Love Is Patient

Well, good morning, everybody. Great to have you. Who's happy to be at church today? I'm Stokes. My name's Renee, another one of the pastors here. Grab your message notes that look like this. The Lost Art of Love is what we call our message series. But before we get into the message, just in case you missed it yesterday, I just wanna give you kind of a peek at what happened all over campus. It was the second annual TLC Bible Conference, major success. We had hundreds of people show up here, packing out rooms to your professors, scholars, authors from all over the country that we flew in to talk specifically about the Bible, Bible difficulties, Bible questions. This entailed a massive amount of effort just to feed all the people who showed up. And I just want us to give a big thanks to our amazing team of volunteers and staff. It was awesome. It was really a dream come true for my wife, Lori, who was the director of the conference. She's an adjunct professor at Western Seminary, and for her to bring in all these really legendary professors, we had somebody who's on the New Living Translation, Bible Translation Committee, two people on the NIV Bible Translation Committee, just the top people all over the planet really talking about the Bible. And it's a dream come true, and we've got the third annual coming up next March, March 8th, so if you missed this one, mark that one on your calendar. It's gonna be fantastic.

And also, in case you missed it, last weekend, the TLC Hope Center is on! We are so grateful for this. If you're just joining us for the first time, this is going to be a permanent home for our recovering ministries, our food ministry, our grief support ministry, divorce care ministry, mental health support ministries. In other words, our community outreach ministries and our adult education ministries will have this permanent home instead of the portables, which will not last another winter, and so we'll be breaking ground. It'll take several months to get all the permits, and then we hope to finally have the grand opening summer 2026. But please, if you pledge to this project, we appreciate you starting your pledges now and giving faithfully through this time, and please pray for that as well.

Well, this morning, I wanna talk about something that we are going to need for the TLC Hope Center project, and that is patience. Everybody say patience with me. Patience. In fact, I thought kind of a mass confession to start with might be a little bit helpful, so a show of hands. How many of you would say, "Yes, I have lost my temper," or, "Become impatient at one time in my life?" Can I see a show of hands? All right. How many of you would say, "Honestly, I've lost my patience at least once in the last month"? Can I see a show of hands? How many of you would say, "I lost my patience in the car on the way to church today"? True confessions. Laurie and I have done that too. In fact, arguing in the car on the way to church, to this church, when she was serving in Sunday school classes and I was a pastor, became such a routine for us. It's like, why do we, we literally don't argue any other hour the whole rest of the week, and we somehow get into these arguments driving to church together. But I'm here to tell you, we found a way to solve that problem. We now come to church in different cars.

But the traffic in Santa Cruz can test your patience, right? One day, years ago, Laurie was in one of those slow, high-one-one traffic jams. And as she's inching along, going 0.1 miles an hour, she realizes that the car right next to her belongs to a friend of hers named Luanne. And Luanne hasn't noticed her yet. And so Laurie figures she'll have some fun with this, and she rolls down her window, and she starts making faces, you know, sticking out her tongue and stuff like that. But Luanne still doesn't notice. And so Laurie decides to kind of like inch even closer to Luanne's car, and she still doesn't notice. So Laurie starts honking her horn, going really close to her. And she looks up to see how Luanne was reacting to all this, and she realizes that's not Luanne. She doesn't know this woman at all. And this woman thinks Laurie's insane. And she thinks Laurie's mocking her. She starts honking her horn back, shaking her fist. She's cursing. Laurie just meant to spread love, and instead she spread road rage.

But would you agree with this? Tempers are getting shorter, right? It seems like everybody's ticked off about something. These days we live in an angry world. But how can we as Jesus followers be in the world but not of it? Well, by rediscovering the lost art of love. And that's what we're doing in this series. We're looking at 1 Corinthians 13, which is famous as the love chapter. That's so famous, so fun to say, I feel like. Let's say it together. The love chapter. Isn't that fun? You're gonna be saying that now all day long 'cause it's super fun the way that I just kind of say it again, the love chapter. Right. It's all about love. You've heard it, we're at a lot of weddings, seen it in Hallmark cards and so on. Last weekend, if you didn't catch the sermon last weekend, I'd encourage you to check it out online because we established the context for this, which is very important to understand.

Super short summary, these words were written by a leader of the early Christians, Paul, to the church at Corinth, the very earliest Christians there. At the time, Corinth was booming, it's just busting out. It had gone from zero, an abandoned ruin, to one of the largest cities. It was in the top 10 largest cities in the Roman Empire, much larger than Athens, which was the next closest city. And Corinth was such a boom town that it was where entrepreneurs from all over the Roman world came to make things happen. These were dynamic people, these were enterprising people, these were sharp people. In fact, earlier in this letter, the apostle Paul talks about how the Corinthians were eloquent, gifted, intelligent, knowledgeable, charismatic, faithful. They were hard workers, but they were also jerks. They were impatient, they were irritable, they were bossy. And so Paul tells these gifted, bright people, look, I can be as gifted and brilliant as an angel, but if I don't have love, then I'm nothing.

And then he says, yeah, in case you forgot what love looks like, it's not just an emotion. Let me describe it to you. Love is patient, kind, it's not envious, it's not boastful, it's not arrogant, it's not irritable, it's not resentful, all these things that they were displaying, right? And what we're doing in this series is we're taking this famous chapter with all these descriptions of love, and we're breaking it down and looking at one of these sections each week. And so we talked about the first three verses last weekend. Today, I just want to focus on that next line, love is patient. Say this out loud with me. Love is patient.

Now, here's something interesting to me. The Greek word for patient here is macrothumia. This is a compound word, macrothumia, made up of two words, macro and thumia. And this is really interesting to me. Macro, what do you think macro means? Big, right? Big or long, and thumia is related to the English word for thermal, and so this means heat or passion. And what it literally means is a long fuse or low heat. Like there's a long fuse until you heat up, until the dynamite blows up, right? A long fuse. Or you're a tea kettle, and it's on such low heat that it takes a long time for it to boil. That's what patience meant in that Roman and Greek world.

Now, the problem is this, the challenge, I should say, is this. In our modern culture, we probably live in an environment that is less likely to produce a long fuse, less likely to produce people who are slow to boil than any other culture in human history. We are the culture of the one-click shopper, right? We are the culture of free same-day delivery. In fact, Amazon even advertises it with no patience required. Just get it right now. The challenge is anything really valuable in life takes patience, right? You know, mature children are not one click. It takes a long time. A healthy marriage is not, you know, same-day delivery. I got married, so now instantly we're going to be mature in our relationship. No, it all happens in stages. So I need to learn to be patient.

I mean, first of all, I need to learn to be patient with life because there's always going to be traffic jams. There's always going to be all sorts of being put on hold. There's going to be checkout lines. And the next, I need to learn to be patient with others. We're going to get no relationship worth anything is a one-click relationship. I need to learn to be patient with myself. No skill is one click. No gold medal is one click. No success is one click. No spiritual growth is one click. And I need to learn to be patient with God, and that's a big one. Ever thought, God, why is this taking so long? So I mean, you look at this. That pretty much covers all of life. I'm going to need patience just to deal with life. But again, the problem is we live in a culture that constantly undermines the patience I need to make life work because we're used to getting everything so quickly.

So what are we going to do? How can we develop that long fuse? Well, how about stepping out of our culture and looking at writings from an ancient culture that knew something about patience? Let's look at five secrets of truly patient people. Now, I did something a little bit different putting this message together. This week, I realized that most of what I had been taught about patience is really not really about patience. I'd heard things like, well, if you really want to not blow up and lose your temper, then, like Thomas Jefferson used to say, when angry, count to 10. If really angry, count to 100, right? And that's good advice, but it's really about self-control. It's really not about blowing your stack once the short fuse has reached the dynamite. It's really about how not showing everybody that your tea kettle water is already boiling, right? How to shut your mouth when you're mad. But that's not about patience. It's about self-control.

What I wanted to learn was, how do I make my fuse longer before it gets to the point where I have to watch my mouth, right? How do I turn down the heat so that it takes longer for me to boil? That's patience. And I realized I actually hadn't heard a lot of teaching about that. So I asked several people that I knew were lovers of Jesus. And also, they just seemed like patient people, kind of like chill people, people who didn't fly off the handle all the time. What is your secret? Every one of them told me-- I did not expect to hear this-- that it was not a result of their personality they'd been born with. They all told me, well, yeah, I used to be an impatient person. Really? It just seems like it's part of your personality. No, I had to learn it. Well, what's your secret? Well, I boiled down everything that they told me into five. I wish I could have gotten it shorter, but I boiled it all down into these five secrets of patient people. And all of them tie into scripture, of course, right out of the Word of God.

And the first secret is the most important. I need to realize how patient God is with me, realize how patient God is with me. Paul says in 1 Timothy, "I was shown mercy so that in me the worst sinner Christ might display his unlimited patience." Another show of hands. How many of you are super glad that God has been patient with you? Jesus tells a story about this. It's in the Gospel of Matthew 18. He says a king decides to settle accounts with all of his subjects who owe him money. And it says in verse 24, "As he began the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him." Now, how much money is that? Well, a talent, that was their word for a large unit of money. It was the largest unit of money they had. It was worth 20 years of work. Now, let's just say that somebody made $50,000 a year. Times 20, that's a million dollars. That's one talent. How many did this man owe? 10,000. That's $10 billion that this man owes the king. Just this Guinness World Record amount of debt.

Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and all his children and all he had be sold to repay the debt. Put him into indentured servitude, and his wife, and all his kids, liquidate all his assets, because I know that still won't add up to $10 billion, but at least I'll get something out of this deal. At this, the servant fell on his knees before him. Have what? Isn't that interesting? He's asking not for mercy. He's asking not for forgiveness. He's asking not for grace. He's asking for patience. And the word is the same word, macrothymia. Patience? If he lives 5,000 lifetimes, he'll never be able to pay this off. How long of a fuse is he looking for? It is impossible. He will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever be able to pay off this debt. He should have been asking for grace, not patience. But the king gets this. It says, "His master had compassion on him, forgave his debt, and released him." Compassion, forgiveness, release. And this is what God does for you.

You owe God a debt you could never, ever, ever repay from your own sins in your past. I mean, how could you ever repay those? And so God has compassion on you and forgives you and releases you. Release, that means you have no more obligation. You don't have to work off that debt. You don't have to go, I'm so, so sorry, I'm so, so sorry, over and over and over again. You are released. I don't know about you, but there's times when I'm-- the oddest times, I'm not even thinking about my past. But I'll be driving around, or maybe it's in the middle of the night, and all of a sudden, I'll think about something from my own past that I regret, that I feel shame about. And it's not just one thing, it could be a variety of things. And one time I was thinking about one of these things driving around, and I caught myself in the mirror. And I was cringing like this, thinking about this something I'd done 20 years ago. And I need to remember when that happens to me. God says, I have compassion on you about that. Wow. I forgive you for that, and I release you. And this is what your Heavenly Father says to you.

In fact, it's because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross, because Jesus says, I paid that debt. Everything that he or she owes, that's on me. Their debt's wiped out. I have compassion, and there's forgiveness, and there's release. How many of you are grateful that God releases you from that sin debt? Well, the servant-- can you imagine how joyful he was? Look at what happens next. It says, when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii. Now, what's a denarius? A denarius would be worth about $43.50 today, but he owes this guy 100 denarii. That's plural, so that adds up to about $4,350. That's not nothing, but it could be paid off or forgiven. I mean, this guy's got to be just overjoyed. And so guess what happens next? It says, he grabbed him and said, rejoice, brother. I've been released from debt. I'm throwing a feast. The king's been so kind to me, so I'm not holding your debt against you. Give me a hug. Let's be friends again. No, that's not what happens.

What happens in Jesus' parable is this. He grabbed him and began to choke him. Pay back what you owe me, he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, echoing a phrase we've heard before. Have what? Patience with me. Same word, macrothermia. Longer fuse, please. Please turn down the heat on me, please. And I will pay it back. Now, unlike this guy's debt to the king, $4,000 and change, he could have paid this back. Actually, if the guy would have showed him patience, he probably could have worked it out. But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw this, they were outraged. They went and told their master everything that had happened. And then the master called the servant, and you wicked servant, he said, I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to? Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?

And what Jesus is saying is, listen, it's like you were forgiven of $10 billion in sin debt. Somebody owes you a few grand. You can work that out. You can have compassion. You can forgive. You can release. And part of the point of this parable, you know, the servant is under judgment from the king and released from judgment. And then he goes and he's impatient with his fellow servant. Part of the point of this is-- think of this. Impatience is a form of judgment, isn't it? Impatience is a form of judgment because what you're saying is, apparently God has a longer timeline than I've got for this person's spiritual development. You know, I'm going to try to speed this up with my judgment, with my anger, with my impatience. To get over that, I need to realize how patient God is with me. And this is absolutely foundational.

If you don't get this first, if you don't get what Jesus Christ has done for you, then everything else that we're talking about this morning really won't quite work. Because this foundation enables you to connect to God through the Holy Spirit as he indwells you and fills you, giving you the power to forgive other people. Now, once you've got that, the next four steps are very practical. You have the conceptual. Now, here comes the practical. And I'll go through these very quickly. Number two is, I need to rewire my brain. Rewire my brain, I mean this literally. Many researchers now, like neurologist Richard Restack, author of The New Brain-- How the Modern Age is Rewiring Your Mind, argue that our fast-paced culture is actually reprogramming our brains to be impatient.

In fact, NeuroImage Journal reported when they do real-time brain scans, they observe flooded brain, as they call it. Your brain's flooded with adrenaline. It's twitchy. It's jumpy. Now, this used to only happen when people felt threatened. Their brains would just start redlining, you know? Short attention span because they're in fight or flight mode. What this journal article said is that in the last decade, the number of brain scans that are flooded as a baseline has increased every year. In other words, people are showing up for their brain scans. They're not under any imminent threat. But their brains are still twitchy and jumpy and exhibiting signs, as the article said, of ADD. Our mental environments making us impatient, short-fused. And so the answer is to rewire our brains by changing our mental environment.

Now, this is countercultural, but it always was. 3,000 years ago, the psalmist said, rest in the Lord. Wait patiently for him. Don't fret. It only leads to evil. How do I rest in the Lord? I pray. I meditate. And this begins changing my brain. Another study showed that just 20 minutes of praying or meditating-- just 20 minutes-- leads to relaxation. You'd expect that. But also, a better memory and compassion and emotional control, longer attention spans, better problem solving. In other words, a longer fuse. I recommend memorizing portions of scripture, like the 23rd Psalm, and reciting those to help you get into this state. Let's look at the 23rd Psalm right now. It says things like, he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. Notice it says, he makes me lie down. It doesn't say, he makes me mow the lawn. You know? God's OK with relaxation. God wants you to just chill sometimes. God's pro taking some time off.

And we do this by going to the green pastures, by going to the quiet waters. Now, some of you are going, but I'm a busy college student. I'm a busy business person. I'm a busy parent of toddlers. You just don't understand. I'm not some retired person that can do all this kind of stuff. I can't do it. OK, relax. First of all. And secondly, you can do this in what they call small dose slowing. You can just take five minutes at a time every day to do some very practical stuff like this. Stare out the window. Take a walk in these beautiful forests we have around here. Listen to a calming song. How about this one? Chew your food slowly. I noticed a few weeks ago that I'm just working so hard. I have so much stuff to do that lunch is always like an interruption. But it's necessary. It's like, my blood sugar's so low. I can't think straight. I guess I have to get more blood sugar in me. And I go and get some yogurt and something and some granola. And it's like, ah, eat it as fast as I can. Just like mainlining blood sugar. Now I can work again.

It's like, no. Just chew your food slowly. Savor it. Stop nervously checking your phone every 35 seconds. And look for ways to practice patience. In other words, times that you have to be patient, like traffic jams, long checkout lines, those can be chances to practice patience. Patience is like any other skill. You need practice. Somebody told me this years ago when it stuck with me. And I am far from mastering this. But somebody said, like five or six years ago, when you go checking out at the grocery store, look for the longest line. And get in that line. That's not really going to take that long anyway. And just kind of use it as a time to just slow down. So I've started doing this. And I've continued to do it. And it's actually kind of fun. I try to play Sherlock Holmes and look around and kind of imagine, what's the back story of all these people around me? And what about my checker? Are they wearing a pin or a sticker or a badge or something that's going to tell me something about them? Can I think based on that? Can I give them some kind of positive encouragement when I check out?

Now listen, I am far from a patient person. But I've started that little practice just as a way to force myself to practice patience. These are all ways that you can rewire your brain. And a big part of rewiring your brain is to resist agents of anger. There's some people who, when you're mad, they help you calm down. And there's other people who, when you're mad, they get you even more riled up. You talk to them about something that's making you mad. And they go, well, you should be mad. If I were you, you know what I'd tell them? And you just leave. Your anger is just intensified. The Bible says, yeah, you've got to not hang out with those people. Don't hang out with angry people, Proverbs 22:24 says. Don't keep company with hotheads. Bad temper is contagious. Don't get infected. And it really is contagious.

Two weeks ago, I was reading an article in Applied Psychology Journal. It said, "Catching rudeness is like catching a cold, the contagion effects of low intensity negative behaviors." It says, somebody is rude to you. Somebody is impatient with you. It affects your cognitive processes. And you've experienced this, right? Somebody cuts you off or something on the freeway. It's like you can't think straight for a few hours. This journal article said, for as long as a day after you experience rudeness, you'll be worse at your job. You'll be worse at simple tasks. You'll be worse at thinking. When people make you angry, it's contagious. So you've got to avoid those people. And you know some of the people that really make you angry, of course, are podcasters, politicians, bloggers who are always mad about something going on politically and their favorite phrase is, where is the outrage? And I find that I am very vulnerable to that phrase.

When I start listening to these people, they're mad about something political. But I start to have that attitude toward everything in life. The toothpaste is out. Where's the outrage? Who didn't replace the toilet paper? You know, it doesn't affect me well. And so it's contagious. You've got to resist agents of anger. And the number four is this. I need to revise my expectations. Revise my expectations. You know why? Because nothing ever goes the way you plan. Repeat this sentence out loud with me. Nothing ever goes the way you plan. Nothing ever does. Ever think, I can do these errands in 10 minutes, five minutes to the store, five minutes back. And 35 minutes later, you're stuck in traffic fuming. Nothing ever goes the way you plan. You need to revise your expectations, especially with people.

The Bible says-- let's read this verse out loud, Ephesians 4:2. "Be patient with each other, making allowances for each other's faults because of your love." Making allowances is a great phrase. Someone said, patience is allowing someone to be imperfect. Nobody's perfect. Your spouse isn't perfect. Your kids aren't perfect. Little kids aren't perfect. They just-- you know, they take time to grow up. When Laurie and I were really struggling when the kids were toddlers-- and it was probably one of those mornings that we argued in the car on the way to church. And Jeanette Kraft, who was the by then elderly widow of Pastor Roy Kraft, who was here for nearly 50 years, she saw us going through this. And she put her arms on our shoulders like this. And she said, it's only a season. And that phrase just made so much of the stress roll off. It's only a season.

Everything's got a season. That's what Ecclesiastes says. A season, just like farming. In fact, James 5:7 says, "See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains." You two be patient, like a farmer waiting for seeds to sprout. You know, when we were in third grade, we did a little project. Everybody got a Styrofoam cup, those white Styrofoam cups that they can't sell anymore in California. And they were filled with soil. And we each got a little bean. And we poked the bean down into the soil. And then all the kids got to take it home and take care of it, water it, and so on. And at the end of two weeks, we were supposed to bring it back in. And we're all going to measure how far the little bean stock tendrils came up and so on. And I got mine home. And after about two days of waiting, nothing was coming up above the surface.

I dug out the bean just to see what was happening. Nothing. So I put it back in and watered it. Next day, dug it out, looked at it. Nothing. Put it back in. Next day, dug it out, looked at it. Still nothing. Put it back in. At the end of two weeks, I brought it back in. I was the only kid in the entire third-grade class who couldn't grow a bean. Because I kept digging it out and looking at it. You know what I didn't know then? Sowing a seed also means releasing a seed. You've got to trust the process and trust that that bean is growing underneath the soil. You know, I'll be honest with you. I have seen parents who have stalled spiritual growth in their own children by trying to control what is happening under the soil.

You've got to plant the seed and let the seed sleep. I've seen pastors kill their churches by trying to overcontrol what is happening in their people's lives under the soil. But I won't micromanage your spiritual growth. I've seen people stunt their professional growth this way, too. They keep re-planting the seed out of the ground. And then they re-plant it here and here and here and here and here. How come nothing's happening? Sometimes the biggest problem with seeds sprouting is your involvement. And then finally, number five, I need to realize the power of patience. Patience is powerful. Look at Proverbs 25:15. In fact, somebody-- let's read this out loud together. All right, here we go. Through patience, a ruler can be persuaded and a gentle tongue can break a bone. That means patience is a strategy. Patience isn't weak. Patience is not apathy. Patience is not lethargy. Patience isn't lack of initiative. Patience is faith. God is at work, and waiting is worth it.

So look at these five secrets of patient people. I know that's a lot. So what I encourage you to do is just to choose one that you're kind of got to focus on this week. What one will it be for you right now? Because I'll guarantee you something. There will be a test on this material. The traffic's going to be bad. Headed out of church in five minutes. A jar won't open. The Wi-Fi will go down. Your spouse will be late. Something's going to happen this week. And when it does, just go, hey, this is that pop quiz on patience Renee told me about. And try to put some of this into practice.

Now, if for you impatience and anger has gotten to a level where it's really causing havoc in your relationships, if you're a guy, I'd consider coming to our men's anger recovery group Thursdays at 7. And if you would like to develop patience in your marriages, you heard Adrian talk about this. Herman Hamilton and his wife Rhonda are going to speak at our couples cafe. Now, excuse me, Herman, pastor at New Beginnings Community Church up in Redwood City. His wife Rhonda is a medical doctor and is also a hospital administrator. She's administrated in Boston at Stanford, and now she's in charge of the VA Hospital in Palo Alto. So these are two high capacity type A people who are at the top of the food chain in their respective places of work. How do they make a marriage work? How are they patient with each other? And they're going to be talking about this at our couples cafe.

But I want to close with this. We looked at the verse where it talks about Christ having unlimited patience with you and grounding our patience in God's mercy. Maybe you need to remind yourself of that today, or maybe for the first time today, you need to say, Lord, I receive that gift of grace and mercy today. Help that empower my spirit of patience in all of my relationships. Let's pray together. Would you bow your head with me? Father, thank you so much for your patience to us. We give you glory for what you've done in our lives. We celebrate that. And so God, help us to joyfully extend patience and mercy to those in our lives as well. Thank you for your love. And Lord, we also pray for the world today. We pray for peace on our planet. It seems like every other day we hear about some new attack or a war erupting somewhere. And God, as the Lord's prayer says, may your kingdom come, may your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. And help each one of us as we show patience and peace to be an agent of that peace we pray for and long for. In Jesus' name, amen.