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<< Hebrews 11:40 Hebrews 12:2 >>
Hebrews 12:1-4
We can learn a great deal about why patience is so vital by comparing the process we are going through to an artist sculpting a work from a piece of marble. Chip by chip over a period of time, an artist uses hammer and chisel to shape a conception from a raw slab of rock until the finished figure is revealed. God is doing much the same with us except we are living, raw material with mind, emotions, and the liberty to allow or disallow the Artist to continue. If we are impatient, not allowing the Creator to complete His artistry by our constant yielding to His tools, we will never be perfect and entire.
It is easy for us to magnify our burdens. Notice, however, what grumbling did for the Israelites in the wilderness when God finally responded. Would we rather have our trial or grumble and receive what the Israelites did? We must begin to cultivate the habit of thinking of life, including all of its trials, as being God's way to shape godly character in us.
James makes what seems to be a paradoxical statement in James 1:2: We should count our various trials as joy. Why? Because verse 3 says that doing so produces patience! We need patience so God can mold us into His likeness. Even God cannot produce godly character by fiat. James is teaching us that we should not measure the experiences of life by their ability to please our ambition or tastes but by their capacity to make us into God's image. If we have any vision - and a zealous desire to live as God does - we can welcome our trials as steps in God's creative process and meet them with patience and hope.
Perfection in this life is to become what God wants us to become. What could be better than that? If we understand that our lives are in God's hands as He molds and shapes us, then the meanings - the eventual outcome - of joy and sorrow are the same. God intends the same result whether He gives or takes. The events of life are merely the scaffolding for shaping us into His image, and we should meet them with patience as He continues His work. This will work to flatten out the emotional extremes we tend to experience.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fruit of the Spirit: PatienceRelated Topics: Character | God's Tools | Patience | Sculpting Metaphor | Spiritual Sculpting | Tools, God's | Trials | Trials, Shaping Power Of | Yielding to God
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What Does Hebrews 12:1 Mean?
Patience is vital because God, like an artist shaping marble, uses life's trials to mold godly character in us. Trials should be counted as joy, since they produce the patience needed for God to complete His work. The great cloud of witnesses are not observing us; rather, they are those who lived long ago and left a testimony of faith, endurance, and perseverance, glorifying God. Though dead, their recorded lives yet speak, as Abel's blood still speaks. They witness that God is faithful, that He calls us to save us, and that if they made it, so can we. Laying aside every weight requires careful evaluation of each aspect of life, throwing off whatever hinders the spiritual race we run against our own nature.