“Running with Patience”
By Rev. Chris Curvin
Chris is a Pastor in the Presbyterian Church, USA. He serves at Church of the Palms in Sarasota, Florida, one of the largest congregations in that denomination. He has recruited several thousand new members in the last decade and has helped to develop contemporary worship services for his own church and others. Chris also serves as Peace River Presbytery’s New Church Development Consultant for a new mission church. Chris is an advisor to ecumininet™ online! and is a FaithShapes!® Consultant with Spiritual Systems, Inc.

I have long admired people who have a patient personality. Patience can be defined as willingness or ability to tolerate delay or difficulty. Patience has received a lot of attention in the medical field as research demonstrates that the degree of patience you have is related to high blood pressure and heart disease.

Do you have the ability to calmly endure delay and inconvenience? If not you may be risking your health.

Many restaurants are places that you have to wait and have patience. I’ve thought about this to some extent… The other day my wife and I were waiting for a table at a restaurant and I started making notes with crayons on the children’s menu and she asked me what I was doing. I told her to leave me alone in my impatience and that I was working on my sermon on having more patience! This is what I wrote down in red crayon:

There are at least six waits in a restaurant:

First, you wait to get a seat.

Second, you wait to get the menu.

You wait to order.

You wait to get the food.

You wait for the bill.

You wait for the bill to be picked up.

One thing that makes patience even harder to come by is that we are all thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that the sheer amount of work production is the measure of a person’s worth to society, company, and family.

Jesus was obviously a loaded with patience. For Jesus, sometimes his disciples, his students, failed to act like disciples most of the time, yet Jesus continued to teach them and he was patient with them when they did not understand his parables and teachings.

In investigating patience in the Bible I discovered it was not what I thought it was. For example, in James 1:4, the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible substitutes the word “endurance” for “patience.” It says, “Let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.” In other places patience is translated as “endurance” or “enduring patience.”

Hebrews 12:1 reads, “Let us run with patience...” Another translation, however, says, “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us...” Here we see patience is not characterized by sitting around, it refers to running!

Just think what patient people the athletes who participate in the Olympics must be. All the training over many years, the strict diets, the constant exercise, the stress of the competitions to be the best, trying to find sponsorships; I never before thought before of Olympic athletes as people with lots of patience until I read the translation, “Let us run with patience.”

Now this term for patience is used often in the Bible, interestingly enough, to describe our wonderful God. And this is true of all the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23. And, do you know, in the Bible, most often, whom it is that God’s patient with? It's us. It's you and me! God doesn't quit on us. God does not grow weary of doing good for us. God just delights in doing good for you and me.

This is interesting, the Hebrew word used for patience in the Old Testament, originally meant “long in the nose!” And it's taken from the fact that when somebody gets impatient or angry their nostrils tend to flare up. Have you ever noticed that when somebody gets mad...their nose does funny things? Their nostrils flare? So, in the Hebrew language, they would say someone who didn't blow up and was patient was long in the nose!

So, we all know that the default mode of the human race is impatience and frustration. So, your job is not to manufacture patience or perseverance - don't just go around saying, "I'm going to be more patient. I'm going to try harder to be patient." Remember it is the job of the Spirit to produce the fruit of patience and your job is to remain connected to the vine, Jesus Christ.

Let me encourage you… In the midst of adversity or when you have to make a decision to make, H-A-L-T. This means, do not make a decision when you are: Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired.

Have you ever tried to make an important decision when you are in one of these four states?

Let us be assured that whatever we are going through, God is working out a plan. We all need patience. May God work it in you and in me… especially when we are running!

“2Count it all joy, my brothers, [2] when you meet trials of various kinds, 3for you know that the testing of your faith produces patience (steadfastness or endurance).. 4And let patience have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 5:2-5)

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