Marcus Bach in his book The Power of Perception tells of how
great worth is found in waste. An old lead and zinc mine had been
abandoned for years. It appeared a worthless worn out pit with all
its value exhausted. But when man developed a new need, a need
for Tungsten, the waste deposits from this old mine were re-assayed
and discovered to be full of Tungsten. The ghost mine sprang back
into life, and a thriving community grew up because waste could
produce worth. In other words, it was not waste at all, but valuable
stuff. Bach says, no mine is ever totally exhausted, and all waste just
waits for man to discover a new use for it. As men develop the
power of perception, they see new values in what they formerly
threw away. Numerous are the examples of how what were once
waste products are now valued products.
Nothing is more practical than the art of turning waste into
worth and James the brother of our Lord was an expert. He has the
power to perceive the worth in what everyone else tends to call
worthless-the trials of life. What can be a greater waste in life than
to suffer trials and tribulation? We count it all joy when we can
escape these worthless types of waste. But James, with an advanced
perception, says you are throwing away your own treasure . There
is great value to be gotten from tough times. In fact, it is one of life's
most precious values-the virtue of patience.
Less you think that patience is a very simple thing, let me point
out how it covers a multitude of complex feelings and attitudes.
1. It means a calm waiting in hope. This is the patience of the
gardener or farmer who plants his seed and then must wait to see
the fruit.
2. It means endurance of trial; a putting up with what is not
pleasant, such as a nine year old boy who is convinced he can learn
to be the world's greatest drummer.
3. It means self-control. When too many things happen at once, you
can still keep your cool and not go to pieces, but persevere through
them all. There are many different degrees of this virtue.
James says to Christians who are struggling with life's
adversities-don't waste anything in life-not even your negative
experiences, for they contain great potential. They can be used to
produce the costly value of patience. If you lack the wisdom to see
this, ask God for it, says James, for none are so wise as those who
have the power of perception that can explore the waste deposits of
human burdens, and see how they can be turned into human
blessings. May God grant us wisdom as we try to see what James
reveals concerning the value and the vision of patience.
I. THE VALUE OF PATIENCE.
Patience is a hard to win virtue. It does not come from reading
books and hearing sermons. You cannot teach patience, because it is
not taught, it is caught, and it is only caught by getting into the
stream of life's trials. Patience is like a purple heart. The only way
you can get it is by getting wounded in battle. The great Henry
Ward Beecher said, "There is no such thing as preaching patience
into people unless the sermon is so long that they have to practice it
while they hear. No man can learn patience except by going out into
the hurly-burly world, and taking life just as it blows....and riding
out the gale." We cannot learn patience by this message, but we can
learn to appreciate its value.
You have to be thoroughly convinced of the value of patience if
you are going to pay the price to obtain it. Men fight for their
country, and for their family, and for the honor of their faith, but
whoever heard of fighting against adversity, and all the while
counting it a joy because they are thereby gaining the virtue of
patience. We all know it is a wonderful thing to have, but is it that
precious? James clearly implies that it is. It is so valuable to possess
it that those who see its value can even suffer in joy when they know
that their suffering is leading them to more patience. Only a deep
grasp of this value will enable any Christian to practice what James
tells them to do. Men can only enjoy suffering that pays high
dividends.
Men can suffer long fearful journeys, and hunger and thirst and
pain of every description, if the end result is gold. Men have
suffered everything for gold, and just the hope of possessing it drove
them to endure agonies beyond our comprehension. A value less
tangible, but just as real as gold, is glory, and again, there is no end
to the suffering men and women will joyfully endure for glory. The
world of sports alone is ample evidence of this. Millions of muscles
shriek out in painful agony, yet there is no let up and relief, for the
price must be paid for glory. The point is, people count it all joy to
suffer for any goal they are convinced is of high worth. We fail to be
motivated to suffer for the sake of patience, because we have
undervalued it, and do not consider it as one of life's precious
possessions for the personality.
There is no doubt about it, Paul saw eye to eye with James on the
value of patience, for Paul says it is one of the fruits of the Spirit,
and in the great love chapter of I Cor. 13, the first positive
characteristic of ideal love is patience. In Rom. 5:3, Paul uses the
word in the same way as James does when he says that tribulation
worketh patience. Jesus used this same word when He described the
good soil in the parable of the sower as that which holds fast the seed
of the word, and brings forth fruit with patience. There are other
texts we could look at, but these are sufficient to convince us that
patience is a virtue which is a key to the fruitful Christian life.
As soon as James opens his letter with a greeting, he launches
into the praises of this virtue that is so precious that it ought to make
us enjoy our trials. If we cannot see the value in patience, we will
not see the value in the trials that help produce it. In 1934 the huge
Jonker diamond was discovered in South Africa. It was given to
Lazare Kaplan, the patriarch of diamond cutters. The owner also
sent a plan for cutting it, but Kaplan said, had he followed that plan
it would have been destroyed. He spent one year just studying that
stone, and planning how to turn it into 12 smaller stones. Only after
great patience in planning did he go to work, and his patience paid
off, for he turned that egg size crystal into a dozen immortal gems.
Only recognition of great value could motivate such patience.
Nobody could exercise such patience to produce a ring of little value.
It takes great value to motivate patience.
If you do not see the great value in patience, you will not see the
worth of any kind of suffering. Only a value system which places a
high worth on patience can give you the power to perceive value in
tribulation. If you lack such a value system, you will consider all
forms of suffering as worthless, and so you will waste a good chunk
of your life's experiences. James says you don't have to waste any
experience of life, but can rejoice in its value if you see it develops
patience. What could be more practical than asking God to give you
the wisdom to be able to turn all waste into worth. Those who think
like James are incurable optimists. If even life's rough roads are
increasing your supply of patience, then you can rejoice while you
groan and moan. You don't have to like the suffering, but you can't
help but like the fringe benefits, if you are building up your patience.
Someone wrote, "Patience is like the pearl among the gems. By its
quiet radiance it brightens every human grace, and adorns every
Christian excellence."
In the history of Christian missions, it has been the virtue of
patience that made the difference. William Carey, the father of
modern missions, labored 7 years before he won his first convert.
This has been true for many, and you just can't write the history of
Christian missions without people of patience. The second thing we
want to consider is-
II. THE VISION OF PATIENCE.
The person who possesses patience perceives life with a particular
perspective. He sees life from the point of view of the whole and not
just the part. He sees the long run of things, and not just the now of
them. He has a vision that penetrates the cloudy now, and sees into
the sunny yet to be. James has a vision, not just of the present
suffering of trials, but of the long range effects of what they can
produce in us through patient endurance. He sees the outcome of it
all leading to Christians being made complete, and lacking in nothing.
If the only way to the castle is by means of a rough road,
than rejoice that you are on that rough road, for better to be
struggling up toward and ideal than walking in ease down a road to
no where.
James does not portray the Christian life in a superficial manner.
It is a false hope to tell people the Christian life is the answer to all
their problems. The Gospel is not, come to Jesus and live happily
ever after. The Christian life is often a struggle and a battle, and an
uphill climb over many obstacles, but it is worth it all because the
end result is a happy ever after with a great sense of satisfaction,
because we have come through the trials of life more like our Lord,
who made it possible for us to fight the good fight by His grace. The
point is, if this year is going to be a good year of Christian growth, it
will not be all blue skies and barbecues. There will be some struggle
and hard decisions that force us to move up or down on the scale of
Christlikeness. James says, don't waste these times, but catch a
vision of the value to be gotten out of them.
The patient Christian sees life as a process in which God works
out His plan by stages and degrees. This is a perspective based on
wisdom. God made reality this way, and it is folly to try to make it
any other way. God could have made it so babies were born a week
after conception, but He chose to make it 9 months so life would
begin with a process of waiting and expecting. God could have
made man so he would be like some animals, and be very soon
independent after birth, but instead He made it so they need a long
process of care and training. This provides a school of patience for
both parents and child. Family life is a process of growth in
learning patience. Life is made to develop by degrees. Jesus entered
this process and grew in wisdom, and in stature and in favor with
God and man. At 12 He already felt the need to be about His
Fathers business, but God made it so He had to go home with Mary
and Joseph and live in patient growth for 18 more years.
Jesus spent most of His life learning to develop patience. Without
this long process His humanity could not have endured the injustice
of His arrest, trial, and crucifixion. Jesus needed time to develop
this virtue, and so do we. There is no such thing as instant maturity.
The fruit of the Spirit, like the fruit of the soil, takes time to develop
to maturity. Nobody is fully loving, joyful, peaceful, or patient upon
conversion. These and all other Christian truth grow by degrees.
The virtue of patience is essential to every aspect of the Christian
life. You cannot become anything God wants you to be without
patience. Patience gives you the ability to see life in its wholeness
and the long run. It enables you to see how the trials of life can be
part of the process you need to develop in specific areas you would
neglect without them. Shakespeare said, "How poor are they who
have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees."
Healing, growing, becoming Christlike-they are all achieved by
degrees, and, therefore, patience is a necessity.
The vision of patience enables us to be ever moving toward the
goal of being complete, lacking nothing. Impatient Christians
always stop short of this goal. The impatient Christian gets a
glimpse of a Biblical truth, and immediately begins to proclaim he
has found the key to the Scriptures. He tends to blow it out of all
proportions, and many will not go along with his enthusiasm, and so
he starts his own church, or cult, and becomes an extremist, fighting
the rest of the body. The patient Christian takes time to see how
new light and insight fits into the whole picture, and how to
incorporate all aspects of truth into the whole. The result is, he
brings greater unity rather than division to the body.
Inpatient Christians have looked at Paul's emphasis on faith and
the emphasis of James on works, and have concluded there is
conflict, and so they choose up sides. Patient Christians look deeper,
and see both Paul and James in agreement, for the two must be part
of the whole for there to be any authentic Christianity. Patience
builds, but impatience destroys. If you want to be the best possible
Christian, James says nothing is more practical than the
development of patience. Try and imagine any other Christian
virtue being complete without patience. Imagine an impatient love.
I'll love you if you snap it up. Sure I love my neighbor for a while,
but when I asked him to come to church, and he said no, I gave up
on him. Impatient love is not Biblical love.
Joy that is impatient will not last in a trial. If all goes smoothly
impatient joy can function, but patient joy can function even when
the way gets rough, for it knows God can use even this to make us
more Christlike. Go though the list of Christian virtues, and see
how all of them lose their value if not combined with patience. The
problem with everyone of us is that our Christian virtues tend to all
have a breaking point. We will be kind and gentle when all is
normal, but lose our cool and become like an unenlightened pagan
when the waters get rough. We have not arrived at the point where
we lack nothing, for we clearly do not have the patience to be
complete in the exercise of our virtues.
Patience is both active and passive. It can press on or hold on,
which ever is needed. The active patience is called perseverance or
persistence. It is a never giving up spirit that plugs away even when
progress seems hopeless. A father was scolding his son for his lack
of ambition. "Why when I was your age I worked ten hours a day
and five hours a night washing dishes." The son said, "I'm proud of
you dad. If it hadn't been for your pluck and perseverance, I might
have to do something like that myself." Wise are the parents who
make their children do what they don't have to do, just to learn to be
patient. Even in our day of greater leisure, every person needs to be
prepared to plod. Shakespeare said, "Though patience is a tired
mare, yet she will plod."
If God did not have patience, the world would long ago be gone.
Love is patient says Paul, and God is love says John, and so God is
patient. The only way we can live the Christian life is by developing
patience. You cannot love yourself or your neighbor without
patience. Impatience is the key sign of immaturity. The Christian
who wants instant success in himself, or in others, will be a neurotic
Christian. They will never be happy, for they spend their entire life
fighting the reality of life. All of their energy will be spent in seeking
shortcuts to holiness, and despising those who will not join them in
their futile search. Impatience mars every gift and perverts every
grace so that even what is good becomes a waste.
The whole point of Satan's attack on Christ in the wilderness was
to entice Him into impatience. Don't wait for food, turn the stones
into bread now. Don't wait for popularity, jump off the temple and
get the crowds now. Don't wait for power, bow to me and have
your kingdom now. Satan's greatest trick is to get us to be
impatient. D. L. Moody said, "Paul when writing to Titus, second
chapter first verse, tells him to be sound in faith, in love and in
patience. Now in this age ever since I can remember, the church has
been very jealous about men being unsound in the faith.....They
draw their ecclesiastical sword and cut at him, but he may be ever so
unsound in love and they don't say anything. He may be ever so
defective in patience-he may be irritable and fretful all the time, but
they never deal with him....I believe God cannot use many of His
servants because they are full of irritability and impatience."
Moody, like James, is saying, let's get practical. What earthly good
is a Christian who believes in the Trinity, but who is so impatient he
turns everybody off?
The passive patience is endurance. It stands fast and takes a
pounding, but does not yield. It patiently holds on waiting in
expectation for a victory. If mud splatters on your clothing, you
tend to want to wipe it off now, but if you wait until it dries it will
not smear, and come off much easier. The unknown poet writes,
O wait, impatient heart!
As winter waits, her song-birds fled,
And every nestling blossom dead.
Beyond the purple seas they sing!
Beneath soft snows they sleep!
They only sleep. Sweet patience keep,
And wait, as winter waits the spring.
We must confess that it is one of hardest things to do, for so many
things in life put pressure on us. Jesus, even in His perfection, still
felt the tremendous pull of impatience. How long must I endure this
generation, He moaned as He came to the edge of His own breaking
point. The folly of man; their blindness and pettiness, and weakness
puts even divine patience to the test. Trials put all of us against the
wall at some point. What do we do? We hang on. Many rescues
take place because victims are able to hang on just a little longer
than what seems possible.
Jesus had to endure the weakness of those who loved Him as well
as the wickedness of those who loathed Him.
O who like thee, so calm, so bright,
Thou Son of man, Thou Light of light!
O who like thee did ever go
So patient through a world of woe!
Those who are not willing to endure trials will just not become what
God intends for them to be. If the Son of God needed to learn
obedience by what He suffered, how much more must we endure to
learn. It is just a part of God's universal plan for all life to grow by
degrees, and by struggle.
I wish I were big the acorn said,
Like the great, green oak tree, over head,
Cool shadows it throws for all who pass,
But I am so useless and small--alas!
Only be patient, a kind voice spoke,
I was not always a mighty Oak;
For my beginning was humble, too;
Once I was an acorn--just like you!
Roberta Symmes
Emerson said, "Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience."
Study of one of the great Sequoias in California indicate it was a
sapling in 271 B.C. 516 years later it was damaged by fire. For over
a century it repaired that damage, and grew layer after layer over
the scar. God built patience into that mighty tree, and it survived.
You and I have the potential for patience as well, but we must
choose to develop it, and only testing can help us do that. Nothing
can be more practical than for us to ask God for the wisdom to see
the value in testing, so that we do not waste anything.
