Patience - Romans 5

In order to grow good fruit, you’re going to need deep roots. There’s an old story about a guy named Parnell Bailey who once visited an orange grove. He was going on a tour and wanted to see how it all worked. In this particular orange grove the irrigation pump had broken down. The season was unusually dry, not a lot of rain and some of the trees were beginning to die for lack of water. The man who was his tour guide then took Bailey to his own personal orchard where the irrigation system was barely used. The trees at this guy’s grove were absolutely flourishing. The first orchard was dying, but the second orchard was doing great. The owner said, “my trees can probably go another 2 weeks without rain, because when they were young I frequently kept water from them. Their hardship when they were saplings caused them to send their roots deeper into the soil in search of moisture. So now, my trees are the deepest-rooted trees in the area. While others are getting scorched by the sun, my trees can reach water at a greater depth. In order to grow good fruit in your life, you’re going to need deep roots. It works for orange groves, but it also works for every single one of us. If you’re just joining us for the first time - we are in the middle of a series called Deep Roots. Good Fruit, and we’re talking, not just about orange groves - but the fruit that grows in our lives when we stay close to Jesus. There’s a passage in Galatians that lists a whole bunch of things - we call them “the fruit of the spirit” - let’s take a look at that. [read Galatians 5:22-23]. These are the features of a life lived close to Jesus. If you’re in here this morning, and you call yourself a Christian - do you see those things showing up in your life? Or even if you’re a first time visitor, just figuring out this whole “following God” thing - do you see how amazing this list is? I think everybody probably wants to have a life full of these fruits. Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness - to grow in these areas, I think it’s something every human, not just Christians, but every human wants to have more of all of these in their life. Have you ever wondered how to have more of these awesome things in your life?

I don’t know about all of you - but my children LOVE fruit. There’s nothing better for our family to do than to hit the different orchards. We do strawberries, and then blueberries and then in the fall we always go get some apples. I remember years ago, we just had the two oldest boys and we went to get some strawberries. Liam was old enough to help us, he could walk down the rows and pick some of the red ones and bring them back, help us fill up our basket. But Amos didn’t quite understand the assignment. He was there to eat. So we would just plop him down in row and we knew he wasn’t going anywhere but he would eat every strawberry within reach. I think we have a picture of that.

Augh, he was so cute - with the little bonnet, why do children insist on getting bigger? But anyways - this is a regular tradition in our household, we love to pick fruit but sometimes - we would get a little ambitious, and bring home giant buckets of strawberries or blueberries or raspberries or whatever it was. And if you bring too many home - even if you eat your body-weight in fruit at every meal, sometimes there’s just no getting through it all. And once you pick a fruit, once it’s no longer attached to the vine - what happens to it? It starts to wither! Like blueberries - they shrink, and wrinkle. They become soft and gross. When a blueberry is ripe - it’s stretched taught, it’s full of life giving juice and water and when you bite into it, it explodes open with tart flavor in your mouth. But the longer it is detached from the vine or bush or whatever - it starts to lose its appeal, it starts to lose its life. It becomes a wrinkled shell, empty of the nutrients and the sustenance it once had - because it is no longer attached to the source. And again, it’s the same thing that happens in our lives. We, each of us, wither when we are apart from God. When we are not attached to the vine, when we don’t grow our roots down deep - attached to God’s Holy Spirit in our hearts - we will wither. And I think that is the perfect word to describe what I see sometimes in the world around me. A withered world. Have you ever felt that way? Withered? Like maybe you used to be vibrant and full of life - full of Jesus and living on a spiritual high ground, but time goes on and you’ve felt detached from the vine, from the source? 

You know what it is for me - where I feel withered? Is Patience. In that list we just heard - love, joy, peace - some of those come easy to me. But patience… it’s almost like, see if this sounds familiar - it’s almost like I start out each day, fresh and ripe - full of patience. But as the day goes on, I wither. My soul gets wrinkled and cranky. And I know I’ve talked about this before, but in our house - the thing that tries my patience the most is bedtime. And it is truly just unfair that bedtime always seems to come at the end of the day, when my patience is all withered up. And for a long time, Dad would be super cranky at bedtime. I was impatient and I always seemed angry. And I remember, Sara would sometimes pull me aside and sort of ask, “hey, everything okay - you seem really upset. You know he’s three years old, right?” And it was always like, “No, I’m not mad - I just…it’s taking longer than I want!” And maybe you don’t have kids, or your kids aren’t little anymore - but how many of us, deep in our hearts, have resonated with that statement. We scream it into the void, we cry out to God - “this is taking longer than I want!” Whether it’s the slowpoke in front of you on the freeway or in the grocery store. Whether it’s the promotion at work or the finding of true love, or waiting for vacation or retirement or that pregnancy announcement. Whether is a solution to family drama or for the seasons to change. We have, all of us, cried out at some point - this is taking longer than I want. It’s a universal experience. And not just for all of us here today, but throughout time, patience is a struggle that has been there for every generation. And so if we want to grow in patience, if we want to find solutions to the itchiness in our schedule, the discomfort in our hearts - we need to go back. Back to the time of Paul, into the book of Romans. 

If you’d like to follow along with me this morning, I’m going to be in the book of Romans, chapter 5. And while you’re looking that up I want to encourage you all this morning to bring your bibles. If you bring them, I promise we will open them. If you love the feel of a physical bible, we have some on the bookshelf in the back, or you can totally look it up on your phone. Youversion has a great app. Now, we’re not going to be in Romans for this whole series, but we were there last week too - and so you might remember, Romans is a letter written by Paul to a church full of people he had not met yet. Next to the story of Jesus, Romans is one of the greatest places to learn about God - the whole book is like an introduction to understanding God. And so chapter five starts out, [read v.1]. That is just so lovely. We have been made right with God, we have peace with God - because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. It starts out so happy, so clean and clear - but then he loses me in verse 3. Listen to this, [read v.3]. We can rejoice… when we run into problems and trials. Nope. Not interested. Another translation says that we “glory in our suffering.” Does that resonate with any of you? We don’t glory in our suffering, we don’t rejoice when we run into problems. Running into problems - that’s the time when we do the other thing, the one that’s not rejoicing. What is he even TALKING about? You know that moment when you’re running late for work, and you’re driving a little fast and you get pulled over by the cops? Are you rejoicing in that moment? Like, aw yeah! Woohoo! So excited that I get to pay $140 to the state of Michigan. So pumped. Parents, you know that moment when the baby gets up at 3am? And then takes a full 45 minutes to get back to sleep, and it’s this horrible time frame where you don’t have enough time to fall back asleep before you have to get up and so you just get up and stay up? Are you glorying in that moment? Ah, YESSSSSS! Less sleep is the best, I’m just so thrilled that I get to start my day way before a rational, sane human being should. Just glorious. Paul says, “we can rejoice too, when we run into problems and trials.” Look, I don’t want to lay it on to think - but do you ever have that moment where you look at a teaching in the bible and think to yourself, “ew. Like, nice try Paul, but no thanks.” But then he explains it to us. [v.3-5a]. Problems, trials in our life, produce endurance. Endurance develops character, and character strengthens hope of salvation. Basically what Paul is saying is that we are stronger BECAUSE of the suffering in our life. The struggles we go through have the ability to help us grow. Like the orange trees that were deprived of water - the roots grow down deep.

But the important part is what he says next, [read v.4-5]. Because he has given us the Holy Spirit. That’s the key. You wonder how you can celebrate in struggle, how we can rejoice when we run into problems, you wonder “how on earth are we supposed to do this Paul?” and the answer is - you can’t. By yourself, that’s not a normal reaction to having problems. “Woohoo, endurance” is not how most of us respond to problems in our life. Most of us respond with defeat. Despair. Exasperation. Impatience. But with the Holy Spirit, we can retrain our hearts to grow our roots down deep. There’s a reason we did a Holy Spirit series right before a series on the fruits of the Spirit. We need the Holy Spirit’s help to get through this. There is something supernatural that happens in your life when you stay attached to the vine of the presence of Jesus. A spiritual shift in your heart is a natural outpouring, a byproduct, of spending time with Jesus.

But here’s the problem - you have probably heard this teaching before. So many of us, we have bad days, we get stuck in crappy situations - and in those moments, some well meaning, but misguided soul will tell us, “You know, Cheer up - God’s got a plan in all of this.” I’ve heard it in hospitals, in funeral parlors, on the sidelines of a high school sport. I’ve seen it while someone is holding a pink slip or an eviction notice. Cheer up - all things work together for the good of those who love God. And I know their heart’s in the right place, and I love them for trying, but it also makes me want to hit ‘em. Is this real life? Please say yes. And so I don’t want you to get it mixed up. If you have a crummy situation, I don’t want you to sit there and try to pretend that it’s not a crummy situation. Your problems are real problems. Your struggles are real struggles. And that is valid. You don’t have to pretend that the situation is better than it is. Or you don’t have to pretend that you like it. What I want you to see is that when Paul says, “because he has given us the Holy Spirit” - when you get the Holy Spirit involved, it’s still a crappy situation, but what I want you to see is that with God’s help we can use that crap as manure to create growth. And I know that’s gross and I’m sorry for that - but you’re never going to forget it. Problems create endurance. Endurance develops character and character strengthens our hope. 

It keeps going in verse 6, [read v.6]. Now there are five words in there I want you to pay attention to. Let’s put those on the screen: At just the right time. Those five words are the key to unlocking patience in your life. You see, patience really just comes down to inner peace at God’s place in the timing and decision-making of the universe. You have to ask yourself - can you trust God to be God? Do you trust God to be in charge of the timing in your life? Can you believe that even in the midst of your “problems and trials” to use Paul’s lingo - that God truly loves you and knows what he is doing with your life? “At just the right time” But here’s the problem - and can I just admit this to you guys. My impatience with the struggles of my life - a lot of the time when I say “I want something now”, what I mean is “God I’m afraid if you don’t give me the answer now, I’m afraid you’ll forget me.” Me and my little problems - I’m sure they don’t really matter to the all powerful God of the universe. Even though I know God loves me, and I tell it to people from a stage every single week - there is a place, deep in the corner of my heart that holds on to doubts. When I say “this is taking longer than I want” mostly what I mean is “did you forget me? Do you REALLY love me?” Patience is nothing more than inner peace at God’s place in the timing and decision-making of the universe. When we say “At the right time” that is a statement of trust - that God did not forget me. God does love me. And he knows what he’s doing. But it can be so hard to get there, because sometimes I wonder - well, but maybe - with all the mistakes I have made, the type of person I have been, I don’t really deserve God’s love. Maybe he won’t give it to me. And I don’t know if this tracks with all of you - but in my heart, when I sat down and spent some time with God. When I dug down underneath my anger I found impatience, and underneath my impatience I found fear. Fear that maybe I’m not actually loved by God, Fear that maybe I, and the struggles I go through - have been forgotten. But then I read the next verse. 

Verse 7, [read v.7-8]. Do you understand what I just read? At just the right time, when we were utterly helpless - so make no mistake, God comes to us BEFORE we turn our life around. God comes to us in our worst day, our darkest moment, when we are at the lowest we have ever been - THAT is when Jesus shows up in our lives. When we are helpless, powerless - we are not worth anything to God, yet still he loves us. God looks at you and knows there is more to you than your worst day. Paul compares God’s love to what we see in the world. Paul points out that dying for someone else is rare in this life. He’s like, alright - maybe, maybe if it was like a really good person, someone would be willing to die for them. But they gotta be like a Mother Teresa-Santa Claus hybrid level of awesome for us to consider giving up our life for them. Nobody dies for bad people. Nobody gives up their life for the scum of the earth - that doesn’t happen. If you are going to give up your life, you want to know that they’ll be worth it, that they deserve your sacrifice - and that mentality is what makes us doubt whether God really loves us. Because if we were in God’s shoes - maybe WE wouldn’t love us. Hear verse 8 again, [read v.8]. While we were still sinners. You don’t clean yourself up and then come to Jesus. You come to Jesus as you are - broken and messed up, and God will wash you clean. This is the gospel, plain and simple - Jesus Christ came into this world and died on a cross taking your sin and shame - so that when he rose from the grave, when he defeated sin and death, you could walk in life just like he does. 

We can’t really find true patience without trusting God. Patience is inner peace at God’s place in the timing and decision-making of the universe. We are impatient in life when we don’t trust God’s timing. When we don’t trust God’s love. And what I want you to see in the scriptures this morning - what God is speaking through these words when he says “at just the right time” and “while we were still sinners” - what I want you to realize is that patience is part of the very character of God. 1 Corinthians 13, that famous passage about love that’s read at every wedding ever - the first thing we hear: Love is PATIENT. The old english word for patience is literally “long-suffering.” Or go back further, the literal translation of the greek word is “long passion” - not short-tempered or impatient, but long tempered. Over and over the bible describes God as SLOW to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Patience comes from knowing and trusting God. It is a part of who he is, and it’s a big part of how he works in our lives.

There’s an old story about a janitor who worked in Saint Peter’s Church in Neville’s Square. He was a good janitor, but he couldn’t read. And the leadership of Saint Peter’s had a rule - all their employees must be people who can read. And so one day a young priest discovered that the janitor was illiterate and fired him. He was a good guy, did a good job, worked hard - but rules are rules. So without a job, the man invested his meager savings into a tiny tobacco shop, where he prospered. He worked hard, managed his store well - bought another shop, and ended up with a chain of tobacco stories worth several hundred thousand dollars, and this is back when that was a LOT of money. And one day the man’s banker said to him, “You know, you’ve done really well for an illiterate, but can you imagine where would you be if you could read and write?” And the man thought about it and said, “well, I’d be the janitor at St Peter’s Church in Neville Square.” Comfort doesn’t move us. Comfort doesn’t help us grow. But the God who loves you - he can move you. Maybe what Paul is trying to tell us is that problems and trials and suffering - maybe those are not the worst thing in the world to be avoided at all costs. Maybe, if we have patience, suffering has a purpose. 

So I have a challenge for you this morning - to take with you as you go about the rest of your day, the rest of your week. First, in your life, I want you to shift your goal from comfort to growth. Take time this week to do the mental shift from convenience to consequence. You know, I’ve heard a lot of testimonies, a lot of stories of transformations - but you know what I’ve never heard, “hey pastor, let me tell you a story of how God is moving in my life” and then they describe something easy for them to go through. The moments in our history when we have embraced suffering, when we have lived into the fruit of patience, and worked hard to understand it as a gift from God that produces character, those are the greatest moments in church history. Comfort is an unworthy goal for your life, but growth is a fantastic goal. As some of you know, at my house - we’re doing a lot of home improvement projects. We dream of moving to Byron Center some day, but in the meantime we bought a fixer upper in Grand Rapids. Last month we built a chicken coop, and this month we’re working on putting in a fence. And we decided to do the labor ourselves, save on some cost - and really it’s not that hard. Putting in a fence is really just digging a bunch of holes. Now I own a post hole digger - it looks like this. And as we’ve gotten to know people in this church - y’all have been so kind and supportive, letting us borrow ladders and tools. And a couple weeks ago, I was talking about digging these post holes, and someone mentioned, “hey, I’ve got one of those augers” Which, if you don’t know, they’re amazing - they just dig the hole for you. And they offered, “you know - if you want to borrow that, just let me know.” And at first I was all like, “yeah - that sounds great.” That would be SO much easier. But then I remembered I also have this goal of physical fitness this summer. I really wanted to start taking care of my health a little more - and working out my arms was part of that. And I realized, it’s harder, and less comfortable, and a lot slower - but if I shift my mentality from comfort to growth, I’ve got a built in arm work out right here. And I know that’s a dumb example, but you see it, right? How much more would we see God’s love in our lives, if we understood that God’s goal for our lives is not our comfort but our growth. Shift your perspective and you will understand the role patience plays in your life.

When you pull a fruit off the vine, it begins to wither. But if we grow our roots down deep we can stay attached to the presence of Jesus. Paul gives us such amazing guidance on how to grow in patience. God’s word shows us that our struggles have the ability to help us grow. If we can take our struggles, and trust in God’s timing - together with the reassurance that God actually, truly does love you and know what he is doing with your life - all of that comes together to create patience - a deep inner peace at God’s place in the timing and decision making of the universe. And in response to all of that - what I’d like to do to close out is to enter a time of prayer. And I’m going to pray briefly, but then we’ll enter a moment of silence. And in that silence I want to encourage you to pray about your impatience. Where is your discontent coming from? What are you impatient about in your life? And I want you to take that thing - whatever it is for you, and I want you to surrender it to Jesus. Maybe for you you have impatience because you simply cannot see how God could possibly redeem a situation and turn it into something good. Maybe you’re convinced the right answer is coming, the solution to your problems is on the way - but it’s just taking way too long. Maybe you’re in a season of waiting, a season of enduring - and those little worries are creeping in. Maybe God forgot me, maybe help isn’t actually coming. Maybe he doesn’t really love me. I want you to take every doubt, every situation, every source of impatience in your life and surrender it to Jesus in prayer. Even if that’s all you say - Jesus, I surrender this situation to you, I surrender my source of impatience to you, and I trust you. 

Let’s pray.