“Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.” ~James 5:7-8
Last week, the sermon on James 5:7-11, struck a chord with me as I was thinking about its application in my life. In our Bible study the following Friday, we were sharing life examples of patience – or lack thereof – and my example of endurance came out all wrong (as my stories often do), and so I’d like to take a stab at achieving its point by writing it down…
When I arrived on the OSU campus as a freshman, my golf game was at its all-time high. I made the traveling squad for the first tournament, to my coach’s shock and seeming dismay, and sparing the details, it all went downhill from there. I don’t know if it was pressure or voodoo, but at the NCAA Preview, I caught some strand of shank-itis (if you don't know what a "shank" is, look it up on youtube) that stayed in my system for about a year and a half.
…This is where I lost the group to whom I was telling the story, for they thought that they needed to comfort me in my golf-esteem. It’s okay – I know I was and am a decent golfer who can beat the Joe Shmo who didn’t spend every daylight-filled minute outside of class on the links. So back to my story…
My first year and a half of college was pretty much miserable. Everyday I’d spend hours shanking ball after ball in front of coaches and teammates – which I’ve tried to equivocate to other sports, and it’d be like a runner tripping over his left heel. Every step. And 4-6 hours spent on the course each day adds up to many painful hours. My boyfriend of 2 ½ years and I broke up, and this made me realize that I had virtually no girlfriends. I never felt so alone and miserable.
Here’s where the patience part comes in. Now, one could say that I endured this trial, which I did of course, but I think, upon last week’s sermon, that the defining mark of true godly patience is one’s attitude. During this time, I was a speaker for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), and, as we’re supposed to, I used my story as my message when speaking to junior high and high school student-athletes. I often focused my message on James 1:2; “… count it all joy when you fall into various trials…” and encouraged them to seek the Lord when things of this world weren’t going the way we wanted them to, and that we must trust that the Lord is using this trial to produce something greater in us. It was good stuff for an 18 year old, but my idea of the “good” that would come out of my trial was that my golf game would come around, I'd win the NCAAs, etc. Hindsight of 5 years shows me just how foolish and narrow-minded my scope was. The idea wasn’t completely selfish: I wanted to be one of those success stories that FCA eats up, and I knew my success could be used to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. Even so, my endurance through shank-ville was motivated by a Joel Osteen-esque, very worldly ambition: God’s allowing this trial in golf, so surely He’s going to bless my golf game if I’m faithful to Him.
The amazing part is that despite my idiocy in what I thought His plan for me was, God did use this time for my good and His glory, and of course golf trophies were not a part of either. Through becoming an English major, I was blessed with the opportunity to study Jonathan Edwards and many other reformed thinkers, which spilled over into what I read and studied on my own time. In the lowest time of my life in many respects, God revealed Himself to me in ineffable ways of such depth that required absolute dependence on and abandon to Him. He wanted me broken. He wanted me to understand that I bring nothing but my sinful self to the cross, and I guess I needed to feel abject humility in a worldly sense before I could fathom it in a spiritual manner.
In many places of scripture we find that it is God who reveals the major truths to our dead hearts and even the smallest tidbits of doctrine, and I think many times that is because it is He alone Who knows what circumstances will prepare our hearts to really absorb each piece of truth about Himself. He knows what will take a belief from an intellectual accent to a heartfelt conviction, and He can procure that encounter. He alone can break a person to the point that they see the beauty and majesty of the doctrines of grace, and though I had always professed their biblical adherence, it was not until I was in my worldly lowest of lows did I realize that the glory of God is more rightly seen from our lowest vantage point.
Hence, patience is a willingness to submit my will for God’s will, to understand and trust that: a) He is omnipotent and has the power to do anything He pleases, b) He is loving and will do what is best for me, and c) what is best for me is to become more like Christ.
Thank you to any who endured this blurb. I pray that you are blessed in your patience with my rambling, and I hope it made some sense!
