Ongoing patience

The Lord Jesus loves his people so much, that every day he is still doing for them much that is analogous to washing their soiled feet. Their poorest actions he accepts; their deepest sorrow he feels; their slenderest wish he hears, and their every transgression he forgives. He is still their servant as well as their Friend and Master. He not only performs majestic deeds for them, as wearing the mitre on his brow, and the precious jewels glittering on his breastplate, and standing up to plead for them, but humbly, patiently, he yet goes about among his people with the basin and the towel.

He does this when he puts away from us day by day our constant infirmities and sins. Last night, when you bowed the knee, you mournfully confessed that much of your conduct was not worthy of your profession; and even tonight, you must mourn afresh that you have fallen again into the selfsame folly and sin from which special grace delivered you long ago; and yet Jesus will have great patience with you; he will hear your confession of sin; he will say, "I will, be thou clean"; he will again apply the blood of sprinkling, and speak peace to your conscience, and remove every spot. It is a great act of eternal love when Christ once for all absolves the sinner, and puts him into the family of God; but what condescending patience there is when the Saviour with much long-suffering bears the oft recurring follies of his wayward disciple; day by day, and hour by hour, washing away the multiplied transgressions of his erring but yet beloved child!

To dry up a flood of rebellion is something marvellous, but to endure the constant dropping of repeated offences--to bear with a perpetual trying of patience, this is divine indeed! While we find comfort and peace in our Lord's daily cleansing, its legitimate influence upon us will be to increase our watchfulness, and quicken our desire for holiness. Is it so?

From Charles Spurgeon's Evening by Evening, the reading for October the 24th. 

Silence

Silence helps facilitate the internal transforming power of God. As we enter into silence, we create space in which God can work. Silence allows us to become better lovers of others as we experience the love of God within us. Richard Foster puts it this way: "Like Jesus, we must go away from people so that we can be truly present when we are with people." Silence develops the spirit of patience within us. It equips us with clarity and purpose as we engage in acts of service and mission within the world.

Mae Elise CannonJust Spirituality

Provoking God

From the additional notes to The Treasury of David, Psalm 106, by Charles Spurgeon.  This note relates to verse 7.

Provoking God imports an affront upon his longsuffering, and his patience. The movings of nature in the breasts of mankind, tell us how keenly, how regretfully, every man resents the abuse of his love; how hardly any prince, but one, can put up an offence against his acts of mercy; and how much more affrontive it is to despise majesty ruling by the golden sceptre of pardon, than by the iron rod of penal law. But now patience is a further and an higher advance of mercy; it is mercy drawn out at length; mercy wrestling with baseness, and striving, if possible, even to weary and outdo ingratitude; and therefore a sin against this is the highest pitch, the utmost improvement, and, as I may so speak, the ne plus ultra of provocation. For when patience shall come to be tired, and even out of breath with pardoning, let all the invention of mankind find something further, either upon which an offender may cast his hope, or against which he can commit a sin. But it was God's patience the ungrateful Israelites sinned against; for they even plied and pursued him with sin upon sin, one offence following and thronging upon the neck of another, the last account still rising highest, and swelling bigger, till the treasures of grace and pardon were so far drained and exhausted, that they provoked God to swear, and what is more, to swear in his wrath and with a full purpose of revenge, that they should never enter into his rest. Robert South.

Self-glorification

[James] Denney urged his flock to love their neighbors in need and “to spend and be spent in the teeth of all discouragement.” He pressed them to shrink from “the impiety which seeks in successful work the ground of self-glorification.”

These prescriptions transcend the specific problem Denney was addressing. They are words for us in all seasons. We need to practice a “patient continuance of well doing,” no matter what the difficulties or obstacles. As Paul put it, we should “not grow weary in doing what is right for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). Despite the temptation to cut and run, or to burn-out, we need an ongoing commitment to doing God’s work in ministry, through all our days and all our circumstances. This patience needs to be continual, grounded in the trust that God is at work in what we do.

When things go well, on the other hand, we may be tempted to think we have done nicely! We pat ourselves on the back for what has been achieved. The cult of “success” is always before us, luring us into its grasp and urging us to attribute whatever has been accomplished to our own abilities, smarts, and strengths. We can easily turn in upon ourselves to ascribe  all goodness to our own efforts.

But this we need to resist. As Denney said, there is “the impiety which seeks in successful work the ground of self-glorification.” In our better moments, we know all things rest in God; and God’s grace is the ground for all that emerges through anything we do. I’m always reminded that “success is not a biblical category”! We are not called to be “successful;” we are called to be faithful. Again, Paul reminds us that in “whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Whatever goodness arises from what we do, the glory is God’s, not our own.

from The Patient Continuance of Well Doing, by Don McKim

Patience...

We’ll continue to practice faithful presence even when the numbers don’t add up, to be good friends even when fear of the unknown threatens to swallow us whole, to be joyful though we’ve “considered all the facts.”  It’s not about a heroic effort to save a neighborhood; rather, I hope it’s about becoming a community of people who can hold our hands open to the promises of radical hope and perceive signposts of success that portend the mysteries of eternity — and I’ll take that work with a heaping side of patience, please.

Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma
"A side of patience" in catapult magazine

Patience with God

Patience is what I consider to be the main difference between faith and atheism. What atheism, religious fundamentalism, and the enthusiasm of a too-facile faith have in common is how quickly they can ride roughshod over the mystery we call God – and that is why I find all three approaches equally unacceptable. One must never consider mystery “over and done with.” Mystery, unlike a mere dilemma, cannot be overcome; one must wait patiently at its threshold and persevere in it – must carry it in one’s heart – just as Jesus’s mother did according to the Gospel, and allow it to mature there and lead one in turn to maturity.

From Patience with God: the story of Zaccheus continuing in us, by Tomáš Halik