You Can’t Hurry Patience

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Patience, James says, is absolutely necessary if you're going to experience anything of God's goodness in your life. He does not work quickly. He aims to produce pearls in you, but pearls take time and time takes patience. Thanks for joining us today for Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. You know one thing I constantly struggle with? Being patient. These days it seems like the culture almost wants us to be impatient.

You can buy almost anything at the click of a button and it'll show up to your door in no time. In a world with so much excess, one of the things that we don't often have enough of is patience. In today's teaching from James 5, Pastor J.D.

explains what patience is, why it's necessary, and how we can develop it. If you miss any of the teaching this week, or if you'd like to hear it again or share it with someone else, you can find every broadcast at jdgreer.com. But right now, grab your Bible and let's join Pastor J.D. in the book of James.

James 5. I remember being fascinated as a fourth grader when I learned from my teacher, Mrs. Kibler, about how a pearl is formed. Basically, an irritating little grain of sand gets lodged inside of an oyster shell and no matter what it tries, the poor little oyster can't get rid of it. It laments and it struggles. It prays in whatever ways oysters pray. I imagine, you know, Lord, if it be thy will, remove this thine piece of sand from the gullet of thy servant.

But the heavens are silent. The oyster is frustrated, exasperated even, and it's at this moment that that little oyster, to quote a 90s urban poet, feels like it's about to lose its mind up in here, up in here. And so the oyster does the only remaining thing it knows to do to find relief. It coats the grain of sand with a milky substance called aragonite, a substance that the oyster normally uses to make its shell.

And it covers and covers and covers this tiny irritant until that irritant has been transformed into something of great value, which we pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for. At the end of the day, that incredibly valuable pearl hanging around your neck is the result of an irritated oyster bewildered by the fact that God did not answer its aquatic prayers. In chapter five, James explains that God aims to produce pearls in our lives.

And just like with the oyster, for them to develop in us, it's going to take time. And so he says, verse seven, be patient, therefore, brothers. Now you see the word therefore. Therefore connects everything James has said before with what he is about to say next.

So let's just take a moment and think about that. What has James talked about up to this point? He's talked about suffering. He's talked about disappointments. He's talked about frustrations that we have with each other. He's talked about our unanswered prayers and our unfulfilled dreams. And James is saying that in all of these things, God is doing something good.

Even though you've asked God to take away all those things, he's doing something good, but to experience the good, we have to exercise patience. Be patient, therefore, brothers. Patience. Patience. Patience. I hate patience. The Greek word for patience is macrothemia.

Everybody want to say that again? Let's say macrothemia. Say it.

Macrothemia. It just sounds nasty, doesn't it? Let's just all get on the same page for a minute, shall we? You were looking at a guy who is not good at patience. I'm glad my wife is not in here right now or she would be screaming amen so loudly.

It would be distracting and embarrassing. Of all my many, many faults, this one is probably the worst. And I have a feeling I'm not alone. At the grocery store. At the grocery store, are you the kind of person who sizes up all the lines to figure out which one's going to be the quickest? As I'm walking up to the line, I'm calculating who is likely to pay slowly, who is most likely to want to chat with a grocery store clerk, or maybe the worst, who is going to actually pull out coupons?

I'm like, it is 2023, and you're going to rummage through your pocketbook to find a mailer so you can save 20 cents on a head of lettuce. Come on. And if you're really sick, you keep track of who entered the line at the same time you did to see how well you fare against them. And if somebody finishes a couple spots ahead of me, my whole day is ruined. Patience. My lack of patience causes problems in our marriage. Sometimes if Veronica is telling me about something and I feel like she's taking too long to explain it or get to the point, I'll go and I'll kind of go like this. I'm telling you those conversations never end well. And y'all, I know that's wrong and I know it's going to end badly, but I just can't help myself. I'm impatient. And I feel like it's not even entirely my fault.

We live in a culture that seems to have conspired against us to inculcate impatience in us. I mean, one click shopping. I love that. I got Amazon same day delivery and Walmart Plus can have it for me in two or three hours. And it is worth the price of both memberships just to watch them battle it out over who can get it to me faster. And would somebody please get the Amazon drone system we've all heard so much about? Can somebody get that up and working? If we can put a man on the moon, there is no reason why my replacement computer ink cartridge should not be at my door within 15 minutes. Y'all, and if there were ever a business opportunity waiting to happen, it is wetting the drone system to the Krispy Kreme hot now sign. I mean, when that hot now sign comes on, I want a notification on my phone that gives me the option to have a dozen on my desk within five minutes.

There is no telling what I would pay for that. Streaming platforms now offer no waiting gratification in our entertainment. Are you like me and my wife, who genuinely wonder how in the world we used to wait a week between episodes of our favorite shows?

I mean, now if I can't binge the whole series straight through, I don't even want to start watching. We are an instant gratification culture. And while it's convenient, and I love it, it also has its share of negative effects on us. Dr. Paul Brand, who was a renowned orthopedic surgeon who spent half of his career working in Asia and the other half in America, he said, and I quote, people in technologically advanced societies live at a greater comfort level to be sure, but they seem far less equipped to handle suffering and are far more traumatized by suffering when it inevitably comes. Why is that? Why do you think? Why are people today so less equipped to endure pain and suffering?

The magazine Psychology Today ran an article not too long ago, explaining that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of students asking for treatment for anxiety, depression, and addictions on campus. We all know that. We've heard that. But it was their explanation for why this was happening that I found most fascinating. They said, and I quote, for young American adults, there is no reason there is no psychic middle ground anymore. Frustration catapults immediately into crisis. There's no psychic middle ground between desire and the fulfillment of that desire. We don't know what to do with that space, that psychic middle ground. That's called patience.

And we just don't have it. But patience, James says, is absolutely necessary if you're going to experience anything of God's goodness in your life. He does not work quickly. He aims to produce pearls in you. But pearls take time, and time takes patience. So first, let's just read this passage, and then we're going to ask two questions. Number one, what exactly is patience? And then secondly, we're going to ask, how can we develop patience? Verse seven, if you've got your Bibles, be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord.

See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also be patient, establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged.

Behold, the judge is standing at the door. As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast.

You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord in his life, how the Lord is indeed compassion and merciful. Okay, so first, what is patience? Patience, as I said, is the Greek word, macrothumia, and it literally means long suffering. Macro, long, thumia, suffering, long suffering. We're not talking about brief flickers of pain in an otherwise charmed life. We're talking about long seasons of suffering. We make sure you get that because sometimes we think that as Christians, we are entitled to basically charmed lives, hashtag blessed, with occasional moments of suffering, a bad afternoon, a sore thumb, a prodigal that wanders for a few months, but then comes back home.

We get passed over for promotion at work, but very quickly, vindicated, and then rewarded with more. But you see, the word patience in and of itself implies suffering that lasts a long time, a long time. Say it again. Say macro. Macro, do your hands like this when you say it.

Macro, long, thumia. I do this right here for suffering. Okay, long suffering. There's your object lesson for today.

All lightness aside, I know some of you are there now, and I know it's hard. You're in pain. You're single, and you don't want to be single. You can't find a job. You've been treated unfairly. You were lied about.

You were taken advantage of. Macro, thumia. James uses another word in this passage as a synonym for patience, steadfast. Verse 11, behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. Steadfast is the Greek word hoopomoneo, or hyperstand, hoopomoneo.

Think of it as standing that won't quit. Tom Hanks stars in a great movie called Bridge of Spies that illustrates this word very well. The movie recounts the true story of a Russian immigrant named Rudolf Abel who immigrates to America and gets accused of spying for Russia. Tom Hanks plays the American lawyer who defends him. At one point, Rudolf Abel says to the Tom Hanks character, you remind me of somebody in my village that we always called Stoykay Muzhik.

And I know our Russian member's going to light me up later for how I pronounce that, but that's the best I can do. Tom Hanks looks confused when Abel says that. So Abel elaborates. He says this one time, this one time our house was overrun by partisan border guards, dozens of them. My father was beaten. My mother was beaten. And this man, my father's friend, he was beaten too.

And I watched this man. Every time the guards hit him, he stood back up again. So they hit him harder. Still, he got back to his feet. I think because of this, they just stopped the beating.

They let him live. Stoykay Muzhik. I remember them saying, Stoykay Muzhik, which means standing man. Standing man. Standing that just won't quit. That's what James means by steadfast. You keep getting up, you won't quit. In the words of another nineties poet, Chumbawamba, I get knocked down and I get up again.

Ain't nothing going to keep me down. You were listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. I wanted to take a second to shout out a very special group of people, our gospel partners, the team that gives so generously to this ministry each and every month. It's not an exaggeration to say that they are the financial fuel behind everything we do. Including broadcasting Summit Life every weekday. We call them gospel partners because that's exactly what they do. They are actually partnering with us to help make the gospel known around the globe. And this month we are sending each of our faithful givers a set of our scripture memory cards for 2024 to help you really internalize God's word. This ministry couldn't exist without our gospel partners. And it's always a privilege to say thank you with our specially curated featured resource each month. To give a one-time gift or to join with us as a monthly gospel partner, call us right away. The number is 866-335-5220.

Or you can visit us online at jdgreer.com. Now let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD on Summit Life. That brings us to the next question. How do we develop patience? James is going to answer this through a couple of illustrations. Illustration number one is the farmer and the seed. Verse seven, see how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains? So you also, you should be patient like that. What does a farmer do after he plants the seed?

Answer, very little. All he can do is wait. He's got to wait on the rains which are totally out of his control. Sure, sure he can put down some fertilizer, he can keep the crows away, but what happens after the farmer plants the seeds is mostly between the seed, the soil, and the weather. If the farmer is frustrated at the speed of the seed's growth, the worst possible thing he can do is dig up the seed and try to make it grow.

That'll do nothing but kill it. I remember during one particularly challenging season with one of our kids, I felt pretty exasperated. I thought I'd taught everything I was supposed to teach, but it just didn't seem to really be taking in their lives. And so I was frustrated, wondering what I needed to do differently. What had I done wrong? What had I not taught? What had I not said? Where had I not taken them? What experience had I not given them?

Where had I failed? I was talking with a pastor mentor friend that he said, he said, you know, JD, your problem is that you're thinking like a mechanic. And at this point in their lives, you really should be thinking like a farmer.

I said, I don't understand that. He said, well, if a mechanic hears a rattle in the engine, what does he do? He pulls the car over immediately, figures out what's making the rattle, pulls out a wrench and tightens it. If the farmer, however, is frustrated at the growth of a seed, the worst thing the farmer can do is dig up the seed to check on it and try to readjust his planting of it. That is sure to kill it. All he can do is wait, leave it alone.

What do you believe it alone? What happens from this point on is between the seed and the soil. My friend then told me, he said, JD, you and Veronica planted good seed. You need to put your wrenches away right now and stop trying to fix everything. You just got to wait. You got to cover that seed with your prayers. You got to stop trying to fix it and let God do his work. Or to change the metaphor, another mentor told me that the teenage years for my kids are like that scene in Apollo 13, which is another great Tom Hanks movie, by the way.

Tom is no Nicolas Cage, but he easily qualifies as second greatest actor of our generation. The movie recounts one of the early attempts to put a man on the moon. The attempt fails and the spacecraft is badly damaged so they're just trying to get it back home safely.

Because of how badly the space shuttle is damaged, Ed Harris is worried that it's going to burn up when it re-enters the atmosphere. And when it enters the atmosphere, they lose radio contact with it for like, it's like four minutes. And all they can do and all we the audience can do is stare at the place where it is supposed to re-emerge from the atmosphere. Even if you know the history, you know it's coming out, but it's still like the longest, the longest, tensest four minutes of any movie anywhere.

My mentor friend said those four minutes are the teenage years for a parent. It's radio silence. All you can do is stare at the place where they're supposed to emerge. You're like, well, they went in at the right angle. I hope the shields work.

Here's hoping. Now, some of you are wondering what does being an astronaut have to do with being a farmer? Here's what they have in common. It's that middle space, that vacuum of helplessness, that period, that ellipsis of waiting where you've done what you can do. And now all you can do is trust God to send the early and the late reigns. Don't try to dig it up. Don't try to fix it. Stop trying to play God.

Here's this second illustration. The prophets and Job. Verse 10, as an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Many of the prophets, you know, preached for years, meeting with nothing but persecution and opposition. They weren't given big auditoriums.

They weren't given book deals and big honorariums. They were given persecution and opposition before any of their prophecies came true. For example, think of Noah.

Noah, who seemed like a genuine, crazy man, talking about a worldwide flood for 120 years before the first reign of Raphael. Or Joseph, whom God had destined to save Israel and rule Egypt, but was first betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused, and then imprisoned for two decades. Or how about Isaiah, who wrote those beautiful words in Isaiah 53 about a suffering, but victorious savior who would be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities and by whose stripes we would be healed, but whose own life ended not with a big book signing tour or a platinum worship album featuring all those great lyrics.

No. No, Isaiah's life ended, Jewish history tells us, with the rebellious, unbelieving king putting him into a hollowed out log and cutting it in two. That's how his life ended. Or Jeremiah, who for extended periods of time was kept in a dungeon submerged up to his armpits in mud, who suffered so long that he wrote a whole book about it called Lamentations, in which he said, God has driven me into a place of darkness without any light. Surely it gets me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. Or how about Ezekiel, who was told by God to lie on his left side in public for 390 days, each day symbolizing a year of God's discipline on the children of Israel.

390 days. What did the creative team do with that sermon series? You come in here every week and I'm just lying on my side like, yep, same thing this week. Or how about David, who after he'd been anointed king for seven years, lived in caves under threat of death, alienated from his family, lied about and slandered, who could only say, Psalm 13, how long, oh Lord. Or Daniel held in captivity for his entire adult life. Or Paul, beaten and bleeding, chained to the prison walls, ultimately beheaded by Nero.

You tracking with me here? All of these prophets endured long macro stretches of darkness, but for all of them in the end, their words came true. And today we consider them, verse 11, blessed. James says, question, if you'd been living at the same time as they were, would you have considered them, hashtag blessed? Would you have looked at Jeremiah and the dungeon or Daniel and exile or Paul and chains and said, now there, there's a blessed man. It's only now that we consider them blessed, they had to, they had to wait for it.

Macro, thumia. And then James points to one more person whose case is so special that he has to mention him directly by name. You've probably also heard, he says, of the steadfastness of Job. You've seen in his life the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. Poor Job. Job was a man who had legitimately no idea about what God was doing in his life.

There were things happening in the heavenly realm he had no knowledge of whatsoever. And God allowed Satan to inflict on Job all kinds of pain, body pain, family pain, the death of his kids, marriage pain, friend pain. But Job never gave up.

Shtoy kam uzhik, standing man. He kept getting up and in time, Job came to see two things. First, that God's presence never had left him. Job is the one who said in the midst of his pain, I know my Redeemer lives and I know one day I will stand with him alive on the earth. Y'all at the time, Job did not even know half of what it would mean for God to be his Redeemer.

How much it would actually cost God for God to stand there with him on the earth. Job just sensed God had never left him and would redeem him from trouble. Second, Job came to see that even when it felt like God had abandoned his good work in Job's life, he actually hadn't. In fact, we learn at the end of Job's life, Job 42, I think it's verse six or something, the Lord restored the fortunes of Job. After he had prayed for his friends and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. God gave Job back double, which doesn't mean I've told you that that's what always is going to happen in your earthly life. That when you lose your job, that you're guaranteed a new one just around the corner where you work half the hours and get twice the pay.

That's not the point. Job's restoration in chapter 42 is a picture of eternity. How all things will be restored to us all things will be restored to us in eternity. But what Job's life does show you, James says, verse 11, is the purpose of the Lord. You can see from Job that the purpose of the Lord is actually compassionate and merciful. In Job's life, you and I get to have a glimpse of what God will ultimately do with all of us, both in this life and in eternity. We see that though the arc of God's goodness is long, it never stops bending toward goodness and will one day fully resolve into infinite goodness. And that was true even when Job couldn't feel it.

Y'all, Job was the first one to sing. Even when I can't see it, you're working. Even when I can't feel it, you're working. You never stop. You never stop working.

You really can't hurry patience, but thankfully we can always turn to our Heavenly Father to help us grow in that area. Pastor JD, since the beginning of the year, we've focused heavily on ways to create a solid start. A firm beginning to the year that applies to all areas of our faith.

And our current featured resource is no exception. Yes, Miley, when we kick off the new year, we like to restart and reset a lot of different things. It's like a big reset button, right?

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It means speaking God's word to others. That's why we've gone ahead and prepared something specially just for our Summit Life listeners that we think will make living out your faith very practical. And that is a pack of 52 memory verse cards. So if you're one of our listeners, and I feel like there's a lot of you who are looking to infuse your life in a very practical way with the timeless wisdom that is in God's word, then head on over to jdgrier.com and you can reserve your set of these brand new Summit Life memory verse cards.

It's a great way to get started. The 2024 scripture memory cards come with our thanks when you donate today to support this ministry, helping more people dive deeper into the message of the gospel each and every day. Give and request your set when you call 866-335-5220.

Or you can request the set when you donate online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to patiently wait until next week as we conclude today's teaching called You Can't Hurry Patience. So have a wonderful weekend of worship and we'll see you again soon right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.