The Pastor's Blog

By Larry Day

We live in an amazing time in history – global travel measured in hours; global communications measured in nano-seconds; money available “24/7” from little boxes on every other street corner; every conceivable piece of information (good and bad) is available at a click of the mouse on the internet; fast food, fast cars, fast decisions,  – everything is fast and available now! And, we demand it that way. 

I grant you that it is convenient – and these things are not bad in and of themselves. It has, however, created a culture that cannot tolerate waiting. We don’t want to wait for anything. We insist on instant gratification. We don’t take grandma’s advice and “sleep on it” before making a purchase or a decision.  In short, we have no patience for – Patience! 

Well, you ask, “So what? What’s the big deal? Who cares if we’re impatient?  God cares.  So, we should too!

The bible talks a lot about the subject of patience. First, it’s a very important ingredient in developing another attribute (that we also are in short supply of) called Character. 

Romans 5:3-4
And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about patience; ⁴ and patience, proven character; and proven character, hope;

If we don’t have patience; if we don’t learn how to persevere, we don’t build character capable of to sustaining us for the long haul (or the short haul for that matter).  The individual who is not shaken by trial or temptation, by failure or success, by riches or poverty, by good times or bad – that person who has the patience to endure and persevere will develop integrity and strength. That person’s patience through circumstances will enable him to develop character.

Patience also has a key role in the development of faith itself.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen.

Faith, by its very nature is something that we can’t see. Although faith is something that we experience in the present tense the manifestation of our present faith will be in the future – it may two seconds in the future, or 2 decades, but if we could already see the manifestation – it wouldn’t be faith! 

So, hope is an element of faith. If faith is the substance of things hoped for, then logically if you don’t have any hope then you can’t have any faith. Faith has substance only if the under girding of hope is sufficient.

Romans 8:25
But if we hope for what we do not see, with patience we wait eagerly for it.

So, hope is critical to faith but how do we get hope?

Romans 15:4
For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, that through patience and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

You see… it is Patience that keeps our Hope alive;

and it is Hope that keeps our faith alive;

and it is faith that keeps us alive!