The Purpose of Patience
(week 09/08)
Olubi Johnson
Patience is not just waiting passively for a long time; rather it is waiting actively: remaining consistent in the application of spiritual law: believing, confessing, and praying in the spirit with tongues (1 Corinthians 14.2) and groanings (i.e. travail Galatians 4.19, Romans 8.26) concerning the promises or purposes of God until the answer or purpose comes into physical manifestation.
James 1:2-4 (KJV): My brothers, count it all joy when you fall into different kinds of temptations, (3) knowing that the trying of your faith works patience. (4) But let patience have its perfect work, so that you may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing.
The purpose of patience is to let God’s work in us be perfectly completed and finished.
Many times the work of God in us is aborted, or brought forth prematurely and so distorted in a distorted form because we did not let patience have her perfect and complete work.
For instance, it takes a baby about 9 months to develop properly in the womb before it can be born to survive outside the womb. A premature baby brought forth after say 3 or 6 months will not have all its organs and members properly developed and so will not be able to survive unless it is placed in an incubator that simulates the same conditions in the womb.
While in the womb the baby continues to receive oxygen and nutrition from the mother through the umbilical cord; in the same way the purposes/promises of God in the womb of our spirits, continue to receive spiritual nutrition and power, through patience in believing, confession, praying in the spirit in tongues and travail, until that purpose/promise comes to full term and can be brought forth into physical manifestation.
So the purposes/promises of God in our lives that are not allowed through patience to develop properly and are brought forth prematurely are many times a distorted version of what God intended and sometimes are spiritually dead.
Hebrews 10:35-36 (KJV): Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great recompense of reward. (36) For you have need of patience, so that after you have done the will of God you might receive the promise.
Hebrews 6:12 (KJV): …that you be not slothful, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Patience is an essential ingredient of divine love: love begins (1 Corinthians 13.4) and ends with patience (1 Corinthians 13.7):
1Corintians 13:4-7 (KJV): Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily. (5) It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]. (6) It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail. (7) Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].
You cannot walk with God if you do not develop patience.
How then do we become patient?
By perfecting the mercy and grace of God: acknowledging the Lord for mercy every conscious hour (Matthew 24.42) and confessing our sins to clean with the blood, asking for life and praying in tongues every six hours (Mark 13.35, Deuteronomy. 6.7, 2 Samuel. 6.13).
