Focus: The Need For Patience

Text: Heb.10:36

"For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise."

Our text reveals the believer's need for patience in the race of faith. The believer must make the virtue of patience an integral part of his life. Walking with God requires it. Life itself demands that we be patient. Impatience leads to disaster and disappointment.

Patience is not a passive thing. The Greek word for patience connotes keeping on or holding on amid seemingly insurmountable challenges. Patience is refusing to be broken at breaking points. 

Patience is faith that cannot quit nor surrender. It cannot bow to pressure because it is founded on the bedrock of belief and conviction.

Patience is the power to endure trials or persecutions, the ability to persevere, the capacity to remain constant in the face of all odds, and the courage to continue in what you believe to the very end. Patience hopes for a good end. Patience is seeing what the future holds and diligently working and assuredly waiting for it, regardless of what may happen along the way. The Message Bible says, "It's still a sure thing! But you need to stick it out, staying with God's plan so you'll be there for the promised completion."

Our text is making the believer understand that there is a period of waiting between obeying or doing the will of God and obtaining the promise of God.

It is essential for the believer to do the will of God, and it is equally essential for him to wait for the promise of God after doing the will of God.

Doing the will of God means participating with God in what he is doing on earth. God wants every believer to be part of the story He's telling. He wants us to play the roles that make us His story. He delights in having us as His cast and crew. He calls us to be His coworkers, and it is by obeying and doing His will that we are able to obtain the promises. Conditional promises cannot be possessed until the conditions are met.

Our text makes us understand that even after we have met those conditions we still need to actively wait on God to fulfill the promises. Do what God wants and wait on God to do what He has promised. Keep being faithful! Keep preaching! Keep winning souls! Keep doing good! Keep praying for others! Keep letting God use you! Keep being loyal and letting God be glorified! Until you obtain the promise keep persevering and doing what God says! 

Waiting for the promise doesn't mean idling away time, but being continuously useful in God's hands while God is getting ready to lavishly fulfill his promise.

Patience is a no-quitting attitude. It is having a spiritual stamina to withstand pressures, distractions, obstructions and contradictions in our way.

We need the virtue of patience, and this patience is most needed after we have done the will of God, and like Paul would say, "Having done all to stand." We wait for the divine rewarder. In fact the next verse of text says that God is coming to us without delays - just in a short while. Let us hold on till He arrives. I assure you that God is infinitely capable of fulfilling His promises. Amen!

by Bishop Moses E. Peter