WAIT WITH PATIENCE

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.

James 5:7-8

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

We live in an era where we can get a lot of things we want fast.

When we’re hungry, we can go to any number of fast food restaurants and go through a drive through window to quickly get a meal and take it wherever we want to eat it. Some convenience stores and airport kiosks in particular offer grab-and-go options which take even less time than that fast food lane.

Short on cash? All you need to do is go to any number of automatic teller machines (known better as ATM’s) and access your bank account or get an advance off of a credit card. In a matter of minutes, you have money dispersed to you and you’re on your way.

Cell phones have allowed us to communicate with one another almost instantaneously, especially via texting, and rather than having to type our feelings and emotions, we have the shorthand equivalent in emojis.

Finally, to keep this from going on and on and on, we have dedicated express lanes on our interstates in many places now. If you want to get somewhere faster (and who doesn’t want to do that), you now can pay for the privilege to do so. Here in Virginia and in other places on the east coast of the United States, the EZ Pass transponders will bill your account when you opt to pay for the luxury of driving in lanes that others won’t because they don’t want to pay.

Yes, we increasingly look for our needs to be met expeditiously - and the quicker the better. The problem with this desire is that we run the danger of applying it to everything in life, to include our Christian faith. If we’re not careful, we’ll treat the Lord as if we would a drive-thru or ATM, expecting that He will give us what we order just a short time after we make the order.

Unfortunately, our relationship with the Lord doesn’t work like that. No person dictates to the Lord what He will do and when He will do it. He is the One in charge, reigning and ruling over His creation and we are all subordinate to Him. We can bring our wants to Him but He will ultimately act on our petitions in His perfect time and in His perfect way. Our job as Christian believers is to trust Him and then wait on Him to work with the confidence that trust brings, a confident waiting that produces patience which we know is a blessed fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).

Herein is the rub. For our yearning for immediacy serves as an enemy and foe of the patience the Lord wants for us to develop and put into practice. This is the call we find in our verses for today from James, chapter 5. Look again at his words here:

Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. Vv.7-8

In first century A.D, we find a very agrarian culture across most of the biblical world, a carryover from Old Testament times. This served as a good foundation for many of Jesus’ parables as they were based on experiences that His prospective disciples could understand.

In our passage for today, we find Jesus’ brother, James, following suit as he encourages his Hebrew Christian readers to wait with patience for the second coming of Jesus. Like today, I am sure there were people so disenfranchised with the way the world was that they felt that Jesus could and would come back at any time to judge all mankind. It was into this space, then and now, that the Word of God speaks in powerful ways. For just as a farmer would wait patiently “for the land to yield its valuable crop” while “waiting for the autumn and spring rains”, so too were the Hebrew Christians supposed to “be patient and stand firm” for “the Lord’s coming as near”.

Some 2,000 years later, we are still waiting patiently and need to continue to. For although we don’t know the exact day and time He will come back, we do know He will, in His perfect and appointed time. Until then, instead of being impatient in our waiting, let us first exercise patience while we go about the work our Savior called us to do, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching all Jesus followers to obey what He commanded. And as we do all this, let us heed this demand found in the final verse of the 27th Psalm:

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. v.14

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.