Faith is the building block on which spiritual graces are built. This daily devotional looks at how faith leads to patience and perfection.
Nuggets
- We gain patience when we submit to and endure the trials that God sends us to grow us to be more like Him.
- Trials grow our patience with the end result being perfection.
Devotions in Living Out Our Faith series
One thing it is sometimes easy for me to forget is faith is a spiritual grace.
Adam and Whitelaw put faith in perspective. Adam wrote, “Faith is the primary, radical grace of the Christian character. From it, as a root, all the others spring; on it, as a foundation, all the others are built.” Whitelaw wrote, “Faith is the organ by which Christ’s glory is discerned; Repentance the tear-drop that keeps the soul’s eye pure and clean.”
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If we don’t have faith, the other spiritual graces do not matter to us. They cannot even take root in us if faith is not in our hearts.
One of the other spiritual graces is patience. Let’s see how James tied it to faith.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Here is a running list of nuggets for the series.
Patience, the Product of Faith
“for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (Jas. 1: 3 ESV)
We gain patience when we submit to and endure the trials that God sends us to grow us to be more like Him.
It is so hard for us to think that we are going to get blessings out of trials. We do.
That is how we grow. Many times, that is the best way to grow our patience.
James said that — deep down — we know. We know the trials — the testing of our faith — grows patience.
And we want and need it to be as fully grown as we can get!
How many times are we ready to give up on something? How many times are we down to our last nerve? How many times are we impatient when waiting for something to happen? How many times do we want something to be over?
Patience is all about waiting. It is about putting aside our timetable to follow God’s. It is being content with whatever circumstances in which we find ourselves. It is about not complaining because we know God sees the whole picture and where He is taking us.
There is so many times we bite on ourselves because we feel we have little patience. We forget that patience is a work in progress. I think it is right there below working out our salvation in the amount of time it takes to get it right.
The way we get it there may not necessarily be how much patience we exhibit. It may be how consistent we are at doing it.
We just have to remember that every trial is working on our moral character. Exell put it this way. He wrote, “St. James is not writing of the perfection of unrenewed human nature, but of the sublime possibility of Christian manhood. He is writing of a life that is animated by faith, that is cultured by deep sorrow, and that is capable of holy patience.”
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Let’s look at the verses in another translation. “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (Jas. 1: 2-4 KJV).
Patience is all about enduring. Patience only comes from faith, but it takes work. It is working through the trials.
So, I’ll say it again. We gain patience when we submit to and endure the trials that God sends us to grow us to be more like Him. We gain it through actively working through the trials with a consistent faith in God.
We would call it a work in progress. That magnifies the need to keep working until the process has been completed. If we cut out half way through, we haven’t gained all the patience we could.
That goes back to the concept of waiting. But we’ve been programmed by the worldview that we should expect instant gratification. When it takes a while — especially longer than we think it should — we give up.
It doesn’t work that way. Patience takes time to develop.
Manton made a good observation. He wrote, “The use and ordination of persecution to the people of God is trial.”
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I read this as persecution and trials are the same thing. We tend to actively avoid persecution more than we do trials.
Trials are the everyday things that we think we can eventually handle. Persecution is someone else make our lives unbearable – and possibly ending them.
But isn’t that what God does? He pulls out the big guns to accomplish His sanctification of us.
We’ve got to approach trials with and through faith. We grow faith by showing faith. We determine just how genuine our commitment to God is.
Bottom line is we need to submit to God even in the hardest trial.
Think about all the different varieties of trials that there are. That means trials focus on different aspects of us to strengthen that part of us.
Perfection, the Product of Patience
“And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (Jas. 1: 3-4 ESV)
Trials grow our patience with the end result being perfection.
How do we fill water balloons? We take the balloon and put some water in it. Then we put some more, then some more, until it is filled up.
That is the concept being discussed here. Hopkins explained it this way. He wrote, “This trial of their faith worketh patience. The more a Christian bears, the more he is enabled to bear; his nerves and his sinews knit and grow strong under his burdens.”
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Just as the balloon expands with more water, our patience grows as trials expands our capacity to feel patience.
Let’s stop and think this through a second. We’ve been saying that patience is a steadfast endurance in opposition without losing a positive attitude.
But it is more than that. It is more than just a worldview emotion or even character trait.
It is a spiritual grace and a fruit of the Spirit. (It seems like a lot of the spiritual graces are also a fruit of the Spirit.)
Isn’t that logical? We want to grow in the spiritual graces because they are the attributes of God. When we do, we are rewarded with them.
That is how patience is a precursor to perfection.
But I really like Hopkins’ definition of patience. He wrote, “It is a grace of God’s Spirit wrought in the heart of a true Christian, whereby he is sweetly inclined quietly and willingly to submit to whatsoever the Lord shall think fit to lay upon him; calming all the passions which are apt to rise up in him against God’s dispensations, with the acknowledgment of His infinite sovereignty, wisdom, justice, and mercy, in those afflictions which He is pleased to bring upon him.”
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Let’s try this. Patience is a virtue, a spiritual gift, and a fruit of the Spirit that fosters steadfast endurance through peace when we submit to trials God allows and leads to perfection.
Having patience doesn’t mean we are weak or stupid. It doesn’t mean we can’t – or won’t – complain. Patience doesn’t require us to stay in bad situations.
It means we are submitted to God, no matter what comes our way. We put our relationship with God as a priority regardless how hard the trials are.
What do we gain when we do it God’s way? Read the verse again. “And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (Jas. 1: 4 ESV).
Manton reminded us that the spiritual graces do not reach perfection without the trials.
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Perfect. Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
Glossary
When we are perfected, we will be complete. We will be exactly the way God created us to be. We will no longer have our sinful nature.
We will lack for nothing. We will be in Heaven with God. We’ll be back to what I picture mankind as being in the Garden of Eden.
Patience plays a big part of us getting perfected. We mature as our patience grows.
How do we get there? Discipline. Self-discipline gives us the environment in which we can endure.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
So, as strange as it may seem, God shows His love for us when He allows us to withstand trials. “For the LORD disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child” (Heb. 12: 6 NLT). We are His children.
Glossary
Growing in patience toward perfection is a process. It needs to be a continuous process.
Unfortunately, we are often like the Galatians. “You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?” (Gal. 5: 7 ESV).
In other words, we navigate the Sanctification Road with fits and starts. There is nothing continuous about it.
Yes, we have to begin with salvation. We also have to continue by working out our salvation (Phil. 2: 12) as we grow from milk babies to steak adults. That is what sanctification is all about.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
Yes, patience is something we are going to have to work at and toward. Patience – therefore perfection – isn’t going to be given to us at birth or just drop in our laps.
Remember, we have to make a conscious decision to follow God. There is no entitlement to it.
We have to make choices that bring us closer to God.
It is a three-step process. Justification – sanctification – glorification.
Watson made two really good observations.
1. When James – or Paul or anyone else in the New Testament – talked about patience, it wasn’t about what they had accomplished. It isn’t about what the world would call success. It was always the growth resulting from the trials.
2. The more patience we possess, the greater the work we are given to do. However, growth will be slower. In other words, the process is going to take years.
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Why is patience so important? If we are impatient, that means we don’t think God will successfully see us through the trial. We aren’t totally submitting ourselves to Him.
Making the Connections
Why should we want to go through trials? Adam said it best. He wrote, “Christians, you are not to be satisfied with holiness that is partial either in its extent, its compass, or in its degree. You are to seek that it may fully pervade every power and relation of your being.
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Pusey said that we are to shoot for perfection and not be satisfied with our progress to date. There will always be more progress that we can make until we are changed.
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Both of those quotes acknowledged the growth process in developing patience — and therefore faith.
Another reason we should welcome trials is because that means we are suffering as Christ did. No, the temptations may not be exactly the same.
But Jesus was tempted, and we are, too.
However, the trials show us just how much we need Jesus. It drives us to our knees. Then is where humility comes into play.
We have to realize trials aren’t always just for our sakes. God can use our trials and how we respond to convict or strengthen others. The world watches whether we put our faith in God or deny Him.
How Do We Apply This?
- Navigate the Sanctification Road to gain perfection by enduring trials to grow patience and humility.
- Evaluate our faith to determine where our faith needs to grow.
- Don’t waste our trials – grow from them.
- Go to God in times of temptation, not away from Him.
- Look for the joy in trials.
- Remember the trial itself is a process, so be faithful until the end.
- Manton said to “… work by love, but live by faith …”
- Hold onto the assurance that God never leaves us, even in our trials.
- Create habits that foster grace.
- Recognize the outward walk without the inward faith means nothing to God.
- Completely submit and follow God’s Will.
- Control our earthly desires.
- Pray unceasingly and search Scriptures.
- Study and imitate Jesus.
- Share information about your trials with others in the family of God.
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Look what David said in II Samuel. “David answered Gad, ‘I have great anxiety. Please, let us fall into the LORD’s hands because his mercies are great, but don’t let me fall into human hands’” (II Sam. 24: 14 CSB).
We are going to fall – in other words, fail. We are going to let the trials ignite our anxiety, so that we take our eyes off God and lose all patience and humility that we have developed.
Let us fall into the palm of God’s hand.
Father God. Teach us patience. We want to grow in it so we may become perfected in the day of the Lord. Amen.
What do you think?
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