… so that you may have great endurance and patience, …
Summary: Why we need endurance and patience is a question that helps us understand our relationship with God and his Word.
I found it very interesting to consider why God gives us “all power.” Paul explains why in today’s passage. God wants us to have “great endurance and patience.”
Okay. We understand why God gives us power, but why does he want us to have endurance and patience? What are we supposed to endure? Who are we supposed to be patient with?
Before we answer these questions, I would like to share a story.
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When I was younger, I believed in God, but the Bible was a mystery. It seemed confusing and complicated. I did not understand the language, nor did I understand the concepts.
As a young man, I struggled to find my place in the world. It was a challenge every day. I had a wisp of a faith in God, but no real knowledge. When I attended college, I majored in religious studies and learned all kinds of ways to look at the Bible. Unfortunately, they all tended to look down on the Bible instead of up to it.
From a secular point of view, the Bible is a book about God. It is nothing more than a collection of old writings written by Jews and early Christians. It expresses opinions about God, not facts.
When it comes to opinions, we all have them. The important thing about opinions is to recognize them as such. Opinions are not facts.
The Bible is full of facts, but only if we believe that it is written by God. If we falter on that point, if we doubt that God was able to get his book published, then we won’t believe what the Bible tells us. To put it another way, we will be blind to the facts that God has presented to us in his Word.
So why do we need “great endurance and patience?”
The answer has to do with changes that happen to us when we believe in God’s Word. If we accept the Bible as fact, then everything is different. It is like Alice when she steps through the looking glass in “Alice in Wonderland.”
People who believe in the Bible are transported into a world of angels and demons, kings and queens, and endless adventure. God himself becomes a man and walks among us saying and doing amazing things. Belief in God’s Word not only opens the door to a world we cannot see, it opens the door to faith in God. Faith, in turn, opens the door to miracles.
One of those miracles is the power to overcome the corrupt nature we are born with. Another miracle is to endure the harsh contrast of living with people who don’t yet believe, or worse, who claim to believe but don’t act like it.
As believers, we seem to have one foot in heaven. The other foot, still planted on earth, looks filthy and dead by comparison. Working out God’s will while we live in the flesh requires living in two places. While we are here, we need great endurance and patience.
Application: Practice loving others as God loves us.
Food for Thought: What are the most hurtful sources of pain in a Christian life?
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