From Ephesus: Patience

Want to welcome me to Venture Church. If you don't

know who I am, I'm Brandon. I'm the lead pastor

of the church. Glad you're here. It's beautiful Sunday in Seattle.

Can't beat it, right. If you're new, I'd love to

meet you. I'll be hanging out in the lobby after

the service. Please come up, introduce yourself to me. Love

the opportunity to get to know you. I want to

mention this about John Vincent. I remember when I met

John the first time. He was leading a small group

at another church and that church was folding, and so

John and his small group had visited several churches in

the area and they had landed on coming to be

a part of Venture. And this was about year three

in our existence. And I always joke that I know

what year it is based upon what building we were

meeting in at the time. And we were at Jackson

High School. And I met with him at the Starbucks

in Mill Creek in the town center, and just an

amazing man. And he began to say and share what

his dream and vision was for his life that someday

he wanted to be a missionary in Indonesia, and it

was such an amazing thing to watch his patient journey

over the next eight years. So it was after eight

years of this dream and pursuing it where he finally

got to go onto the mission field. And then in

our movement, you serve more or less as a temporary

missionary for a couple of years to make sure that

this is what you want to do for a career.

And then once you determine yes, this is what I

want to do for a career, you come back, you iterate,

you raise money. That is a long, slow, patient process

to get on the mission field. John comes back, does

that whole process, and now he's been a full time

mission on the mission field for about the last seven years.

And that happened because you and I gave And it's

also really cool because this is John is a full on,

homegrown venture missionary. I remember when the process started to

the point that he got there, So it's pretty fun.

Today we are continuing our series through the Fruit of

the Spirit. If you've missed any of these messages, I

do really encourage you to go back check out the

podcast catch up on the message. Fortunately, every single message

because they're teaching on one of the characteristics one of

the fruit. Every message sits by itself. But you want

to grow in all of these characteristics, so it's important

to hear them all. But would you do me a

favor by your heads, close your eyes, repeat this prayer

after me. Everyone say, dear Jesus, speak to my heart,

change my life in Jesus' name. Amen. I heard this

story recently about a little boy who loved mangoes. Any

of you love mangoes. Mangoes are my favorite fruit. Mangoes

are a great excuse to go visit Hawaii when it's wintertime.

In Seattle, this boy loved mangoes. He loved them so

much that he had decided he wanted the ability to

eat unlimited mangoes. So after he ate a mango, that big,

gargantuan seed that's in the middle, he went and he

buried it in his backyard. And then the very next

day he ran out to where he buried the mango,

unburied it to see if it had grown, and it hadn't.

And he did this for a month and saw nothing. Finally,

his mom settles him down and says, son, you have

to be patient. You see, when you keep unburying the seed,

it doesn't give it time to germinate. So if you

would leave it buried, be patient, you'll see what you

want to see. So once the boy learned this, he

eventually saw this mango tree sprout. Well, it took a

lot of time. It took a lot of patience to

finally produce fruit. In that moment, the boy realized that

it was his impatience in the beginning that was just

prolonging the process. Today we are going to talk about

the fruit of patience. Why when I wrote the sermons schedule,

out of all the people that are on my teaching team,

I assigned myself to teach on patients is very ironic.

Most people would not look at me and say, you

know what characteristic defines Brandon patience. So as I share today,

I am preaching to myself Galatians five point twenty two,

These are the fruit of the Spirit. I told you

several weeks ago that how do you know how you

were progressing as a follower of Jesus. It really boils

down to the fruit of the spirit. Do you have

evidence of the fruit of the spirit in your life?

And you should every message be evaluating you, not your spouse, yourself,

Paul said, the fruit of the spirit is love. Several

weeks ago, Pastor Morgan preached a great sermon on love.

How are you doing? How do you do when it

comes to loving people that you normally wouldn't love? And

Paul goes on and he says, the fruit of the

spirit is joy. Several weeks ago, Die preached an awesome

sermon on joy. Are you one of those people that

you were able to have joy despite the circumstances around you?

Then last week I preached on peace. How are you

when the world seems to be falling around and there's

craziness all around you? Do you have peace? Then Paul says,

the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance. Now,

the word forbearance, it actually means patient, self control, restraint, tolerance.

Most translations forbearance comes from the NIV translation. Most translations

do some form of the word patient. They use patient,

they use patience, and forbearance is the result of being patient.

So we're actually gonna go with these other translations and

say that the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience.

You've all heard this statement. Patience is a virtue. Don't

you love it? Since I was a little boy. My

mom would encourage me, Brandon, you need to be more patient.

This month, Die and I celebrate thirty three years of

being married, thirty three years. For thirty three years, Die

has put a hand on my shoulder, a hand on

my knee, and said patience. Patience is a virtue. I

think it's the world's toughest virtue. The Bible says a

ton about patients, says a lot in the Old Testament,

says a lot about it in the New Testament. But

let's look first at the Old Testament. In the Hebrew,

the word for patients is actually two words that are

merged together. I'm going to butcher this Hebrew, but you

know Hebrew less than I do, so go with what

I say. So it's rek a payen. Together those two

words mean patient. My favorite part is what they mean individually.

These two words separately mean long nostrils. That's what they mean,

because the image is what is the opposite of long nostrils.

When you're angry and you're frustrated, and you're impatient with someone,

you breathe quickly, loudly, and rapidly. If I start doing

that around you, you should leave. But in Hebrew, patience

is long nostrils. In other words, you breathe deeply. Try

it with me. This is yoga practice. Breathe in through

your nose, out through your mouth, deeply, calmly, slow. Proverb

says this Proverbs nineteen eleven. It says a person's wisdom

yields patience. It is to one's glory to overlook an offense.

Ecclesiastes says that the end of the matter is better

than the beginning. We all love the end. We're in

the middle of a building project again. I can't wait

for it to be done. The end is better than

the beginning. But then it goes on and it says

patience is better than pride Proverbs fourteen twenty nine. Whoever

is patient, whoever has long nostrils, has great understanding. Proverbs

fifteen eighteen. A hot tempered person stirs up conflict, but

the one who is patient calms a quarrel. I think

we've all been in settings where we've watched two people quarrel.

There's always one person that loves to throw gas on

a fire and cause a quarrel to turn into an explosion.

But then there's always that calm, cool, collected person. They

seem patient in the middle of the storm. The other

person is raging, and they just patiently, calmly wait, and

eventually the storm subsides and there ends up being peace

in the relationship. The Psalmist said this, I waited patiently

for the Lord. He turned to me, and he heard

my cry. There are actually hundreds of verses in the

Old Testament about patience. Patience is a virtue. Patience is

the toughest virtue. The New Testament says a ton about

patience too. Patience in Greek is another long word, and

it's also two words that are merged together that mean patience,

and that word is macro sima. It's two different words

merged together. The first word is macros, which means long.

Have you noticed that patience in the Old New Testament

has to do with being long? And then the second

word is sumus, which means soul or heart. So in

the New Testament, the word patience is actually means long soul.

What does it mean to be long soul? It means

that you are patient, you wait. Your long sould with

other people means you stay calm, you keep going and

doing what you're supposed to do even when you're frustrated

and tempted to give up. Second Peter three to nine,

amazing verse. The verse I'm challenging you to memorize this week.

It says the Lord is not keeping his promise, as

some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not

wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

You could almost rephrase it and say that the Lord

is not slow in keeping his promises. Some understand slowness. Instead,

he is long sold with you and I not wanting

anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. Two

Peter three point fifteen says, bear in mind that our

Lord's patience, our Lord's long souledness, means salvation to us.

One Timothy one sixteen is the great verse. These are

the words of Paul to Timothy. So Paul was this

seasoned minister, and he is investing in this young minister, Timothy.

And we get this like inside mentorship, teaching and first

and tewod Timothy that Paul gives to Timothy. But here's

the advice he gives Timothy one sixteen. He says, Timothy,

for that very reason, I was shown mercy so that

in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display

his immense patience as an example. So this is Paul saying, Timothy, man,

I know who I used to be. I know the

thoughts that have gone through my mind. I know my actions,

I know what I've done, I know my motives. And

in spite of all of that, he was long sould

with me. He was patient with me. So, Timothy, I

am a living example of God's mercy. See if he

can be patient with me, he can be patient with you.

If he can be patient with me, he can be

patient with anyone. And he says immense patience as an

example for those who would believe in him and receive

eternal life. Paul has advice for preachers like me two

Timothy four two. He says, Brandon, preach the word. I

like that part. But then he says, with great patience

and careful instruction, I shared this in the first service.

I have someone who's been in my life for a

long time, has gone through a major difficulty and is

taking the major difficult that he's gone through and literally

spiraling even worse, and the lukewarm Christians around him keep

giving him really terrible advice. And I gotta be honest.

I don't like dumb people. Dumb people frustrate me. And

so you got a dumb person getting really dumb advice

from lukewarm people. And I am beforehand praying and I'm

venting with Jesus about it. And then I got to

this with patients and careful instruction, I'm a work in process.

One Corinthians thirteen four. Paul says, hey, if you love people,

love his patient James. In James one verse two, This

sets up what I want to highlight. He starts off

by this reality, and this is a great verse that's

really worth memorizing. At some point he says, consider it

pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials

of many kinds, because you know that the testing of

your faith produces perseverance, and let perseverance finish its work

so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

So he's basically saying, whoever told you that when you

got saved everything would go great for you, that you

would be rich and healthy and have no conflict, they lied,

because you live in a world full of broken people,

and you are a broken person. And you're going to

experience trials, temptations, troubles all the time. But hopefully, because

you have the Holy Spirit inside of you, you are

beginning to show evidence of the fruit of the Spirit.

So remember, when you commit your life to Christ, you

become a follower of Jesus. The Holy Spirit comes inside

of you, dwell inside of you, begins to cultivate the

fertile soil that is in your heart, and it begins

to produce fruit. And that fruit looks like love. You

love people who are unlovable, not because of any other

reason than the Holy Spirit has grown that fruit out

of you. Sometimes that fruit evident, is evident in the

fact that you have joy like the world is falling apart,

but you are able to have joy in spite of

the circumstances around you. That is a fruit of the spirit.

You have peace. That's what the Holy Spirit does. So

James is saying that as you pursue Christ, and as

you get closer to Him, the trials and troubles and

tribulations of this world still come, but you are able

to step back and consider it pure joy. Then he

dives in and he uses this illustration in chapter five,

verse seven he says, be patient, then, brothers and sisters,

until the Lord's coming. Uses a farmer as a metaphor,

he says, see how the farmer waits for the land

to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for autumn and

spring rains. You too, be patient, stand firm, because the

Lord is coming and is near Church. Remember that as

you pursue Christ, the Holy Spirit dwells inside of you

the many of the fruit of the Spirit. These characteristics

might not be natural for you, but the Holy Spirit

will begin to work in your heart, begin to transform

you from the inside out. And as you walk with Jesus,

the fruit of the Spirit should be more and more

evident in your life. I shared as you last week

that you will never arrive, you'll never finish. You will

spend your whole life on this journey with Jesus, never

probably quite be where you want to be. But hopefully

you can look back and say, at least I'm not

where I was like If you're like me and patience

is a challenge, hopefully you look back and say, well,

I'm not as impatient as I was five years ago.

That's what it's like to be on this journey with Jesus.

Patience is not a passive word. It's an active word.

It is the ability to endure hardship, suffering, delay without

being angry or frustrated. True patience from God involves three

areas quickly, three things. That involves number one. It involves

enduring trials, troubles, challenges without complaining or becoming discouraged. Life

is complicated. Life has challenges, Life has unexpected downs, Life

has roadblocks, Life has bills that you weren't prepared for.

Life has failures that you didn't see coming. In fact,

there are some of you you are sitting here today

and you stepped out in faith, believing God was calling

you to do something. Maybe it was moved to a

new location. Maybe it was start a new career or

start a business, and you stepped out in faith, and

it seems like everything has fallen apart. Life happens that way.

Life has bad reports from doctors, life has bad news

about loved ones. But the fruit of patience involves enduring

these unexpected challenges in your life. So you would say,

peebe okay, I'm living out what you're talking about. How

do I be patient in the middle of that? Because

your patience comes from your hope and faith in Jesus.

Your patience comes from your stepfast faith and trust in Jesus.

This is about the only golf metaphor you will ever

get from me. To cultivate patience in your life, you

have to think the long game, not the short game.

Patience is something that you and I spiritually develop over time.

It is it is not something that you are, but

the more you walk with Jesus, you begin to become it.

You look at life this way. I don't like what

I'm going through. I don't like what's happening and my finances.

I don't like what's happening in my business. I don't

like what's happening in my relationship. But I've walked with

him enough. I've served Jesus long enough to walk through

these storms before, and he's brought me through before. He'll

bring me through again. That's where this patience comes from

comes from. I walked with Jesus enough to know that

he's He's done it before and he'll do it again.

Number two, Patience not only involves enduring trials, troubles, challenges.

This is the part that I love the least. Patience

involves a lot of waiting. Things never happen in my timing.

Everything always takes longer than I want. My wife and

I downsized our house from our house in Mill Creek

and we bought this house in muckle t O three

four years ago. Now, when we bought the house, it

wasn't the house that we wanted. It had the view

we wanted, but that was it. But I am, by

my nature, I'm a visionary and a dreamer. So I

saw what this little house with no garage was, and

I saw what it could be, and so I bought

the house based upon the vision of what the yard,

the house, the eventual garage would be. And I'm still

waiting for it. Four years later. I just got a

note from the City of Muckleteo because I'm trying to

have this garage built finally, and the City of muckle

Teo said, you're gonna have to be patient in the

permit process because there's wetland issues every time I go anywhere.

Everybody's telling me to be patient. Patience involves a lot

of waiting. But because you learn to trust God's timing,

you learn to trust God's plan when you allow God

to work in your life. It's according to his schedule,

not yours. The Psalmist says, ask for God. His ways

are perfect. When you play the long game, the fruit

of patience grows more and more in your life. Now,

I am definitely not as patient as I should be,

but I am not as bad as I was. Here's

the best evidence that I can give you. I remember

when we had this building built. It was a torture

in learning patients. I would come and visit the building

after a month, and I swear all they did for

a month was move a mound of dirt from here

to here. I would come the next month and a

brick was laid, and my staff would be going. They

laid a brick. I quoted the Book of Zechariah so

many times that says, uh, don't despise small beginnings, but

the Lord rejoices, and to see the work begin, I'm like,

I don't know how God does, but this is annoying

to me. So I was very patient. So when we

started the expansion of this building, I just anticipated that

it was going to take forever. But then Pastor Ali

McGregor was in charge of it. That guy works at

Turbo Space. I mean, I come into my office and

everything's torn up. I walked into the auditorium after like

being gone for three days, and they tore out the

sound booth and I come in and this is happening.

This has happened. I was just informed that in two

weeks my office is gonna be torn apart and they're

gonna start building. And then I'm like, finally, I've learned

patients with construction and now it's happening in you know,

light speed, But patience involves a lot of waiting. I

hate slow drivers. Still why the city of Mill Creek

thought it was a good idea for a twenty five

mile an hour speed limit around Village Green Drive and

up Seattle Hill Road beyond me? But I'm much more

patient with the building process us at the church. I'm

not where I want to be, but I'm not where

I used to be. Finally, what does patients involve? Patience

involves forbearance with others. This is where that word forbearance

comes in. Forbearance is self control, restraint, tolerance with others.

Probably the wildest transition in twenty years of being a

lead pastor at of church that I've watched, just kind

of worldwide, just in the change of people. In the past,

there wasn't a lot of things that were black and white,

like I would say, yet about ten percent that was black,

ten percent that was white, and eighty percent was gray

in the middle, and most people lived in the middle.

And so what would end up happening is you would

have people that had ideological differences, theological differences, philosophical differences,

sociological differences, political differences, and they swayed a little bit

to the left, they swayed a little bit to the right,

but they were in the gray still. And as long

as you were in the gray, you were able to

be friends, you could get along, you could have civil

rational discussions. Fast forward to where we are today in

the world, everything is black and white. Everything there is

no gray, And if someone doesn't agree with you theologically,

it is like they are almost enemies. I think of

with everything that God is doing in the church around

the world right now, and like we are in historic

times for the growth of the Church, especially in America,

but I have never seen the Church more divided amongst

disputable issues than ever before. Like it is like, hey,

we believe the only way to heaven is through Jesus,

but we are gonna fight over whether or not a

woman should be teaching a man. And if you land

on the opposite side of what I think, where enemies.

I watch churches fight over like the Holy Spirit. So hey,

there's this one side speaking in tongues is the evidence

of being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Then this other

side says, speaking in tongues is and evidence that one

word N or the has caused enemies because everything is

black and white. Well, let's talk about it politically. I mean,

Republicans can't be friends with Democrats anymore. Democrats can't be

friends with Republicans anymore. Even if you only lean a

little bit left or a little bit right, I did

it the opposite. I did it in facing you. It's like,

we can't be friends anymore. If you have sociological differences,

you have to be enemies. But what is patience? Patience

that is the fruit of the spirit. It is forbearance

with others. If you were a follower of Jesus, you're

patient with people that disagree with you. You love people

that disagree with you, You love people that are disagree

with everything you stand for. Why why are you patient?

Because Jesus is patient with you. You are patient with others.

You're patient with others even when they don't deserve it,

because Jesus was patient with you when you didn't deserve it.

You should be able to step back and say that

person is acting dumb like I was thinking in my office,

and then I should be able to step back and say,

but Brandon, Jesus was share patient with you when you

were dumb. When you're patient with others when they don't

deserve it, it's because it is a demonstration of love

and compassion. You extend grace to others because God extended

it to you. Here's the harsh reality about patience. Patience

is not something that comes natural to people. You want

proof you were born inpatient if you've ever held a

baby in your arms. All of us that have had kids,

when they were babies and they wanted to eat, they

weren't patient about it. They screamed. Then they became toddlers

could walk around and talk. When they wanted something, they

weren't patient about it. They threw temper tantrums if they

didn't get it. Patience is not something that comes natural.

It is not a character trait that you develop naturally.

Patience comes because you recognize its absence in your life,

and you pursue patience through prayer, God's word and a

reliance on the Holy Spirit. And as you walk with

Jesus more and more, and the Holy Spirit dwells inside

of you, transformed on the inside out. And just as

the fruit of love becomes more evident in your life,

and just as the fruit of joy becomes clearer in

your life, just as the fruit of peace is seen

more and more in your life, so also the fruit

of patience is the natural outflow of a life of

someone committed to pursuing Jesus. Patience is a virtue. I

think patience is the world's toughest virtue, and apart from

the Holy Spirit, it's going to be very challenging to develop. Interestingly,

today being the day of Pentecost, to the day we

celebrate Pentecost, it's done around the world this Sunday, the

first time the Holy Spirit fell. That happened after Jesus'

last message to his disciples, and here's what he said.

He said, I want you to go to the Upper

Room and wait and go be patient like the thing

that is contrary to the way we normally function, go

into the upper room and wait for what I've promised.

And because the group of one hundred and twenty people

went into the upper room and waited in the two

thousand years since then, it's pretty crazy to think you

went from one hundred and twenty to three hundred billion

in two thousand years one hundred and twenty with the

Holy Spirit moving inside of them. I did a series

through the Book of Acts a couple of years ago,

and the theme of it was this that the Gospel

is unstoppable when it's shared by people that are filled

with the Holy Spirit. One hundred and twenty grows into

where we are today, where eighty thousand people are following

Jesus every single day. That is the result of waiting.

That is the result of this really difficult virtue of patience.

Want you to buy your heads, close your eyes. I

want to pray for you. I want to pray for myself.

If you're here and you would say, hey, peb I'm

one of those people. I recognize that I need more

patience in my life. While you're praying, would you pray

for me? If that is you, would you raise your

hand right now? You need more patience in your life.

I love it. You can put your hands down. Everybody

stand up. I want you to put yourself in a

position to receive on Pentecost Sunday. I want to pray

that the Holy Spirit will overwhelm your life, penetrate your heart,

and begin to develop this character of patience within me

and within you. So put yourself in a position to

receive Jesus. Right now, we humbly stand before you and

we ask that you would fill us from the tops

of our heads to the bottom of our feet, that

you would fill us to overflowing. Lord, that you would

do a work within our hearts, within our minds, within

our souls that would transform us from the inside out. Lord,

we pray that the character traits that you have would

be more and more evident in our life. God, may

we be people that love. May the people adventure be

known for being filled with joy. May we be people

of peace and Now, Holy Spirit, we ask that you

would give us patience. And we know that patience comes

from trusting you, putting our hope and our faith in you,

believing that you came through before you'll come through again,

That you worked in my life, you can work in

that person's life. Lord, help us be people that are

more and more patient. May that be something that we

live out in this community. May we live out evidence

of the fruit of the spirit. In your name, I pray, Amen, Amen,

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