Life Unexpected: Patiently Righteous
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Focus: How you respond whenever there are curveballs in life helps reveal your foundations and refine your love for Jesus.
Patience is a Virtue
How We Respond
In the Righteousness of God
Patience is a Virtue
Much of life is here to help test and develop our patience.
When Paul was instructing the early Roman church, he had to clarify for them the nature of true faith.
Whereas they were looking to determine their piety by ceremonies involving rituals like eating and drinking certain foods, Paul pointed instead to a life that comes fully alive in Jesus Christ.
Romans 14:17 ESV
“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
When Paul speaks about the Kingdom of God, he is speaking about Jesus as Lord - Christ being the governor and benevolent ruler of your heart, mind and actions.
True faith is to be based around our understanding of the one true God in Jesus, fortified by a relationship with him and grounded in genuine experience with him.
Though valuable, true faith is not found simply in external, cultural rituals.
True faith is found in how we walk with Jesus through life, even in the midst of an unexpected life.
The question is:
What is God determined to produce in you through the unexpected curveballs of life?
Answer:
Fresh Fruit!
One of those fruits is patience.
Patience is the fruit of the Holy Spirit that is the bedrock on which righteousness can be received, developed in our lives and expressed toward others.
Curveballs are the opportunities to grow in this fruit by making determined choices to live righteously despite our surprising, and at times, frustrating, circumstances.
*This is why we need to find a way to encourage one another daily - intentionally filling our conversations with the truth, promises and eternal hope found in Jesus.
Proverbs 24:10 ESV
“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.”
Hebrews 3:12-14 ESV
“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”
It is not only how you treat others outside the home, but how you treat people closest to you - in your family, with your roommates - that is the real measure of your devotion to pleasing God.
Life unexpectedly shows us where our faith, love and our confidence truly lay.
Were they in God or something else?
“If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which 'took these things into account' was not faith but imagination.”
-C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Patience literally means long-suffering.
That means suffering for a long time.
Can we do it with patient, righteous responses?
Can we do it with peace?
Can we do it with joy in the Holy Spirit?
How We Respond
Those who understand patience as long-suffering know that God is shaping us to be like Jesus through trial.
God tests you to break you and then strengthen you.
This is the real testimony.
We become a living testimony of the truth of Scripture when we patiently walk with Jesus through an unexpected life.
“More often than not, it is what you are rather than what you say that will bring an unbeliever to Christ. This, then, is the ultimate apologetic. For the ultimate apologetic is: your life”
-William Lane Craig
*The only thing that truly produces both righteousness and patience is time spent with Christ - reflecting on his sufferings and receiving grace for our own as we look to our reward in him.
Walking with God is different than just believing in God.
Walking with God means that you are:
Thinking about how to obey Scripture in the decisions that you are making regarding relationships, work and pursuits. This applies to how you spend time, talent and treasure.
Listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit - Inviting God into every moment of your day, including at home, at work, with friends and with neighbors.
Asking God to fill you your heart with the tangible patience of God, as you set your heart on living righteously before him.
Matthew 18:21-35 ESV
“Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times. "Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, 'Pay what you owe.' So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you.' He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."”
When people are already trying to live for Jesus, harsh judgments discourage rather encourage people to become who God has made them to be.
How do I know if I’m being patient with others?
We now it by our response and our tone.
Proverbs 15:1 ESV
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”
Proverbs 25:15 ESV
“With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone.”
In the Righteousness of God
The righteousness of God frees me to develop in Christ and patiently allow others to do the same.
Whenever we return to the original Scriptural reference in Romans, Paul was addressing a community that was trying to find their right standing with God based on ceremonial rules and traditions regarding their eating, drinking and rituals rather than in Christ.
Paul was appealing to the Romans that there is no basis of our right standing with God without Christ, his cross for our sins and his resurrection from the dead.
How often has life unexpected brought us to a point where the fruit of our lives, embittered and disillusioned by disappointment with circumstance, yourself and others, brings out of you what Paul would describe in Romans?
Romans 3:10-18 ESV
“as it is written: "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one." "Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive." "The venom of asps is under their lips." "Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known." "There is no fear of God before their eyes."”
Again, life unexpected exposes our foundations to us, not to God.
“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”
-C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
The surprising righteousness of Christ provides a patience with myself and others that enables me to walk in kindness towards myself and others.
Romans 3:21-27 ESV
“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.”
When I’ve come to understand the righteousness that God has given me in Jesus, I am no longer continually beating myself or others up, but am striving to treat everyone with the same mercy and grace with which Jesus has treated me.
I can patiently wait on God’s promises and respond in righteous obedience to him because I know my promises are not based on my merit, but on God’s goodness to me.
The righteous things I do as I wait, I do out of love for the one who has given me his perfect record, and not to earn that which I could never measure up enough to attain.
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher