking about can indeed be interrelated, and this has a practical application which I found I was able to put into action. Instead of thinking about patience as an abstract goal when I’m feeling impatient with someone, I found that if I work on one of the more concrete qualities in the group Paul brings together, it helps with the impatience at the same time. For example, thinking about and working on being humble when I’m feeling impatient really makes a difference.
After all, when I remind myself I’m not the center of the universe, what does it matter that someone is late to meet with me? If I think about what it means to be compassionate, I can better empathize with the overwhelmed driver in front of me who is holding up all the traffic, and so on. If I focus on the other qualities on Paul’s list, I don’t even have to think about patience directly in order to better apply it.
Anyway, I think this small tactic is helping me grow in this area. Perhaps not as quickly as I would like, but I have to be patient.
* We now have a Free e-book on patience: Why Every Christian Needs More Patience – download your free copy here.
Secure safekeeping of important or valuable items is never easy. Throughout recent history the safes and vaults developed for individual and bank use have become ever stronger as thieves continually find ways to bypass or crack into protective safekeeping devices.
Even in the past century, the renowned Mosler safe-making company produced safes that withstood the nuclear attack on Hiroshima in World War II, and the vault now installed at the United States’ Atomic Energy Commission’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee weighs approximately 138 tons and has two door blades weighing 58 tons (52616 kg) each. Today, even the vault in your local bank is probably a formidable device for safekeeping.
But safekeeping of valuable and important things works in two directions – it involves the safe or bank vault we use to keep whatever we store safely, and also the key, password or combination we must keep to open the secure housing.
Paul speaks of a similar situation – of two ways safekeeping – in his second epistle to Timothy. Speaking of God, he wrote: “… I am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day” (2 Timothy 1:12). The words “that which I have entrusted to him” are literally “my deposit” in the Greek, and Paul’s statement ties directly into the analogy we are using here.
But what is it that the apostle had entrusted to God? When he wrote 2 Timothy Paul knew that his death was near (2 Timothy 4:6), and he almost certainly speaks of entrusting his spirit to God. Paul may well have had in mind Psalm 31:5: “Into your hand I commend my spirit.” The Jewish philosopher Philo, who was almost a contemporary of Paul, uses the expression in the same way, calling the soul “a deposit.”
So Paul was entrusting his very self – the totality of all he had become in following the calling he had been given – to God for safekeeping (see also 1 Peter 4:19). But this is not all that the apostle speaks of in his letter regarding safekeeping. Only two verses later Paul tells Timothy: “Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us” (2 Timothy 1:14). This is clearly the other half of the safekeeping arrangement – the part that we as “depositors” must keep safe. Just as something – a key or password – is committed to us in any safekeeping arrangement, so Paul reminds Timothy that he too must keep something safe, and he makes it clear what this is in the previous verse:
“What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:13).
There is a clear echo of the apostle’s great “faith hope and love” triad of 1 Corinthians 13:13 here – with the “teaching, faith and love” being only a slight variation of “faith, hope and love.” The concept of teaching, doctrine or truth is related to that of hope in the Scriptures (2 Timothy 2:25, etc.,), but the point here is that Paul encourages Timothy to securely keep the way of life (faith and love) he has been given, along with the teachings or doctrines upon which our hope is based.
So in these few verses Paul reminds Timothy of the two aspects of safekeeping, and there is a great deal of encouragement underlying the truth of his words. It is a simple message, yet an important one. We are given a great responsibility in the safekeeping of the truth and way of life (“doctrine” and “practice”) that is revealed to us, but if we do our part in this and are careful not to lose what has been given to us – as Paul showed with confidence – despite age, health or any other circumstances, God is certain to keep safely the treasure of character and attitude of service that we develop with his help and commit to him.
In the Old Testament Book of Numbers there is an interesting story about the prophet Balaam. This individual seems to have been a man who knew of the true God, but who was nevertheless a “wicked” man (2 Peter 2:15, Jude 11, Revelation 2:14) who served pagan kings and who was eventually killed by ancient Israel (Joshua 13:22).
Numbers describes how Balaam was hired by the Moabite king Balak to curse the people of Israel. If we have read it, the incident in which God miraculously caused Balaam’s donkey to speak to him to warn him (Numbers 22:28) is one we all remember about this “prophet for hire.” But there is something more important that we can learn from the story of Balaam that is easy to miss.
It is clear that one of Balaam’s chief credentials or skills was constructing curses to be used on the enemies of those who hired him. Balaam evidently knew enough about the true God and His purposes for Israel, however, that the prophet repeatedly refused to curse the Israelites. Three times Balak provided expensive sacrifices and urged Balaam to curse Israel (with considerable financial incentives to do so), yet each time Balaam delivered not a curse, but a blessing (Numbers 23:11), insisting: “… I can’t say whatever I please. I must speak only what God puts in my mouth” (Numbers 22:38). And what God told Balaam to tell Balak was not what the king wanted to hear. God firmly instructed Balaam “You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed” (Numbers 22:13).
In the course of delivering not curses, but blessings on Israel, Balaam makes an astonishing statement, recorded in Numbers 23:21. The NIV translates this verse “No misfortune is seen in Jacob, no misery observed in Israel. The LORD their God is with them …,” but many translations take a more literal approach and translate this verse along the following lines:
“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the LORD his God is with him …” (King James Version). “He considers no disaster for Jacob; He sees no trouble for Israel. The LORD their God is with them …” (Holman Christian Standard Bible). “He has not responded to iniquity in Jacob or gazed at mischief in Israel. The LORD his God is with them…” (International Standard Version). “He has not looked on iniquity in Jacob, nor has he seen trouble in Israel. The LORD their God is with them…” (NET Bible).
But whichever option we choose among the possible translations of this verse, the message remains the same: God was not looking at Israel’s failures and saw no disaster looming for them. The remarkable thing about this is that God’s command to Balaam not to curse Israel, and the words of blessing that He did tell the prophet to convey, occurred after the people of Israel had turned to idol worship at Sinai, had complained continually (Numbers 11, etc.), and had openly rebelled against Moses and God (Numbers 12, 14). This is after we are repeatedly told “the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people…” (Numbers 11:33, etc.), and God had even said he was tempted to destroy them utterly (Numbers 14:11-12). Yet because of his love for Israel, God remained loyal to them (Deuteronomy 23:5).
This picture of God’s loyalty to Israel despite their disloyalty to him is a remarkable one of itself, and it is an important example for us to consider in our own lives. Humanly, loyalty is a quality we tend to give only to those who are loyal to us, and it is a quality that is all too quickly withdrawn when others do not reciprocate.
The story of Balaam and God’s loyalty to Israel is one we can all apply in striving to be loyal to others despite their failings toward us. God still disciplined Israel for its transgressions (Numbers 14:20-23), but his love included loyalty. In our own lives we should use wisdom in dealing with those who show they cannot be trusted, but we should remember that loyalty is a clear trait of the character of God and a very real part of true forgiveness and love.
Many people presume that Christianity is a religion of meekness and mildness – even of weakness. To be fair, many have absorbed this idea from hymns, songs and sermons that juxtapose meekness with mildness, from the concept of Christ as “Gentle Jesus meek and mild.”
Anyone who studies the life of Jesus knows that this view is in error. We cannot read a single one of the Gospels without seeing instances of Jesus telling the Pharisees, the hypocrites and the religious rulers of his day exactly what their problems were – without the slightest hint of timidity, just as we read of him single-handedly casting out the money changers from the temple. We cannot read the accounts of the life of Jesus without seeing a man strong enough to go willingly to his own death for the sake of others – knowing it was to be one of the most painful deaths ever to be suffered by a human being.
Even the concept of Jesus as a man of pacifistic mildness is inaccurate. The same Jesus who, when he was arrested, told Peter “Put away your sword” also said – at the same time – “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53). The Bible makes clear that the son of God was and is the supreme commander of enormous power and that he wielded that power and will wield it again (Revelation 19:16).
So we must look more closely at biblical verses that might suggest, out of context, that Christ or Christians are defined by meekness that is weakness. It is certainly true that Jesus said “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5); but the Greek word for meekness (praus) found there and throughout the New Testament has the connotation not of weakness, but of “strength under control.”
It is interesting to realize that in making the statement “Blessed are the meek…,” Jesus was almost certainly quoting Psalm 37:11 in the Greek Septuagint version. While the Hebrew Scriptures say “The meek shall possess the land,” the Septuagint says “The meek shall inherit the land,” more closely reflecting the wording of Jesus recorded in Matthew. But the significance of Jesus’ quoting Psalm 37 is found in the fact that the verses directly before “The meek will inherit the land” state “Refrain from anger and turn from wrath … For those who are evil will be destroyed…” (Psalm 37:8-9a). They are then contrasted with the words Jesus quoted: “But the meek shall inherit the earth” (emphasis added). The meekness spoken of by David and quoted by Christ is, then, one of controlling anger and wrath – with the self-control that meekness really is.
To be meek is not to be weak. Meekness is the gentleness of the strong. Meekness is strength under control. That is the quality exhibited by Christ and to which He calls his followers. When we understand this,we realize that there is no contradiction between this fact and the words of the apostle Paul describing the Spirit of God that is to be in every true follower of Christ: “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7). We may notice that the English Standard Version – translating a little closer to the Greek – says “self-control” rather than self-discipline. “Power, love and self-control” is almost a perfect definition of meekness. Meekness is strength in love. It is power under self-control.
We don’t hear the expression “built to last” very often any more. It’s used of old castles and some classic and vintage cars, but not much else. In fact, with modern “planned obsolescence” being as widespread as it is, we don’t hear the term used very often at all.
Why is this? Doubtless because “built to last” requires both planning and hard work on the part of the builder, and neither of those concepts is popular in a world that increasingly promotes instant consumer gratification and fast producer profits wherever possible. The result, of course, is that most things aren’t built to last any more, and that’s a principle and an attitude that all too easily affects other areas of our lives.
The apostle Paul has something to say about how we build things in relation to our spiritual lives. Notice what he told the Corinthians:
“… no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames” (1 Corinthians 3:11-15).
First, Paul presumes that we will be building on the foundation God has provided. When we look at the differences between the various building materials that Paul lists, most noticeable is the diminishing value of the materials themselves: “gold, silver, stone, wood, hay, straw.” But these construction materials are also different in their permanence. In both cases they are listed in decreasing order. Paul makes the point that value is tied to lastingness in his analogy – value is limited when things we produce do not last.
In stressing this, Paul is looking at things from God’s perspective – and clearly, God has a better perspective on time than we have. He knows that nothing physical that is human built is really lasting – the only thing we can build that will ultimately survive is His character in us and what we accomplish for Him. It is our service to God and to others that cannot be destroyed through wear, rust or the destructive elements. This is clearly what Paul had in mind when he urges us to consider the works we are doing – what are we making that is truly “built to last?”
“Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.” – Cavett Robert
“How’s the resolution doing – you know, the one you made in January?” That’s a question many of us might cringe at, but it’s good to remind ourselves of Cavett Robert’s old truism. The character we build in following through on resolutions is often just as important as the resolution itself.
The Bible shows that God’s servants often made resolutions, and in each case these resolutions were faithfully carried out. Notice just two examples from the Old Testament and New Testament, Daniel and Paul: “But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine…” (Daniel 1:8); “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).
In fact, the Bible shows that God Himself makes resolutions. Notice in the Book of Zechariah, where God says: “So I have resolved again in these days to do what is good to Jerusalem and the house of Judah…” ( Zechariah 8:15 HCSB). Not only does God make resolutions that we can all be thankful He keeps, but also He reminds us of the responsibility to make and keep good resolutions:
“ ‘If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not resolved to honor me’” (Malachi 2:2).
While this statement may sound negative out of context, God simply points out that we need to be firm in our resolve to do what we need to do. He knows that when we do not, we lose His blessings and, as a loving parent, He warns us against that outcome. That is why God’s word frequently stresses the need to give our full resolve to doing what we come to understand we need to do. That guidance can energize and inspire us to follow through.
While some minor physical resolutions may not have widespread effect in our lives, our major resolutions can have major effects on us, our marriages, our families and our relationship with God. So let’s remember the resolutions we do make and maintain them. The fact is, the more we follow through with our resolutions, the easier it will become to keep them.
God is certainly aware of what we resolve to do in regard to the way of life that He reveals to us, and He will help us follow through if we are serious and ask for His help. That is why the Psalmist could write, as confidently as he did: “I am resolved to obey Your statutes to the very end” (Psalm 119:112 HCSB).
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