WORKING PATIENCE

My patience has grown considerably since the Lord Jesus indwelt me and made me a new creature, and that's saying something, for patience was a quality that I possessed very little of, and which I held in extremely short supply before I was born again. But as the Lord began to work his holiness and his other graces in me, he also began to work patience in me. And I came a very, very long way indeed. At least compared to what I was before in the realm of patience. Some people are born patient, and so God doesn't have to deal so much with them concerning patience. But then, they have other areas that they are weak in, and in which naturally impatient people like me are strong. So no matter what the deficit is, God begins to make it up in his elect once he indwells them and makes them new creatures.

And thus, patience is an area that God began to work in me mightily immediately after I was born again. And he has succeeded, for I am infinitely more patient now than I was when I was born again. Certainly, my wife might take exception to that, but in the first place, she didn't know me before I was born again, and secondly, I'm not talking about earthly patience; I'm talking about godly patience, and there is a difference. While godly patience does indeed operate in the natural realm as well as the spiritual, godly patience is nevertheless not earthly patience. Oftentimes they are the exact opposite of each other, and undiscerning people have no clue as to the difference. In fact, in many cases a truly godly patient man might be misconstrued as impatient by worldly standards. But that is not the point here.

The point is the fact that patience, godly patience, is a holy quality, and is a quality that God absolutely demands in his elect. If you don't possess godly patience (and no one possesses godly patience by nature), then God will work it in you if you truly belong to him. One way or the other. Just as he did in me, even by leaps and bounds at times.

However, through the years, in interludes of persistent trial, temptation, and affliction, there have been many times when my patience broke, and I later had to go before the Lord and confess it and have it dealt with.

But no more. Not now, for by the sheer grace of God in Jesus Christ, I may say that I have since turned the corner completely on patience. Through great trials and afflictions over the past years, if there's one quality the Lord has worked in me, it is patience, and I'll tell you why, or at least how. That is, I will show you the why and the how of how and why this happened.

To begin with, it happened like everything else in the true spiritual life in Jesus Christ, which is to say, it came by way of SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. If you'll remember, John tells us that we shall be like Jesus when we see him, for we shall see him as he is. In other words, we shall become like Jesus through PERFECT REVELATION.

It's the same with ALL the good that God works in his elect, including patience. When God works a holy quality in his elect by the Holy Spirit, he ALWAYS does it via REVELATION. SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. That is not to imply, however, that God excludes other means, for he usually doesn't. God will normally employ other means to bring you to the point to where you can RECEIVE REVELATION, for few are spiritually tuned properly to receive revelation as a habit, even among the truly regenerate. It takes a perfect walking in the Spirit to live on that plane.

Thus, before God can give you TRUE SUPERNATURAL REVELATION, he must first bring you to the point to where you can RECEIVE that REVELATION, and sometimes that path is a seemingly devastating, desperately lonely, agonizing path. Just ask Job. I needn't rehearse his story here. Simply suffice it to say that before Job could RECEIVE the transcendent revelation of God which God bestowed upon him, he first had to be thoroughly broken. Had Job not been broken, God would not have been revealed. Jesus understood this, of course, for not only was it the preincarnate Christ who actually interacted with Job, but it was also Jesus who revealed -

In the same way, the Lord Jesus, by his Spirit, began to show me the value of patience, godly patience, and he did so by SUPERNATURAL REVELATION, just as he did with Job, and not only by bringing me to my knees (to my face, and to my deathbed), but in the doing of it, in breaking me completely and by removing all earthly desires from me whatsoever, by then showing me how truly FEW shall be saved, relatively speaking, and by showing me that the vast, vast majority of the human race will be everlastingly shut out of the kingdom of heaven, and will suffer eternal torment and damnation.

You see, once you receive a revelation of the glory that shall be revealed, that eternal weight of glory which shall abide with you and grow and grow and grow for all eternity, and once you receive the revelation of your everlasting felicity in Jesus Christ moment by moment for all eternity, and the unapproachable light that will overtake you and swallow you in a vast ocean of infinite love and peace, and the inconceivable majesty that your very own eyes will behold forever and forever without end in the face of Jesus Christ, and the supernatural certain knowledge that YOU will walk with Jesus in the corridors of the New Jerusalem always and forever, and that you will walk with the holy angels always and forever, and that you will be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light always and forever - I say, once you have received all of this by SUPERNATURAL REVELATION by the indwelling Spirit of Christ, then suddenly the term IMPATIENCE itself becomes merely a euphemism. It can do no other once you've received this revelation.

When you realize how FEW will be saved, relatively speaking, and that YOU are ONE of those FEW, and that you did absolutely NOTHING to achieve that status, that even your faith was a GIFT from the very same Jesus who died and rose for you, and that it was God ALONE who made you to differ, and not from anything FORESEEN, but from EVERYTHING FOREORDAINED, indeed, when you truly SEE these things by EXPERIENTIAL SUPERNATURAL REVELATION, just as Job did, when you truly no longer fear ANYTHING that this world can throw at you -- not loss of life, not loss of health, not loss of wealth, not loss of food and shelter, not loss of reputation or respect or anything else that can be named -- I say, when God brings you TRULY and EXPERIENTIALLY to this point, and then SHOWS you, just as he did Job, the things described above (and much more besides), then patience itself becomes a joy rather than an obstacle. And the longer you wait, the STRONGER your patience gets, not the weaker.

Whereas before your patience began to wear thin through severe trial, temptation and affliction, now it only waxes thicker. Whereas before you tired in trial, temptation and affliction, now you grow stronger, and your strength - your SPIRITUAL strength, at least - is renewed like the eagle. You no longer care for your own ways; you only care for God's ways, and at the root of it all, after the new birth, that is, at the root of it all is the SUPERNATURAL REVELATION that God molded you to receive, for you saw already, spiritually speaking, you saw already Jesus as he is.

You SAW Jesus IN THE SPIRIT in his suffering, and God made you like him. You SAW Jesus IN THE SPIRIT in his hours of agony, and God made you like him. You SAW Jesus IN THE SPIRIT in his wearisome toils and manifold temptations, and God made you like him. You SAW Jesus IN THE SPIRIT in his majesty when he defeated Satan in the desert, and, to a lesser degree, God made you like him. You SAW Jesus IN THE SPIRIT in his Godhood when he walked on water and multiplied the bread and made the lame to walk and the deaf to hear and the blind to see and the dead to live again, and though God did not make you like him in this, God nevertheless put you under him, in the shadow of his wings, so that NOTHING can ever befall you that will be truly harmful. And you SAW Jesus in his desertion and humiliation and death when he died upon the cross, and to a lesser extent, God made you like him, and you SAW Jesus again IN THE SPIRIT when he rose from the dead and ascended on high and led captivity captive and gave gifts to men, and to a lesser extent, God made you like him, for your life is hid with Christ in God, and when Christ, who is your life, shall appear, so shall you also appear with him in glory. Colossians 3:1-4

Indeed, you SAW Jesus IN THE SPIRIT, and you became like him, for IN THE SPIRIT you SAW Jesus AS HE IS. Think not that this will diminish your meeting him face to face in the air, for it won't, but if God has worked this in you, then you can IN THE SPIRIT truly say - AS HE IS, SO ARE WE IN THIS WORLD. 1 John 4:17

And when you understand how HIGH the privilege is that has been granted you, and that you are one of the FEW to whom this privilege has been given, then God has worked his holy quality of patience in you, and it will only grow stronger, now and forever more.

And yet, if you are not born again, if you have never EXPERIENCED Jesus Christ PERSONALLY INTRODUCING HIMSELF to you in the SUPERNATURAL MIRACLE of the NEW BIRTH, you will have no excuse on the day of judgment, for these words of Jesus are now open to you, and if you do not heed them, if you do not heed them here and now, you will have no one to blame but you yourself -

If you will not ask, and keep asking until you receive; if you will not seek, and keep seeking until you find; if you will not knock, and keep knocking until it is opened unto you, then you will go down to the depths of agony and torment for all eternity, and you will have no one to blame but yourself. Wait and see.

Would you be born again? GENUINELY born again?