How do you get more patience? Many of us image that patience is waiting and doing nothing, but what if being patience can be active as well? Join us this weekend as Pastor Jeremy Jernigan shows us how God can use us as we grow our patience.
How do you get more patience? Many of us image that patience is waiting and doing nothing, but what if being patience can be active as well? Join us this weekend as Pastor Jeremy Jernigan shows us how God can use us as we grow our patience.
Well, hello, Central. It is so great to be with you to those in the room with me and whatever campus you are watching this. So glad to have you be a part of this as well. My name is Jeremy and today we're continuing the series that we have been in the credentialed life, looking at the fruits of the spirit.
[00:00:15] And so I want to encourage you to get your Bibles out and go to Luke chapter nine. That's what we're going to be in. Just a few moments. And today we're going to look at patience and that's one of those you either get really excited or you're like, oh no, I have had no small amount of people say to me this week, you're not going to ask us to pray for patience
[00:00:35] are you? Because if you've ever done that, you know, bad things happen if you pray for patience. So I'm not going to ask you to pray for that. So just relax calm down. We're going to look at a story together today in Luke nine. And we're going to just explore what does it mean for us to be a little bit more like God in this area?
[00:00:51] And so if you get to Luke chapter nine, I want to read Galatians five. And for us, this is the passage that this whole series is based on, where we get the idea of the fruits of the spirit, such a beautiful, just few sentences of what it looks like to really be filled with the spirit of God. Paul writes this in Galatians five, but the holy spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives.
[00:01:16] Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Now the reason why we explore this, the re the reason why we're doing a series on this is that this is what God is like, God is these things. This is what God is like. And so if we want to know, why are these things important?
[00:01:39] Because these are traits of God. And then if we want to be more like, God, right, then we start to look like, God, we start to take on these traits and you should see those as evidence of the holy spirit in our lives. And that's why we're exploring these together. And so I thought, all right, I get to talk about patience today.
[00:01:58] Sounds fun. I like patience. And I thought this was like a frame of reference. I'll go online, I'll take a patience test and figure out how good I am at patience. Now I'm a bit of an overachiever. I like book learning. I'm like, Hey, I'm going to go home and ACE this thing. And I'll feel confident going into my message on patience.
[00:02:18] So I find this quiz online this week and I go through and I take the different questions and I'm answering it. And it gets to the end of it. And it gives you like a little paragraph summary of like, here's how you ranked with patience. And the opening line of my results stood out to me. It stopped me in my tracks a bit.
[00:02:37] And I thought I would share that with you and I quote patience isn't your strongest virtue friend.
[00:02:48] You can imagine the moment. Going, whoa boy. I'm in for it. I'm giving a message on something that evidently I'm not very good at. And so I had a little bit of turmoil over this, and then I thought of one of my favorite quotes from a preacher that I love named Andy Stanley. And he gives this advice to preachers.
[00:03:09] He says, if you preach from your weaknesses, you will never run out of sermon material.
[00:03:16] So do I have some material for you today? Friends. I got so much, so we're going to explore it together, but here's the deal. I know you're kind of going, oh man, this guy stinks at patience and he's going to talk to us about patience. Here's the reality. You probably stink at it too. All right. Just to be real.
[00:03:32] And so I thought it wasn't fair for me to have to share my results with you and you not. How good you are at patience. So I created my own patience test to give you today. Now this is very non-scientific as you'll realize, but this is my own test. And this is going to give you just an initial gauge. How good are you at patience?
[00:03:56] And so wherever you're at whatever campus you're on, I want you to play along. I'm going to give you five. There are three answers to each question you're going to choose one of the three. It's very simple. And now here's, again, it's not scientific. I'm going to tell you how the test is set up so that you won't game it.
[00:04:10] Right? The first answer of all of these is the most patient answer possible than the middle answer, slightly less patient. The third answer, not that patient. And you'll see how the points add up now. Here's what I want you to do. Friends. We're here in the name of Jesus. Let's be honest. Okay. So don't game it and go, Hey, I'm going to ACE this thing I want you to, just to come up with, when you hear these three engines, you go, that one's me.
[00:04:36] That is for sure. Me. And then here's what you gotta do. You gotta keep track of your points. Okay. So you're going to get different points for these. That's how you're going to figure out your score. It's not complicated. I'll help you, but you gotta, you gotta put a little work in as we go. Number one.
[00:04:50] Here's our first question. If you need to write down your points of math, isn't your thing. Get a pen and paper ready? Okay. Number one, which lane of the freeway do you mostly drive in? You're like, oh, this is going to be bad. Hey, the right lane, driving the speed limit and enjoying the tunes. If that is you, congratulations.
[00:05:12] That is worth 20 points. Option B the middle lanes, hoping that slower cars will move to let me pass. If that is you that's worth 15 points or see the left lane, obviously, right? If that is you and you know who you are, 10 points for that one. Fun side note. This is free of charge. My dad once gave me advice when I was a kid long before I could drive.
[00:05:40] And it has been one of the most profound advice I've ever heard when I was a kid, he said to me, Jeremy, you can tell a lot about a person's personality by watching how they drive. This is before I could drive. So I remember thinking, oh, that's interesting. And then I grew up learned how to drive and then applied it to his driving.
[00:05:57] And boy, is it true? You can learn a lot by someone's driving. Okay. So number one. Which hobby appeals to you the most, you have to pick one of these, a starting a garden, because it's exciting to see what will grow over time. 20 points be reading. It's nice to wind down and have some time to think 15 points or running.
[00:06:18] I like moving fast and getting it done quickly. 10 points. Okay. Now you might go. None of those three. Just pick one. All right. This is non-scientific question. When leaving the house, your elderly neighbor stops to make conversation with you. Do you a, take a few minutes to talk and check to see if they need anything done around the house?
[00:06:42] B clearly A's not getting chosen B chat for him. Then find a way to wrap up the conversation or see, make an excuse and rush off. You've got things to do, right? So that's accordingly figure out your number there. Two more. Number four. Do you regularly warm up before and cool down after your workout? Hey, always to keep myself injury-free and give myself some time to think about my session.
[00:07:12] 20 points B, why waste precious exercise time. Or see, who has time to exercise? 10 points. Last one. You're waiting to pay for groceries, but you haven't moved for three. Oh, come on now. Preach. Hey, do you strike up a conversation with the person behind you while you wait you extroverts? Like this is great social.
[00:07:45] Be reluctantly way, letting out loud, sighs and checking your watch often, or see, pack up your car and switch chug out before someone else does 10 points. Now you're the one you do want you to total up your score. If you're figuring out my non-scientific test, the highest score you can get is a hundred.
[00:08:05] The lowest you can get is 50. So you got a letter, Gregg. Okay. So go back to school. I want you to assign a letter grade to your score. Now, wherever you're out, show of hands, let's play along. How many of you got an, a, you pass this test with flying colors? Oh boy. I think like three, I could count them in the room.
[00:08:24] I'm in. That's not good. Let's be honest. Okay. We're all amongst friends. How many of you, if this was a test and you're in school, you would have failed to this test. Raise your hand. Come on. Yeah. There's lots more hands going up now. I don't know where you landed on this. I don't know if you were surprised by your results or if you're like, wow, maybe I've got some work to do.
[00:08:45] Here's what I would suggest. Most of us are not great at being patient. And we're living in a time of, of technology where we don't have. Or we have more and more tools to equip us to be less and less patient on top of that, we have just gone through a year in which we had to be more patient than we have ever had to be in recent memory.
[00:09:10] We've had to ask questions like how long do I have to stay at home? Especially if you have young kids, right. Or how long do we have to wear these masks or how long until all of this goes back to normal. These are questions that test our patience. And we have all collectively around the world, had to endure a year of this, of going through these kinds of things.
[00:09:38] And here's what I like to suggest you today, rather than lamenting that fact rather than going, oh, so glad we're on the other end of it. That's actually a good thing for us. Here we go. What, why, why would that be. Well, I love what the author Priscilla Shire says. She says the fruit of God's spirit virtues, like patience and gentleness and kindness are not cultivated in contexts where they are not.
[00:10:05] As a brilliant thought that these, these virtues that we see these fruits of the spirit, like patience are not cultivated. They are not grown when they are not required. If you are in a situation where you never need patience, you are likely not going to see patience emerge in the. But when you find yourself in a position, you go, I need patience.
[00:10:28] All of a sudden, you're going to watch God start to produce that in your life. And so we are coming out of a year of that a year of the season of patience. But in addition, here's what I want to suggest to you. If you decide that you want to follow Jesus, you are signing up for a journey of. Now some of you today, whether you're here or one of our campuses, so you today may be going, Hey, I'm not there yet.
[00:10:52] Jeremy, I'm exploring this. I'm just checking out Jesus, I'm checking out the church. I'm not sure where I'm at. If that's you so glad that you're here, you are absolutely welcome here. And here's a caution to you. You may not want to keep going, right? Because what I'm telling you is, if you say yes to Jesus, you are also saying yes to a journey of patience.
[00:11:13] And some of us, we're not really. And some of you, if you're honest, this is why you've had some friction in your spiritual life already. This is why some of you may feel stuck. You may feel stagnant and it could be about this idea of patiently following God. Now I want to explore why, if you got your Bibles, we're going go to Luke chapter nine, verse 51 shows us a day in the life of following Jesus.
[00:11:39] What was it like to be one of his disciples? It might sound awesome. But as we're going to see in the text today, there are many. That would not have been awesome. And they would have been frustrated. They would have been hard. And we're gonna look at one of those today. So in Luke nine verse 51 says this as a time Jr.
[00:11:57] For him to ascend to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. He sent messengers ahead to a Samaritan village to prepare for his arrival, but the people of the village did not welcome Jesus because he was on his way. To Jerusalem when James and John to the disciples saw this, they said to Jesus, Lord, should we call down fire from heaven to burn them up?
[00:12:27] Now I love this. If you're like new to the text, this is like your first summer in this story, you probably got that sentence and went. Like w I escalated quickly. How do we get there? Right. It's a little bizarre. Let me give you a little context. What's going on? Why is this Samaritan village not welcoming Jesus?
[00:12:45] Well, the Samaritans and the Jews had like lots of things in common and a few things that they adamantly disagree. The two things that they disagreed on. One of them was about the place of worship to the Samaritans. They believed that you could only worship God on Mount Gerizim. The Jews said, no, you've got to worship God in Jerusalem, stark contrast here.
[00:13:05] And they hated each other over this. And so these Samaritans find out Jesus is passing through our village. Awesome. Welcome him in where's he going? Oh, he's on his way to Jerusalem, the Jewish worship site. And they're like, not over our dead bodies. Is he going to do that? He is not coming in here no way.
[00:13:23] And so they say you are not welcome. Tell your, tell your master because he sends people ahead. He's not welcome here. Why not? Because of who Jesus is because he's going to Jerusalem. As a Jew, that was something they were not okay with. And so Jesus gets snubbed, just get snow, gets rejected. What it feels like when someone's like, I'm not interested in you.
[00:13:45] I don't want to hard pass. Jesus has one of those moments. And for James and John, they're like, oh, nobody is going to treat my Jesus like that. Right. Ain't nobody going to do that to Jesus. They get defensive, they get protective. They get all riled up. We got an idea. How about we call down fire from heaven and roast them?
[00:14:07] Let's do it. Now you might think that's a little bit weird. What, where did this idea come from at first glance? Especially if you don't know the old Testament, you're like, did they just come up with this? Like, this is like a weird, like, just on the spur of the moment. Here's you got to realize James and John are good Hebrews in this moment, they are channeling all of their heritage in the old Testament.
[00:14:32] Those who have gone before. See to us, this sounds very strange, but what we may not realize that they for sure realize is that there was once a prophet named Elijah big deal. You can read about Elijah throughout the old Testament. Elijah wants, did that. He called down fire from God and it worked. Now.
[00:14:52] I'll just show you that text here. Cause again, you can read all about this. I'll show you a snippet of it. Second Kings chapter one, verse 10. But Elijah replied to the captain. This captain has come to, to tell Elijah, he's got to come with him. If I have a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and destroy you and your 50 men.
[00:15:11] This captain brought a little battalion with them to forcibly take Alijah. Lodge is like not going to happen. I'm going to call down fire. Then fire fell from heaven and killed them all. Like battalion gone. So the king said another captain with 50 men. You guys, you go get him, bring Elijah back. The captain said to him, man of God, the kingdom mans that you come down at once Elijah replied, if I'm a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and destroy you, Andrew 50 men.
[00:15:41] And again, the fire of God fell from heaven and killed. If you keep reading the story, it's hilarious. A third guy gets sent and he's like, look, I've seen what happened to the first two crews. Can we not do that again? I'm just going to ask nicely. Would you please? And it's like, it's hilarious, but also sad.
[00:16:01] Right? He's realizing this guy is literally raining down fire from heaven. Supernaturally. I don't want to mess with him. Please. Don't kill me. So this is a famous story from a famous. In the old Testament, James and John are very familiar with this. So they're like, oh, this Samaritan village, they don't want us.
[00:16:18] They don't want our Jesus. Hey Jesus. We got an idea. You remember Elijah? Elijah did. Let's do it. You just say the word Jesus. We believe by faith. You say the word we're going to rain that down on the sky, you know, and they're ready to go. And they're all pumped about this. We got a solution to this problem.
[00:16:38] Notice Jesus as a response. But Jesus turned and rebuked them. So they went on to another village that that is not at all. If you are reading the story, if you are in that moment, that is not at all. What you're expecting to happen. Jesus looks at them, listen to the suggestion and rebuke. The word that Luke uses here, the word rebuke is an interesting word because normally throughout the gospels, when you see the word rebuke, it is usually Jesus or one of his disciples, rebuking, a demon, like literally good versus bad.
[00:17:16] This contrast, like get out. I, I, you know, I rebuke you. It's usually not used for Jesus and his own. And yet Jesus is making a point. Luke is making a point that this idea they're suggesting is so far from the heart of God. That Jesus doesn't just say. Yeah, that's probably not a great idea, guys. He rebukes them for the idea.
[00:17:41] And I want you to put yourself in James and John's shoes here. No again, we can go up. That was a bad idea clearly, but they got the idea from the old Testament. They got the idea from a story. They were familiar with a prophet named Elijah, who in the name of God evidently did this. And so they suggested again to Jesus and then they're rebuked for, I imagine they were a bit confused, a bit taken back, like you're going to rebuke.
[00:18:09] No, no, we're the ones on your side. There's that village over there. That village over there will not let you come in, but you're not going to rebuke them. You're going to, you're going to rebuke us. And he said, you can imagine their reaction to confusion. I bet their feelings were hurt. I bet they were spitting a bit going, why are we the ones getting rebuked in this moment?
[00:18:32] Now it's easy for us to judge James and John, but we know what it feels. To suggest something like this to Jesus. We know what it feels like to go. All we can solve that problem. God tell you how to fix that. One of the takeaways I have from the story, and if you want to write something down, is that too often, our pursuit of Jesus lacks the love of Jesus.
[00:18:55] And we see that with his disciples time and time again, they are pursuing Jesus. You could say passionately pursuing Jesus. And yet if we do that without the love of. You're going to find yourself in these kind of moments where she's looks at you and is like, no, we're not doing that. That, that idea is not of me.
[00:19:14] And so again, you can imagine James, John going well, Elijah did it, and it was good for Elijah. Why are you not on board with this? And Jesus says, Now notice what Jesus doesn't do. He doesn't go, oh gosh, that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Right. He doesn't say James, John you're out. That is like the worst idea ever go find some other rabbi.
[00:19:35] I don't want to do this with you guys anymore. You guys are so off. No, he, he patiently says, okay, we're not doing that guys. And, and this is what Jesus often does with us. We come up with great solutions to problems. Jesus is like, no, we're not. We're not doing that one. No, no, Jesus. Let me tell you, I got this one figured out.
[00:19:53] Well, we're not going that way. And sometimes even Jesus might need to rebuke us, like, Hey, you're doing something right now and you're doing it in my name. Cause you think this is of me, but it's not, you're pursuing me right now, but it lacks the love that I have. So I'm going to go ahead and say Hart, hard-stop on that.
[00:20:08] We're not doing that, but he does not break the relationship. He does not give up on us. He is patient because this is what God is like. This is who God is. And in second, Peter three verses eight and nine. But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends a day is like a thousand years to the Lord. And a thousand years is like a day.
[00:20:30] The Lord isn't really being slow about his promise. As some people think, no, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent catch that last line. That's the heart of God being revealed. God is so patient. Why? Because God does not want anyone to be destroyed.
[00:20:54] God does not want anyone to be outside of the love of God. That is why God is so, so patient, because God wants everyone to have a chance and we go, no, I don't, I don't want to wait that long. I don't, I don't want that. Well, that's, that's the heart of God. God wants everyone to be included and to whatever degree we don't want that we're going to come into friction and the tension with the patience of God.
[00:21:21] So Jesus says, Hey, if you want to follow me, trust me, trust me. This is who I am on patient, and I want to include everybody. So trust me, even when you may not understand what I'm doing. And I think that was James and John this day going, why? Why is Jesus not more? Why is he not bothered by this murder?
[00:21:41] He's not going to do anything. He's just going to let this insult pass. He should do. I mean, to them, I love the way that Richard Rohr says it. He says redemptive suffering instead of redemptive violence, is the Jesus. Right just says, I'm not going to inflict harm on them. I'm going to allow them to inflict harm on me.
[00:22:02] That's the Jesus way. Patience comes from our attempts to hold together and always mixed reality, not from expecting or demanding a perfect. Patience comes from acknowledging God is doing this in a way I would not do this. God is doing something that I don't necessarily desire to happen. And rather than expecting the result, expecting things to play out, I'm going to make room for that.
[00:22:27] And I'm going to trust God. And so if you've ever tried to follow Jesus, you know, it demands massive amounts of patience. God, why are you not as angry about this? God, why are you not solving this? Like I could, I mean, this has to be so easy to solve. Just all of it. We got, God doesn't seem to care. God doesn't seem to be involved.
[00:22:48] God doesn't seem to, it really is about patience. Do we trust that that God, is it still worth trusting in the midst of what God is up to? One of the takeaways and this is, would be the big idea. I'd encourage you. Is that the patience of the spirit. Opportunities of the spirit. This is why it matters. So what, because the patience of the spirit, the patience of God produces new opportunities as well.
[00:23:17] Peter saw Simon look, why is God so patient so that there are more opportunities for other people to be included in God is incredibly patient, more patient than most of us would want God to be. But that is who God is because God is constantly producing new opportunity. God is a God of opportunities, a God of possibilities.
[00:23:40] He's so patient, so that more and more things are happening. And he invites us into this life. And for many of us, we don't know if we want it. We don't know if we're comfortable like that, because if we're honest for a lot of us, we, we kind of think of patience as doing nothing. W we think of patience as the absence of something, right.
[00:24:01] Patient just means you, you just sit back and you just watch everything. It's a horrible understanding of patience, patience. Isn't the absence of something. It's a fruit of the spirit. It is something tangible that is produced. When we start to look more like, God, I can illustrate this for you. There's a bird called the king Fisher bird.
[00:24:22] It's a little bird, but the king Fisher is known for dropping down quickly and diving into the water to get a fish. And it's incredibly fast and cool. And there's this one photographer. And his name was Alan Mcphaden and he decided I'm going to capture the perfect photo of a king fishers dive. Right.
[00:24:40] When it dies right before it hits the water. And I was like, this is a reflection of the bird, like right when it's doing it. And as you can imagine, it would be tricky to do. And so Alan Mcphaden decided, Hey, I'm just going to, I'm going to really pursue this and try to get it. And eventually he did. He captured away.
[00:24:56] He considers the perfect photo of a king Fisher. This picture is incredible. Not only to think about the lighting and the angle and the timing and all of that, that perfectly captures that moment. All the things that had to go, right, right. This bird is screaming down into the water, all the things that had to be perfect for him to capture that they asked them.
[00:25:22] How long do you think it took you to get that photo? He estimated 4,200 hours. Now to make that make sense. If you ran that continuously with no breaks, that would be 175 days since that would not be possible. Let's say you said I'm going to work on getting that photo eight hours a day, seven days a week.
[00:25:44] I'm not going to take any breaks. How long would that take you? 525. That is what patience look for. Now imagine saying to Alan, Hey, patience is a lack of something that's just passively. He'd be like, I'm the one that showed up day after day after day after day 4,200 hours of to get one perfect photo. And here's, what's crazy about that.
[00:26:13] How many hours did he have to think back before he had it? You know, 4,100 hours all that time. Didn't have. He had to keep going and keep going. So many people would have given up would have said, no photo is worth. And yet he kept it going. I mean, think about the nature of photography. You're capturing a moment.
[00:26:35] And yet we often expect immediate results. Right? Think about if you had a wedding photography recently or anything event, we have like 3000 photos taken of our special day. That's awesome. I'll need them back tomorrow. Right? Like immediately give me back the results. We just have this expectation, but patience is the willingness to say I'm going to do what other people wouldn't.
[00:26:55] I'm going to keep adding. And that allows for opportunities that do not exist. Otherwise on English writers said it like this patience is not passive. On the contrary. It is active. It is concentrated strength. I love that phrase. Patience is concentrated strength. It is focused strength, oftentimes in areas that other people would not.
[00:27:25] Now, if you think about the flip side of this impatience, that is passive impact is what you naturally feel when life happens to you. You just naturally feel impatient, impatience. When other people do things, you just go, oh, I feel impatient. That is a impassive choice, right? Or passive choice patience is.
[00:27:47] Patience is a fruit of the spirit to go. I'm not going to sit in the impatience. I'm not going to stay there. I'm going to move beyond it. It takes work and it is an invitation from God to us as a, do you want to be more like me? Do you want to experience more of who I am? If so, leave the inpatience behind and embrace this.
[00:28:08] Take a step forward and say yes to this without a mind. I want you to ask yourself a question. How is Jesus inviting? To be patient. Now you said, Hey Jeremy, you said we don't have to pray for patience not asking for it for it. Just ask Jesus. Hey Jesus, how are you wanting me to be more patient right now?
[00:28:28] What is it in my life that you're inviting me to experience you in a new way? Maybe there's something you've been praying about and you are not getting the answer you're looking for and you're going, God, I'm praying. I've said that prayer lots of times, and you're not showing up. You're not. Maybe it's a chance for you to experience and practice patience as you go, Hey, even though I'm not getting that answer, I'm going to keep going.
[00:28:54] Or maybe there's something that God wants you to keep doing, even though you're not getting results from it. Well, why I should give up, I should move on. And there's something else that the better rate of return, you know, and she's going to know, I've asked her to do this, keep doing it, keep doing it. And maybe you'll never see the results, this side of heaven of what Jesus.
[00:29:14] Maybe just say, Hey, just trust me be patient. Right? How many hours had Alan Mcphaden spent on a photo that never materialized until the very end, how many things that Jesus asked us to do? Will we not ever see until the very end we go? Wow. I had no idea all those years. You're asking me to do this. This is ultimately what you are producing.
[00:29:35] Or maybe if you're honest, there's an area of your life. You have stopped trusting God, because God. God God didn't deliver. God. Didn't show up rather than having to work through that and push through that. You just close that area off your life. Fine. I'll move on. Jesus. I won't include you in that part of my life anymore.
[00:29:56] Maybe there's this wound that you carry with you and Jesus is inviting you to say, Hey, trust me on that. Be patient with me in that trust that maybe there's something else that I'm up to. I want to close with one more. Will you read the, our story today out of Luke chapter nine. And if you keep reading the gospels, you get to a book called acts and ask could, could kind of be like Luke part two, because Luke wrote acts as well.
[00:30:22] And acts takes place a little bit down the road, right after Jesus has been he's died. He's embarrassed, resurrected, and the church is born and they got to figure this out. How do we do all this? And so Luke has his gospel and then he keeps writing. It writes the book of acts and keeps going. And in acts chapter eight, Luke records this in verse 25 after testifying and preaching the word of the Lord in Samaria, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem and they stopped in many Samaritan villages along the way to preach the good news.
[00:30:59] See down the road, the disciples come back to these Samaritan villages and they begin to tell them about Jesus, how he died. How he rose again and now he is alive now. And they go through all these villages that are Samaritan villages, because they're no longer defined by just were Jews versus Samaritans.
[00:31:19] Now they think of themselves as something beyond that, or Christians were we're following Jesus. And so they want to tell other people about it, but I want you to envision, how would that have gone differently? Had Jesus said yes to James and John calling down fire on a Samaritan. Do you think the reception in acts eight would have been a little bit different?
[00:31:39] Had they killed off an entire village of Samaritans? Absolutely. Would've it wouldn't have been possible for us to have an acts 8 25 and even more amazing than that. Notice who's doing the preaching in verse 25. It is Peter. John the same, John who with his brother, James asked Jesus, if he could call down fire and kill an entire village of people, John got to be the one to go back and say, Hey, let me tell you about Jesus.
[00:32:09] Let me tell you about something that has happened. That has changed the world forever. And John is able to go back because God's patience had opened up a possibility and opportunity that John never could have. John never could have wrapped his mind around that moment back in Luke nine. And that is what the patience of God produces.
[00:32:31] The spirit of God produces opportunities as we join God in patience. And here's what I believe the right now, wherever Jesus inviting you to be patient, it is because there are some opportunity that God's working on that if God were to explain it to you right now, it would probably blow your mind. It might even scare you.
[00:32:52] There's a guy who says, Hey, just, just trust me, be patient with me because there is something I'm working on. There's a new opportunity, a new possibility being produced. And if you're patient and you'll join God long enough, you'll have a chance to see an adventure, unlike any other let's pray together.
[00:33:12] Jesus. We want to experience the opportunities of the spirit as we join you. And.
[00:33:23] God, as we explore what it means for you to be patient for your heart, to be for all people to be included, may you shape our hearts in the same way? May our desire be that way? And maybe we join you in patiently working for that to come about. God, may we not close off doors because of our inpatience, but maybe we try.
[00:33:49] Maybe we lean in and maybe we say yes to what you're inviting us to experience and may the thrill of the adventure of the acts eight moments. When we get to see, oh, we had no idea what you are working on. Maybe we get to live in those moments. We pray in Jesus name and all God's people said, amen.