Patience and Endurance: Job 1: 1-4, 20-22; James 5:7-11
A friend of mine and someone I consider to be a wise person once told me, “Never pray for patience. God will teach it to you, and you won’t like it.” I believe we all have some instances where we have zero patience in life. When we sit in traffic that simply won’t let up, our moods drop and our inclination to hit the horn grows minute by minute. Those times we have to drive through Atlanta during rush hour, we can feel our hands tightening on the steering wheel and our blood pressure increasing.
Or, perhaps closer to home, there are times we are standing 15 people deep in a line at the Wal-Mart check out and only two registers are open. I know from some of you, that in those times you get the closest to a meltdown that you’ll ever be. I, too, share in that struggle. But there’s a common theme. This idea of patience always comes up in our tough times. It’s the common theme that when all is well, you don’t need to patiently endure, patience is only needed when there is a struggle either on its way or already upon us.
One of the most difficult aspects of having patience is that patience grows in our waiting periods of life. James writes, “be patient as you wait for the Lord’s return.” And we are then told to take courage with the example of farmers who wait for the rain to fall and harvest to ripen. This idea of waiting is found all throughout the Bible: Psalm 27:14 says, “Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.” Isaiah 30: 18 says, “Blessed are those who wait on God.” And perhaps the greatest words on waiting, Isaiah 40;31, “But they that wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not be faint.”
Our waiting periods are a time to grow closer to God, and patience is the bridge which gets us there. We continue in these days to see trials and turmoil. I saw a comic the other day had someone staring out the window, and they said, “Looking out to see what part of The Book of Revelation we’re living through today.” But in trying times, we must patiently and actively wait for God’s Word and God’s healing. We must have patience over panic if we see safety and security crumble. We must patiently and pointedly hold out until justice is done for those on life’s margins. Waiting is more than sitting idly by. Waiting is a time of preparation and a time of work. Let patience grow in your waiting periods, and let your strength be renewed during waiting periods. The struggle is there, but so is God’s strength. Don’t waste the wait.
James also teaches us that endurance is the power to overcome and the final product of our patience. James writes in verse 11 that we give great honor to the ones who endure through suffering. But there is also a promise of restoration at the end of the suffering, “for the Lord is full of tenderness and mercy.” Romans 5: 3 and 4 says, “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.”
Endurance builds the character which strengthens our confident hope. This means that patient endurance is the hallmark of a mature faith. It is the actual living of the “I can” attitude for those who say, “I can do all things through Christ.” Patience and endurance may go hand in hand, but neither one is easy to live with. Both require us to trust in God. There are really only two options we have in times of trial—trust in God and wait with patience and endurance, or walk away. The latter choice will never bring us peace or comfort in the long run.
I remember a friend who talked about her struggles with patience and endurance and managing to get through trials in a graceful way. She is an older woman, and she said for most of her life when things were unpleasant or difficult, she made sure people knew it. If she was going to suffer, she was going to let everyone else know loudly and boldly that she wasn’t happy. That means it was frequent and consistent that she was complaining about something in life annoying her, bothering her, or causing her some level of distress. Three of us were in the car headed to a meeting, and after that statement, we prepared for the worst through the next 45 minutes of the trip. After a pause, however, she said, “But I stopped it as I grew older. I realized that no matter how much I complained, how much I made other people struggle as well, I still had to endure through the trial.”
And finally, we are given the example of Job, who lived a life showing patience, endurance, and restoration in the end. Job was a man who had everything he could ever want in life: a great family, land, livestock, servants, quite literally everything. But in one short time period, all was taken away from him, and Job began to endure the worst trial imaginable. He lost family, land, servants, livestock, and even the support of his wife and friends. He was left utterly alone and without much hope at all.
But Job had the kind of mature faith needed to wait for the Lord. Job had the patience to endure the struggles and trials until the end. In fact Job lasts for 42 very, very long chapters. This was not a quick or easy waiting period by any means. But Job sets his attitude and his trust in God early on, and never, never waivers. He says, “The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord.” And perhaps we read one of the boldest statements of faith and trust in the next line: “In all of this, Job did not sin by blaming God.”
In the end, Job was rewarded. All of his blessings were returned, and everything which was taken from him was restored. Job 42 tells us that God actually restored twice what Job had before. This doesn’t take away the pain of the suffering, but it shows that God has in mind restoration, hope, and life instead of destruction and death. Job saw that God’s promises were true. Remember that in every painful waiting period, there is a new and wonderful thing awaiting. Sometimes that is restoration double fold here on earth, and sometimes that promise is eternal, not earth-bound. Remember that when we patiently endure, the end result is always hope, even when it seems to be such a far way off. Hope is still there even as we continue to trust in God.
But the waiting is tough. I was once told never to pray for patience, for God will teach it to you, and you won’t like it. But patient waiting is where we find God’s presence most strongly with us. Patient waiting is where we spend our time growing and preparing. If we trust and endure, God will always see us through to our hope made real. Patiently listen, willingly do, endure to the end until hope is a reality. This isn’t just a good thought or wishful thinking. It is a promise which God himself has made.