James 1:3-4, What's So Great About Patience
James 1:3-4, “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.”
“Worketh patience.”
And what’s so great about patience? I’ve always heard the half-joke growing up, “Don’t pray for patience because the Lord will send it. Be careful what you ask for!” The response is generally a mild laugh with a nod of recognition that you really don’t want the thing in your life that works patience. But truthfully, we need patience!
Patience is well-defined as steadfastness, constancy, and endurance. 1 Corinthians 15:58 teaches, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” Being so resolute that we are unmovable and always abound in God’s work is not a natural quality—we must learn it. God must use trials in our life to teach it to us. We have to learn the qualities that aid to staying constantly in Jesus—in abiding in Him. We have to learn what we must lay aside as Hebrews 12:1 reminds us to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us.” We must endure; we need patience.
“But let patience have her perfect work.”
It should be obvious by now that if God is allowing a trial that He has a purpose behind it. Why can’t we learn to trust Him more? Patience is working toward that end. These trials are developing patience in us that allows us to wait for God to deliver and provide. We get beyond our ability and can do nothing but wait for God. This is the perfect work of patience. Anything God is working is perfect, for God is perfect—He makes no mistakes. And the work that patience is doing is a perfecting work. God allows trials which teaches patience and helps bring us to be complete, wanting (or lacking) nothing.
Did you notice that we are to “let” patience have her perfect work? We need to allow God’s work in our lives. We need to not only accept it but also look to God and humbly let Him work. We can refuse to learn what we need, but then we have not grown. Will the trials just make us bitter? Will we patiently wait for God as He works and learn the endurance? What is your heart toward God’s work through trials? When God allows you to suffer a trial and He brings you through it, you become that much more enduring. An athlete improves by pushing the boundaries of his body to exhaustion so that the next time he can endure more. Over much time, he finds that he can accomplish more as he pushes more. God allows trials to push our boundaries so that we learn that we are able to endure more for the cause of Christ. Thank you, Lord, for working in our lives so that we “may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”
