Tag Archives: Screen

Patience Right Now

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The fruit of the Spirit is . . . patience.

My children were small, and I was impatient and irritable. So much so that I didn’t like myself sometimes. So of course I prayed for patience. That’s what you do, right? Ha ha.

Years went by before I finally learned that “being patient” doesn’t mean letting the children disobey and disobey while you stand by, smiling placidly and speaking gently. Instead, those gentle words should accompany a swift correction.

So I came to find out that I didn’t even really understand what patience was.

Our modern way of thinking about patience always embodies two attributes: Calmness, and Passive Inactivity. But that’s not how it is in the Bible.

One day my dear friend Heidi described how she had importuned God for six months to topple an idol in her heart. The day finally came when He smashed it and fully delivered her. Afterwards, she read Psalm 40, which begins, “I waited patiently for the Lord.”

She said, “That whole psalm is true about me, except the first verse. I did not wait patiently. I wanted Him to change me NOW.”

But many psalms say something like, “How long, O Lord?” So I looked and found that the Hebrew word in that verse was the same as the one before it: “wait.” So David is saying something like, “I waited and waited.”

“Oh, I definitely waited and waited!” said Heidi. “It was excruciating at times. But I kept asking, because I knew God would respond. And He did it. He did it.”

My soul, wait only on God, for my expectation is from Him.

Even in the New Testament, none of the words for patience imply inaction, and some don’t even imply calmness. They imply determined resolve, based on a rugged confidence, like Heidi’s. A blazing hope that God will do what we know we cannot do ourselves.

The seed on the good ground are those who, with an excellent and good heart, hear the Word and hold fast to it, bearing fruit with patience.

Romans 5 reminds me that because of Jesus Christ and His grace and glory, I can rejoice even in the very hard times of life. I will wait for Him, hope in Him, trust in Him, with determined resolve, because I have nowhere else to turn.

If we confidently hope for that which we cannot see, then we wait for it with patience.

And Romans 5 says that I will most surely see Him accomplish great things in me and for me, which gives me a fierce hope for His continued work, by His love in me through the power of the Holy Spirit.

If I pray for patience, because, well, I really just want to be a nicer person, I want to have an easier life, am I not failing to see the big picture? Isn’t this just one more way of focusing on the Screen?

When I look beyond, when I rejoice in the midst of the tribulations of life, because I expect God to do a mighty work for His glory, won’t I find that the determined resolve I need, based on a strong confidence, will be mine?

A woman like me complained about her need for patience with her children. “Oh, madam,” said Watchman Nee, “it is not patience that you need. It is Christ.”

Don’t focus on the patience you don’t have. Focus on the Savior you do have. And find that the Biblical patience to trust Him with determined resolve springs naturally, like fruit, out of your life.

Eyes to See

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One reason I quit wearing contact lenses was that I was always losing them.

But in one of those days when my absent-mindedness was still propelling me toward the inevitable decision, I stood at the window. One eye had a contact lens. The other was legally blind.

I looked out with first one eye closed, and then the other. The near-sighted eye could clearly see the screen, the dust, the cobwebs. Obviously I needed to clean. Beyond the screen was only a hazy blur of green, too indistinct to give more than a passing glance.

Then I looked through the corrected eye and found that the screen faded almost completely from view. I knew it was there, but what I saw, what my eye was able to focus on, was the beauty of the vista beyond the screen: flower and trees, even individual blades of grass. I marvelled as if I had never looked outside before.

I played the game for a minute. Bad eye, screen. Good eye, beauty. Thank God for corrective lenses, to look beyond the screen.

What was David thinking when he looked at Goliath and said, “I’m going to feed you to the buzzards”? What did he see beyond the giant?

How was it that Hudson Taylor could come to the end of his life, after losing a wife and child in China, after multiple hardships and broken health, and in the spirit of Hebrews 10:34 say, “I never made a sacrifice”? What could he see beyond those hardships? What had happened to his spiritual eyes?

How could Moses turn his back on the riches and pleasures of Egypt? How could he, as Hebrews 11 says, turn his gaze away and fix his attention on something no one else could perceive with physical eyes?  What could he see beyond those physical attractions?

What did Paul mean when he told the Ephesians in chapter 1 that he wanted the eyes of their perception to be filled with light? Can spiritual eyes, even the eyes of Christians, be legally blind? What are those things he talks about, those things we’re supposed to see? Are they worth begging God for corrective lenses?

Lord, fix our vision to fix our gaze—beyond the Cares of this World and the Deceitfulness of Riches. Fill our eyes with light to see beyond the Giants.

Spirit of Christ, give us eyes to see your Beauty. Your Power.

Beyond the Screen.