Patience is not surrendering or giving up. It is a strategy for overcoming and winning.
OUTLINE
PROBLEM
injured on the ice, nothing you can do.
main problem in our lives
Patience was the response of people who didn’t have the freedom to define their own goals or make choices. Notably patience was a response of slaves, for whom it was an inevitability, not a virtue.
not so the ability to withstand, but the ability to overcome, the ability to endure to the point of victory.
GOD
In embodying patience, Christ perfectly expressed the way that God works to bring God’s mission to completion.
1 Timothy 1:16 – But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.
God waits for the time when humans will be converted from idolatry, malice, and crime to fullness of life.
APPLICATION
Christians can be patient, believing that in him all things are possible, that no action on their part is urgent. Patience grows out of praising the God who holds all things securely. saw themselves as collaborators with God, they didn’t need to manipulate things.
“Now, nothing undertaken through impatience can be transacted without violence, and everything done with violence has either met with no success or has collapsed or has plunged to its own destruction.”
Patience, on the other hand, brings new possibilities
Job if he had continued in his prosperity—and that first part commonplace. but now his life possesses an enduring fruitfulness which blesses multitudes every day!
business people Christians – “change sides, – turning the other cheek, going two miles. not to quarrel
spectators watching to see how the Christians respond to persecution. —Christians treating their neighbors well and behaving courageously in the arena—is at the core of the church’s witness.
VISION
Patience is hopeful: It entrusts the future confidently to God.
Christ perfectly expressed the way that God works to bring God’s mission to completion. God, in dealing with Israel was never in a hurry.
The people rejected killed Jesus, but did not frustrate God’s purposes. God’s mission unhurried unstoppable.
Patience is not in a hurry: Patient Christians live at the pace given by God, accepting incompleteness and waiting.