"Dear brothers and sisters, be patient as you wait for the Lord’s return. Consider the farmers who patiently wait for the rains in the fall and in the spring. They eagerly look for the valuable harvest to ripen. You, too, must be patient. Take courage, for the coming of the Lord is near.
Don’t grumble about each other, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. For look—the Judge is standing at the door!
For examples of patience in suffering, dear brothers and sisters, look at the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. We give great honor to those who endure under suffering. For instance, you know about Job, a man of great endurance. You can see how the Lord was kind to him at the end, for the Lord is full of tenderness and mercy."
If you haven't encountered a season of suffering recently, get ready. It seems that suffering just comes with being human. In fact, God promises that you will! "In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). And, I can end today's post right there. God has overcome the world!
But if you do find yourself in a season of suffering, perhaps you want a little more than that. I think this passage gives us three points to live by as we endure suffering and hardship in this life. The first paragraph deals with waiting expectantly. It says, "be patient as you wait for the Lord's return." And how do they wait? "They eagerly look..." We know that the Lord is returning, and when He does, all this pain and all these tears will be wiped away! But the part that gets me about these couple of verses is that WHILE THEY ARE WAITING for the Lord to return and for the Lord's timing in their suffering, they are looking for the "valuable harvest to ripen." Remember what we talked about a couple weeks ago? There will ALWAYS be fruit...even in the suffering. God is allowing your current suffering for the fruit that it WILL produce in you and in your life. You can EXPECT it! I'm using lots of capital letters this morning because THIS IS GOOD NEWS, PEOPLE! Your current circumstance and pain will not be wasted. There will be fruit. I have to remind myself of this often. And "take courage" while you wait it says, "for the coming of the Lord is near." The pain will not last a lot longer. There is an end to this season. We don't know if He will return before He takes you to Heaven or not, but regardless, the pain and suffering will not last forever. Joy is coming!
The second paragraph is speaking to me today. What do we tend to do when things aren't going our way? We grumble. Doesn't the Lord know us so well? All of humanity is this way! We all grumble! And when things aren't going well, we tend to grumble about the people around us because they are something we can put a finger on. Oh, I can be so guilty of this sometimes! What good does it really bring us? A momentary release of emotion and anger, followed by a small feeling of superiority perhaps. But then even that goes away, and we are still left grumbling all the more. And we know that we are judged the way way that we judge others. Lord, help me with my grumbling.
And we think, well that's impossible! This is just my nature. I can't help it. Everyone does it! Ahh, yes, and again, God knows we are tempted to compare our shortcomings to someone else's, so next comes some examples of people who have had patience in suffering. Look at Job. He endured losing everything. Everything! Yet, God "was kind to him at the end, for the Lord is full of compassion and mercy." Job never gave up on God and His plan.
I am humbled as I think how God says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" (Isaiah 55:8), and I can't always answer why God allows our suffering. Perhaps, even the reasons I think are God's reasons, aren't really His reasons at all. He IS so much higher than us in His thoughts as well as in just Who He Is. But we can trust that He is doing something in us that we would not believe even if we were told (Habakkuk 1:5). But we have to wait. We have to be patient in our current circumstances. Your patience will produce good fruit.
And while we're waiting, let's continue to lean on one another. God certainly didn't design us to go through this life, its joys, and its trials alone.
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