Overview
This teaching examines “Patience vs. Stress and Frustration Part 1” through 1 Corinthians 13, 2 Peter 3, 1 Peter 3, Psalm 25, showing how patience, know, don’t shape a believer’s relationship with God, daily choices, and service to others.
Transcript
Understanding Patience vs. Stress and Frustration Part 1
Well, we’ve learned about grace and community. We’ve learned about forgiveness and peace, and let’s consider patience. 1st Corinthians 13, please.
1st Corinthians 13. I’m going to ask you to do something, which maybe you already do, but in case you don’t, I’m going to ask you to listen with your heart. The world doesn’t teach you to listen with your heart.
It teaches you to listen with your head. The Bible was never meant to be an academic proposition. It’s designed to help God’s people.
And when we listen with our heart, God can make impressions on your soul. I don’t care how young you are, and I don’t really care how old you are, and I don’t care what background you come from, what state you come from, what’s your socioeconomic background. I don’t, because God can reach you today, this morning, but you’ve got to be willing to listen, man.
You’ve got to open your heart to him. I’m not going to open the eyes of your understanding. Some people think that that’s what teachers do and ministers do, and they don’t.
God does that. But you’ve got to be willing to listen. And perhaps he’s already told you some things along the way this weekend, maybe along your life.
And maybe this morning, you’re ready to hear him. You’re ready to listen to him. He is your guide to this life.
He is the one. There is no other. We help each other, and we partner with him.
We plant water. But only he can bring the increase of the word in your life. He can cause it to grow.
But you’ve got to be willing to listen. If you tune me out or you tune your brothers and sisters out, that’s your decision. But this topic is so needed.
Patience. And let me first say that patience comes from God. It’s not a man-made contrivance.
He provided it to help our need. He saw what we would be like. Patience is something God is very willing to help you with.
The choice is yours and mine, whether we’re going to apply it or not. Secondly, because it’s from God, despite what people tell you, despite what people think, each Christian has an endless supply at our disposal. You have an endless supply of patience.
Oh, no, not me. I’m fiery. I’m all these kind of things.
That’s all senses. You have an endless supply of patience. We’ll see it.
And thirdly, patience is not passive. It’s actually an active demonstration of love. 1 Corinthians 13 enumerates many different demonstrations of love.
And the first one noted in verse 4, the word charity is the word for love, is suffereth long. We could understand it as patience. Now I want to just describe for you why, to help us understand.
The Biblical Foundation
It’s the only reason why I’m going to bring up the Greek, because it’s going to help you understand. It’s the Greek word makrothumia. It’s made up of two words.
Makro means long or large. Thumia means passion. And when these two words put together, it makes a compound word.
And it means to be long in passion, meaning before you get to your fuse and you explode. It means long. When we’re challenged with irritation, frustration, anger, or we’re, you know, kind of reactive negative impulses, when we’re tempted to force life or even desire to simply give up, patience is what we need.
At our greatest point of need, when we were dead in trespasses and sins, and believe it or not, that was the greatest point of need you ever had and you ever will have. It was already answered through Christ Jesus, our Lord, because God loved us so much that he gave us his son. And it’s the knowledge of salvation that’s going to help you with patience.
Let me ask you a question. What’s the largest or the longest thing that you know of? Longest? Eternity. That’s the essence of demonstrating love through patience.
We have to bring salvation into it. We have to bring eternity into it. Look at 2 Peter 3, please.
See, patience is the energized expectation of eternity in the moment. Patience sets the moment or the challenge within the backdrop of eternity. Christians were told that they were saved for a reason.
He didn’t surprise us at the end. He told you up front because he wanted us to know that we’ve been saved from the wrath to come, that we have eternity to look forward to. And these aren’t just trite and cliches.
They actually have impact and import in your soul. That’s why I’m saying you got to listen with your heart. 2 Peter 3. Peter was a great man.
I tear up when I think about him. Great man. In verse 9, it says, The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering, patient.
It’s our word there. To us word. Why is he patient? Not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
In God’s heart, the reason why he’s patient is because he wants the salvation blessings to unfold in a person’s life. Do you want to be patient? What’s going to help you is the desire to see the salvation impact of the risen Christ in a person’s life. Again, like I told you, God’s going to show you things, so don’t be surprised.
Don’t fall out of your chair when he shows you something. He will. See, God is patient because he doesn’t want anybody to perish.
Look at his heart. And that all should come to repentance. Those words should come mean to make room for, to make room for, and repentance is a change of mind.
When you’re patient with a person, you’re making room for them to change their mind. You cannot force them. You can’t force anybody, and that’s a delivering truth.
But what you’re doing is you’re making room for them to change their mind from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God. That’s why it’s active. And you know, you and I don’t know what actually goes on in people’s hearts.
Examples and Spiritual Lessons
Even our spouses and the people that we love and are very close with, we don’t know everything. God does, though. Sometimes the room in this person’s heart can be ignited by a catastrophic event, like the malefactor that was crucified with Christ.
He’s coming to the end of his life, and yet God worked in Christ while he’s on the cross to listen to this man. And he responded to that man, and he said, today, hear me. You will, in the future, be with me in paradise.
See, you bring salvation into the moment. It’s not something for Sundays and Wednesdays. It’s every day.
Patience begins with God. That’s why people have such trouble with it. They think it’s all on them.
I have to be patient. How does that work for you? Not very good. Well, how about we get God involved? 2 Peter, same chapter.
Look at verse 15. And account that the longsuffering, the patience of our Lord is what? It is salvation. That’s why he’s patient.
In the moment, sometimes it’s difficult to see salvation and eternity. I understand. I’m human too.
But the more you can build it into your heart and life and realize that all this is going to go, nothing you can see is going to last, the more you build that in the backdrop of your soul, you’ll bring patience into every situation. Even as our beloved brother Paul, also according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you, Paul authenticating and corroborating the apostle Paul. How fantastic that is.
See, patience does involve some level of understanding. That’s why children have a difficult time with it. Children often see their circumstances in the moment and they’re enthralled.
They’re enslaved in the moment. They typically do not bring the current circumstances into a broader context. They don’t extend that fuse.
They got a short fuse unless they learn and they’re taught. You know, I got no fancy dancy techniques to help you about patience. But if this gets into your heart, I mean deep into your heart, you will not be the same when you leave here.
You will not. But you got to be willing to listen. Now, he’s already told you things and you know he’s told you.
I don’t have to know it. You have to know it. There’s things that he’s impressing upon your soul.
There are things that he is showing you that you need to know about yourself, perhaps, or about others in your sphere of influence, perhaps things about him. See, children do not bring the current circumstances to a broader context. You know, they’re hungry.
They see mom is cooking on the stove, but it’s not fast enough. They have a short fuse. They immediately move into breakdown mode.
Impatience is the removal of God in a situation. Impatience. That’s why patience is to include him.
Part of understanding that helps us be patient is that there are things beyond our control in this life. And you have to be honest with that. Let me just explain a few.
Faith in Action
One of them is free will. You and I do not have the authority from God to rule any other person. Nobody can rule anybody else, meaning control their life.
Free will. Another one is God’s timing. His timing is perfect, but we get impatient.
But he already knows what he’s doing. We have to trust him. So there are factors and variables in life that we do not understand because we see through a glass darkly, meaning our reflection is an enigma.
It’s a riddle because simultaneously we’re seated in heaven, yet we’re here on earth and dealing with challenges. We do not have the ability at this point to grasp all things at once. God does.
That’s why you can trust him. So why is salvation key to understanding patience? That’s why we got to go back to the beginning to begin to understand the answer to this question. In the Garden of Eden, before there was sin and death and corruption, there was no need for salvation.
Therefore, I’m not even sure that Adam needed patience because everything was right there for him. He was in perfect union with the creator and nature. They were in perfect harmonic balance.
There was no discord in anything between them. Man had everything he needed. He was in a perfect state of harmony.
Man didn’t need salvation, but man did need prevention. God needed to prevent him from experiencing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which basically means to experience evil as if it’s good, making no distinction between evil and good. That’s why it’s the same tree.
But Adam disobeyed. We know this. And from then on, the struggles of man became very difficult.
The earth was cursed. The soil was cursed. Man needed to labor.
Not everything was at his fingertips as it was in the original arrangement. Then you add on an active adversary into the equation. You add relationships beyond Adam and Eve.
You begin to add possessions, and you begin to add children, and you begin to add survival. All these different things came into play that weren’t existent within the original arrangement. Man became occupied with these challenges, so patience in all things was needed because life did not freely flow as it once did in the perfect balance that God originally designed.
Because Adam’s disobedience and sin and death entered into the arrangement, and the result was an imbalance with nature and a state of antagonism with God. Look at 1 Peter 3. So patience actually became a need. 1 Peter chapter 3. Man was around for about 2,000 years or so after Adam and Eve, and it got so bad that every thought of man’s heart was only evil continually, and God could not allow it to continue.
He did not destroy things. He allowed it to happen because of the evil of man. That was the first judgment of man.
The second one will be the lake of fire, and that’s permanent. This one was a cleansing of the earth. 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 20, which sometimes we’re disobedient talking about the evil spirits that unleashed the flood during the time of Noah.
When once the what? Long-suffering. So is God patient? Yes. Yes.
Walking in Love and Confidence
Of God waited in the days of Noah. Tells Noah to build the boat. Took about 100 years as far as we can calculate.
Why didn’t he just blink his eyes and the boat appears? Because God works with free will, and he works with the principles that he instituted in life. But yet we want things right away. We want everything right away.
That’s the original arrangement. You and I are not in that original arrangement anymore. While the ark was preparing, we’re in few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
Again, we see salvation involved with patience. This is very deep truth here. God is aware of your capability.
Do you think he was aware of the stamina of Noah? His skill level? Did anybody help him? I don’t know. I can’t read that anybody even lifted a finger with him. I don’t know.
Maybe they did, but he doesn’t say. Does God know your situation? Does he? Now sometimes he may speed things up a bit. That’s okay.
That’s his prerogative. But he works with you where you are. And what a lesson for us to work with people.
Work with them where they are. In the backdrop of eternity, you will have patience in that situation. Like God did.
He allowed this situation to unfold. You know, I know it’s easy to say that God already knew the outcome. This is true.
Do you always know the outcome? No. Do you know who does know the outcome? That’s where trust comes in. Patience is part of this whole trust thing.
Where you rely on him to provide what you need when you need it. The more the salvation of the Lord lives within you, the more you and I work out our own salvation with fear and trembling or respect and awe, the more it works within your soul, the more patience you’re going to have. They tie in so well.
Because this is the way of our Father. Look at James. Please.
James. Hebrews James. The world’s going to tell you that patience is a technique or a virtue.
And I’m not saying that things don’t help you. Maybe things help you. I don’t know.
But it’s got to be in the depth of your soul. It’s actually a spiritual verity. It’s actually a fruit of the Spirit, which we’ll get to here in a little bit.
But here in James chapter five, verse seven, it says, Be patient. Be patient. Therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.
Behold, pay attention. Behold, open your eyes. The husbandman, a husbandman is a farmer.
Applying the Teaching in Daily Life
The farmer waited for the precious fruit of the earth and had long patience for it until he received the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient. Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord.
Draweth nigh. So now God is telling us, hey, listen, pay attention to the farmer. The farmer knows you don’t plant and then the next day you have your crop.
We are surrounded with an illustration of patience all over, everywhere. When things grow organically, meaning they are not interfered by man, they run their proper course. That’s the way God designed it.
But yet we don’t do that with people. We think that people have to be forced to grow. Children, same thing.
You can’t do it. It doesn’t work. When we are forcing situations, we are moving into the realm of man and not God.
And the farmer is a great illustration for us to understand. Look at verse 10. Take, my brethren, the prophets.
These are men and women that spoke for God. And yet at times they were challenged, but yet they knew the outcome, God’s glory or judgment, one way or the other, who have spoken in the name of the Lord for an example of suffering, affliction and of patience. They’re an example that at times you will be challenged.
At times those you love will be challenged. But God is saying that in the scripture, as we allow the scripture, the word of God to really saturate our souls, we will gain in this category of patience and stop trying to control everybody. It doesn’t help you.
Christ didn’t do that. God doesn’t do it either. Look at Hebrews chapter six, please.
Can you hear me? That was a joke, kind of. Hebrews six, verse 10. For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, which you have showed toward his name.
And then you have ministered to the saints and do minister. He knows what you’ve done in your life. You don’t need to tell everybody necessarily.
He already knows. He doesn’t forget. And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of the hope unto the end.
The hope is a way of expressing the realization of our salvation, that you be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith, faith is to believe God. It’s that simple. People talk about the law, believing, and all this kind of stuff.
Nonsense. Believe God. Believe God.
That’s what faith is. Now, here’s a clue about faith. He’s got to give you something to believe.
He gave Noah a task. When he’s 500, build the boat. Noah did it by faith.
A Life Shaped by God’s Word
You can’t have faith without God giving you something to believe. Once he gives you something to believe, then you believe him. That’s faith.
Now, when Jesus Christ comes along, it’s a different story. God gave us his son to believe. That’s the faith of Jesus Christ.
And it elevates us to a stature of sons of God, and that we have the ability and the capacity to walk in the steps and do the works of Jesus Christ. Christians may not necessarily rise to that. That’s okay.
No judgment on anybody. But that’s still the truth. We are to follow them through faith and what? Patience.
Even though God has told you something, you’re believing God in that situation? Perhaps you need patience. Look at Psalm 25. Psalm 25, please.
Just like the man on the cross, we don’t know his entire life, that malefactor that Christ spoke to. We don’t know anything about his life other than he was condemned as a criminal. Maybe his whole life was waiting for that one moment.
I don’t know. But I know that moment happened. So don’t give up on people.
Psalm 25, verse 9, the meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way. Part of his way is patience. Do you really want to learn patience or just play? If you really want to learn, he’ll teach you.
He will teach you personally. He will escort you into the inner sanctums of his heart regarding patience. He will teach you.
Look at Psalm 27. Psalm 27, verse 11, teach me thy way. What a great prayer.
Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path because of mine enemies. Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies, for the false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty, it’s everywhere. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Yep, wait, wait, wait on the Lord. So key to patience is having your expectations in God and not in people, not even yourself. Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart.
Wait, I say, on the Lord. The world will not teach you this. Carnal Christians will not teach you this.
People that walk in love will teach you this, that our expectation is in the Lord. Our expectation is in him. And I know we all have our challenges in this life, family, friends, work, health.
Oh, we all have them. Where’s your expectation? If your expectation is in the Lord, you’re going to do good because perhaps there’s variables and things that need to come together before he can pull the trigger. But make no mistake, he has not forgotten about you.
He’s not put you on a shelf. He’s anticipating and expecting that as you and I turn to look at the bush, as Moses did, he’ll call out to you. So that’s our first half.
Wait on the Lord, and we’ll be back later.
Key Takeaways
- When we’re challenged with irritation, frustration, anger, or we’re, you know, kind of reactive negative impulses, when we’re tempted to force life or even desire to simply give up, patience is what we need.
- Man became occupied with these challenges, so patience in all things was needed because life did not freely flow as it once did in the perfect balance that God originally designed.
- We don’t know anything about his life other than he was condemned as a criminal.
- It was already answered through Christ Jesus, our Lord, because God loved us so much that he gave us his son.
- Even our spouses and the people that we love and are very close with, we don’t know everything.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main message of “Patience vs. Stress and Frustration Part 1”?
This teaching examines “Patience vs. Stress and Frustration Part 1” through 1 Corinthians 13, 2 Peter 3, 1 Peter 3, Psalm 25, showing how patience, know, don’t shape a believer’s relationship with God, daily choices, and service to others.
Which scriptures are central to this teaching?
The teaching draws especially from 1 Corinthians 13, 2 Peter 3, 1 Peter 3, Psalm 25, Psalm 27.
How can believers apply this teaching?
Even our spouses and the people that we love and are very close with, we don’t know everything.
Scripture References
1 Corinthians 13; 2 Peter 3; 1 Peter 3; Psalm 25; Psalm 27
This text was prepared from the teaching audio or source document. Please verify scripture references against your own Bible.
