Jan 18, 2022
Does patience result in trust or does trust result in patience? Welcome back to the Follower of One podcast. We invest a few minutes every day to think deeply about how we can integrate our faith into our daily life. I'm Mike Henry, the host. Thanks for joining us again today.
Today's passage is Psalm 40 verses one to three, and I'm reading from the Christian Standard Bible. It says, "I waited patiently for the Lord and he turned to me and heard my cry for help. He brought me up from a desolate pit out of the muddy clay and set my feet on a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see in fear and they will trust in the Lord."
Notice how this passage begins with patience and it ends with trust. Recently, I was speaking with a friend and we were both talking about how friends of ours has suggested that we consider having a word of the year. I don't know if you've ever had a word for the year, but neither of us had ever done that before. His wife had actually suggested to him that his word needed to be patience. I believe my wife probably suggested that to me several times over the past few years.
I also had a friend who suggested that I select trust as my word for this year. And I'm doing that. And so I was studying trust and patience and came across this passage today because I was talking with this friend about his word of patience and my word of trust. I lack patience, but I confess it's a little bit selective as patience leans over a little more towards passivity, I catch up with it.
I can be pretty passive. But when I have to actively wait on something outside of my own control, I don't relax. My mind is always working. I constantly calculate and figure and plan. Until I have a next step or next series of steps or a plan of some kind I don't rest well. I'm constantly busy. I'm constantly active in my mind.
This passage showed me the circular nature of trust and patience. When I trust someone to do what they say, I can relax. I can become patient. I don't think about something due next week when the person who's doing it is trustworthy. I trust them. Therefore, patience is easier or maybe patience is dormant.
My patience isn't necessary. Maybe I don't even need to be patient because I trust.
This podcast is part of my own discovery and search for trust. I want to trust Jesus more. I want to do what he says, but when the results, aren't what I expect. I go to work. I flip a gear and I jump into action. I become my own God trying to produce my own results. I stop waiting and to quote the next verse, I "turn to the proud." I'm the proud that I turn to most often.
God is working in your career and in your daily life right now and mine. What's he doing? Do you know? Are you waiting on him for anything? I believe we can live without ever trusting God because we have enough money or energy or resources to solve our own problems, but that becomes an empty lonely life.
We isolate ourselves because we're not dependent upon anything outside of ourselves. We save for retirement. We have insurance for just about everything. If we never have to wait on Jesus, do we ever really trust him? Today, I want to stop being my own. God. How about you? I want to ask God what he wants me to do.
I want to ask him to give me the state of the people that I interact with and the people that I work with, of my job and my workplace. And if he wants me to wait on him for something, then I want to bring my patience and put it to work. My patience needs some exercise, anyway.
I don't practice patience very often, and as a result, I can only talk about trust. But it's more like a city or country I've never been to. Today, I want to visit trust. I want to live there. I want to relax in my relationship with Jesus. And it requires me to exercise patience. It requires me to be dependent upon him. It requires me to lay back and to say, "okay, God, show me what you want me to do," and not act until he says what he wants me to do.
I'm not good at not acting. Today, let's ask God to let us visit trust more. Let's put our patience to work and do things that God asks us to do. But also let's put our patience to work and wait until he directs us. When we live like we trust Jesus, sometimes waiting on him instead of fixing our own problems, then we can talk about him. Then others will see him and they will trust in the Lord, which is what it says in verse three here.
Take some time today, reading Psalm 40. It's a deep multifaceted Psalm. And so is God. Let's do our jobs today and patiently wait. We will come out with a new song and we will help others trust Jesus more and more because we waited.
Thank you for being a marketplace minister. Check out our online community at https://community.followerofone.org, and let's get around other people who can help us exercise our patience, and rely on God, and trust God more. Thanks very much.