We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised. — Hebrews 6:12

Patience is more than endurance. Our lives are in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something we cannot see. He stretches and strains, and every now and again we say, “I can’t take it anymore.” God doesn’t waver. He goes on stretching until his purpose is in sight. Then he lets the arrow fly.

“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15). Trust yourself in God’s hands. Maintain your relationship to Jesus Christ through the patience of faith. Faith is not a pathetic sentiment. It is vigorous confidence built on the fact that God is holy love. It is the heroic effort of your life.

A mental poise comes from being established on the eternal truth that God is holy love. Is there something you need patience for just now? Maybe you can’t see God, can’t understand what he’s doing. But you know him. God has given everything in Jesus Christ to save you. Now he wants you to give everything for his sake. He wants you to fling yourself out in reckless abandonment to him.

There are parts of us that this kind of abandoned faith hasn’t reached yet, places that remain untouched by the life of God. There were no such places in Jesus’s life, and there must be none in ours. “Now this is eternal life: that they know you” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything without wavering. If we take this view, life becomes a great romance, an opportunity for seeing marvelous things all the time. God is disciplining us to bring us to this central place of power.

2 Kings 4-6; Luke 24:36-53

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Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? — Luke 14:28

In Luke 14:26–33, our Lord isn’t referring to a cost we need to plan for; he’s referring to a cost he planned for, for our sake. What did it cost Jesus to redeem the world? Thirty years in Nazareth; three years of popularity, scandal, and hatred; the deep, unfathomable agony in Gethsemane; and, finally, the onslaught at Calvary—the pivot upon which the whole of time and eternity turns. Jesus Christ planned for this cost, so that in the final reckoning no one could say of him, “This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish” (v. 30).

Have you anticipated the cost of discipleship? Jesus states the cost clearly: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother … such a person cannot be my disciple” (v. 26). The only people the Lord will use in his mighty building projects are those who have been entirely remade by him: men and women who love him personally, passionately, and devotedly, above any of their closest family or friends on earth. His conditions are stern, but they are glorious.

Everything we build will be inspected by God. Will he find that we have built something of our own on the foundation of Jesus, something for our selfish gain? These are days of tremendous enterprises, days when many people are striving mightily to work for God—and therein lies the trap. We can never work for God. We can only give ourselves to Jesus and let him take us over for his work. We have no right to dictate to our Lord where we will be placed or what we will do.

2 Kings 1-3; Luke 24:1-35

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Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. — Ephesians 6:18

If we are praying as this verse commands, our prayers might cost the ones for whom we pray more than we expect. When we begin to intercede in prayer for others, God begins to lift them into a totally
different sphere, a process that may involve trials and difficulties. We have to make sure that our natural sympathy doesn’t get in God’s way. If we slip from identifying with his interests in others into personal sympathy for them, our vital connection with God will be lost. Putting sympathy first is a rebuke to him.

It is impossible to pray vitally unless we have perfect confidence in God. Personal sympathy and prejudice weaken this confidence; identification with God ensures it. Whenever we stop being identified with God, it is because of sympathy, not sin. Sin isn’t likely to interfere with our relationship to God, but sympathy will make us say, “I refuse to allow this to happen.” When we refuse to allow God to have his way, we have lost our vital connection with him.

If we are interceding properly, we have neither time nor inclination to pray for our own sad, sweet selves. It’s not that we’re working hard to keep thoughts of ourselves at bay; thoughts of ourselves simply aren’t there. In vital intercession, we are completely and entirely identified with God’s interests, and our natural sympathy—for ourselves and for others—is entirely eclipsed.

1 Kings 14-15; Luke 22:21-46

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Though it linger, wait for it. — Habakkuk 2:3

Patience is not indifference. Patience is an immensely strong rock, withstanding all onslaughts. The vision of God is the source of patience, because it gives moral inspiration. Moses was able to be patient, not because he had a sense of duty but because he had the vision of God: “He persevered because he saw him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27). If God gives you a time of temptation in the wilderness, when there is no word from him at all, be patient. The power to endure is yours because you see God.

A person who has had a vision of God is devoted to God himself, not to any particular cause or issue. You always know if the vision you’re having is of God because of the inspiration it brings. When you see God, everything around you is energized. Everything is larger, more vibrant, more.

“Though it linger, wait for it.” The proof that we have the vision is that we are reaching out for more than we have grasped. It is a bad thing to be satisfied spiritually. We have the tendency to look for satisfaction in our experience. We think that because we’ve experienced salvation and sanctification, we have the power to endure anything. The instant we begin to think this way, we are on the road to ruin. If we have nothing more than our experiences, we have nothing. If we have the inspiration of the vision of God, we have more than we can experience.

Never let yourself relax spiritually. Press on toward your goal. “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me” (Philippians 3:12).

1 Kings 12-13; Luke 22:1-20

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Love is patient, love is kind. — 1 Corinthians 13:4

Love is not premeditated. Love is spontaneous, bursting up in extraordinary ways. Consider Paul’s description of love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:4–5). There is nothing calculating about the kind of love Paul describes. It is free and easy, arriving without conscious effort on our part. When the Spirit of the Lord is having his way with us, we pour out his love spontaneously, living up to God’s standard without even realizing it.

Like everything that has to do with the life of God in us, the true nature of a loving action can only be seen in hindsight. Looking back on some loving action we took, we are amazed at how we felt in the moment: unselfish and uncalculating. That is the evidence real love was there.

Trying to prove to God how much we love him is a sure sign that we do not love him. The evidence that our love for him is true is that it comes naturally, bubbling up without our bidding at the command of the Holy Spirit. That is why we can’t see our own reasons for doing certain loving things: it is the Spirit in our hearts who does them. We can’t say, “Now I am going to always be patient.” The springs of love are in God, not in us. To look for the love of God in our hearts is absurd if we have not been born again by the Spirit: God’s love is there only when he is. “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5).

1 Kings 8-9; Luke 21:1-19

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What we will be has not yet been made known. — 1 John 3:2

Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing. We imagine that we have to reach some goal, but this isn’t the nature of the spiritual life.

The nature of the spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty. Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life; gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain of the rest, never knowing what a day may bring. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should be said with a burst of breathless expectation: we’re uncertain of the next step, but we’re certain of God.

The instant we abandon ourselves to God, he begins to fill our life with constant surprises. But when we become advocates of a creed, something within us dies. If we are clinging to a creed or a belief, we aren’t believing God himself; we are merely believing our beliefs about him.

Jesus said, “Unless you change and become like little children …” (Matthew 18:3). Spiritual life is the life of a child. A child isn’t uncertain of God, only of what God will do next. If we are sure of our beliefs, we are haughty and absolutely set in our opinions. Jesus said, “Believe also in me” (John 14:1). He didn’t say, “Believe your own ideas about me.” When we are rightly related to God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy.

Leave everything to God. It is gloriously uncertain how he will come, but he will come.

1 Kings 6-7; Luke 20:27-47

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Be prepared in season and out of season. — 2 Timothy 4:2

In this verse, the word season doesn’t refer to a time of year; it refers to our emotional state. To be prepared “in season and out of season” is to be ready whether we feel like it or not. If we only ever do what we feel like doing, we may do nothing, forever and ever. There are unemployables in the spiritual domain—spiritually decrepit people who refuse to do anything unless they are supernaturally inspired. The proof that we are rightly related to God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not.

One of the great dangers is making a fetish of rare moments. When the Spirit of God gives you a time of inspiration and insight, do you say, “Now I’ll always be like this”? You won’t; God will make sure of it. Such times are entirely a gift from him. You can’t give them to yourself. If you say that your plan is always to be your best, you become an intolerable burden on God. It’s as though you’re telling him that you’ll never do anything unless he keeps you consciously inspired.

If you make a god of your times of inspiration, the Lord God will fade out of your life and never come back—not until you do the duty that lies nearest. This is how you show him you’ve committed to doing his will, in season and out.

2 Samuel 21-22; Luke 18:24-43

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Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. — Luke 10:20

As Christian disciples, worldliness isn’t our snare; sin isn’t our snare. Our snare—the thing that threatens to entrap us—is a lack of spiritual discipline. If we are spiritually undisciplined, we shamelessly strive to fit in with the religious age we live in, drawn by the lure of spiritual “success.”

Never court anything besides the approval of God. Take yourself “outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore” (Hebrews 13:13). Jesus told the disciples not to rejoice in successful service, and yet this seems to be the one thing in which most of us do rejoice. We have a commercial viewpoint, tallying up how many souls have been saved and sanctified on our watch. We forget that our work begins where God’s grace has laid the foundation. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace. Our work is to disciple lives until they are entirely given over to God. One life wholly devoted to God is more valuable to him than a hundred lives reawakened by his Spirit. God brings his disciples to a standard of life by his grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that standard in others.

Unless we are living a life hidden with Christ in God, we are likely to become irritating dictators instead of indwelling disciples. Many of us are dictators. We dictate when we pray and when we preach, telling God what he must do, telling others how they must be. Jesus never dictated. When Jesus talked about discipleship, he prefaced it with an “if,” not with a “must” (Matthew 16:24 kjv). Discipleship carries an option with it.

2 Samuel 19-20; Luke 18:1-23

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