By your patience possess your souls!

Luke 21:19

A direct command from the Lord.

In Luke’s gospel our Lord Jesus speaks of a magnificent truth in respect to attitude of our faith towards God. Here Jesus is saying in difficult times and in times of personal trials  and tribulations we need to hold unto our faith by  joyful expectation even if the answers of our prayers seems to be delayed.

Our souls or in Greek our (Psuche) is the seat of our effections, our will, desire, emotions, mind, reason and understanding.

Jesus here says keep on trusting God in your inner most being. Do not let the hope of your faith and joy of your expectancy to die down, because this part of us is that which brings God’s promises to pass in our lives. Even though the circumstances show otherwise, let us keep on trusting Him.

James the half brother of our Lord in the opening of his letter says… “Patience is the most costly ingredient of our faith.” In verses 1, 2 & 3 he says through trials and difficulties the Lord perfects our faith in patience (joyful expectancy while waiting). Although to us mere sinful men this concept is very strange and painful, but while looking at it from God’s point of view it makes a lot of sense.

James in chapter 1 verse 1 & 2 says it in this way “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience” meaning when God is testing our faith He does it by delaying the answers of our prayers, and in it He wants to see if we will keep the joy or the expectancy of our faith. In His time of delay God wants to see how much do we truly trust Him to answer our prayers, or would we just give up if He delays answering us for a while.

In verse 3 James says “But let patience have its perfect work that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing”. Here the Apostle of Christ is introducing another aspect of faith and that is to be complete in faith. Therefore I believe we could learn that, while waiting in joyful expectancy for God’s answers, our faith is being perfected through our endurance of hope.

Therefore I also can understand this thing that when God is trying to perfect us in our faith, He would purposely delay the answers of our supplications and prayers, especially while we are waiting patiently under severe trials.

A very direct word from the Lord Himself about this process is found in the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18:1-8.

In this parable of our Lord Jesus He speaks of this expectancy of faith of His saints who are crying out to Him day and night for vengeance. Jesus says here that He would avenge them speedily, but would He find faith on earth when He comes to answer their prayers?

You see the problem is never with the Lord, it is with our lack of faith. That is why the precious Holy Spirit through the work of restoration of righteousness is always trying to perfect us in our faith by bringing trials and tribulations to help us build our faith in the midst of them.

Although many times we are ignorant of this heavenly reality while being tested, but its smoothing virtues comes later on to perfect and establish us in His grace.

We the Body of Messiah His bride always need to learn these heavenly realities through the trials we walk through.

Many times being caught up in the midst of a trial our focus is shifted from Him unto the intensity of these trials and all we want to see is a way out of them. However in Psalm 46: 10 the psalmist is saying “Be still, meaning stop worrying and stop doing any works of the flesh, and experience the fact that He is God in the midst of these trials.

As others scriptures also say in this battle you should not fight, since the Lord will fight for you.  All the great men of God had to learn this heavenly principal of faith, which is to possess their own souls through patience, from drawing away from the Love of God.  I believe this also will be the case with those who would apostate in these final hours and would forsake patience.

Now that I think more intensely to the meaning of the title of our message today, and the words of our Lord Jesus, I see this deep truth hidden in this saying of His. The falling away will be not only by losing the love of the truth, but that people in times of trials would be endangered by losing their joyful expectancy of their faith based prayers to be answered in His timing,

The believers will lose faith in God in answering their long awaited prayers and they would fall into unbeleif and despair. Oh wow! I pray that may the Lord through His mercy and grace sustain us in these difficult times of great trials.  This is why Apostle Peter in 2^nd Peter chapter one includes patience as one of Godly commodities that we need to have, so an abundant door would be opened up before us to enter into everlasting Kingdom of God.

This is another reason why prophet Habakkuk had to learn to deal with many kinds of lacks in order for his faith to stands its test.

It was the same with Job. The world knows Job through his patience. “Patience of Job” is almost as his second name. God perfected this man’s faith through suffering and patience. Truly if there was a man who endured under the most sever trials and did not lose hope was Job. In His time of trials Job remained faithful and God was glorified though it all.

Job’s patience was in all different aspects. He truly did possess his soul through patience. Patience with men and his own suffering, never losing his joyful expectancy with God His Creator.  Job called God his Redeemer and Lord.

Apostle James in chapter 5 verse 11 commanded and called them all blessed who endure trials of patience. Then in the same verse he said “You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord. That the Lord is very compassionate and merciful”.

In saying this Apostle James in a way is saying these words of Jeremiah the prophet in Jer. 29:11.

The half brother of our Lord clearly declares here that our God is a merciful and compassionate God. That He does not allow trials and testing’s  so that He wants us to fail during them, but that He intends to prosper us spiritually and physically through overcoming them by patient endurance through joyful expectancy of favor from Him.

Although the enemy and the physical circumstances would try to prove them otherwise, but His intended end is to give us a hope and future that we can never even imagine while going through the trials. He also says God knows our frame and that His plans also include no harm to us, even though in the natural for a while they might seem that way. Yet in them all He wants to perfect our faith in Him.

In these times of great trials and testing’s many of us might think God has forsaken us  or has abandoned us altogether, however the closer we look to the end intended for them by God we would see His unfathomable plans of redemption on our behalf.

As mentioned Job and his friends are wonderful examples of such divine act of foreknowledge of God in respect o our future grace poured out upon His vessels of mercy.

God is always making us to conform to the image of His Son, who did not despise the shame of the cross and He endured the cross to bring many sons to glory through His patient suffering on our behalf.

Job’s friends are common example of all those who misunderstand the trials of the God righteous elect, but one day they too did recognize God ‘s plan of redemption.

Many seeing the natural process of God’s plan of restoration fail to see the greater picture and therefore condemn the incent, yet the Lord will stand to show Himself glorified through all their trials.

In Job’s life his patience brought God the glory, which He alone deserves, and it is the same with each one of us. God’s grace through time produces this quality of our faith and that is patience. Patience is a product of Godliness and long suffering in the hope of the triumphal victory in Him.

God’s love through His longsuffering the Bible says brings us unto repentance, therefore this is a Godly characteristic He is trying to work in us.

The entire Old and New Covenant scripture shows one common commodity and that is God in all His doings is sovereign and in His soverignly He has His own timing for everything.

Patience also means to wait for God’s timing in all things. Just like Christ being born in the fullness of time, or Sarah becoming pregnant according to time of life, or Joseph being elevated to the kingdom power in God’s own timing, these represents  higher understanding of God’s eternal patience with His own elect according to grace.

Therefore we too need to walk in this heavenly characteristic in order to attain a perfect faith in response to our mandate of conforming to the image of Christ who is the image of the invisible God in a bodily form.

Amen?