Patience: Abraham

Sermon Summary:

This powerful exploration of patience invites us to reconsider what it means to wait well in our spiritual journey. Through Abraham’s story in Genesis 15, we discover that patience isn’t merely about enduring difficult circumstances—it’s about maintaining enduring strength rooted in a future hope. Abraham waited years for God’s promise of a child, struggling with anxiety and doubt, yet God didn’t rebuke him. Instead, God offered hope, reminding Abraham of a purpose beyond his comprehension. This speaks directly to our own seasons of waiting, whether for guidance, provision, healing, or relationships. The message challenges us on two fundamental beliefs: Do we truly believe God is able, and do we trust that God is good? These aren’t just intellectual questions but tests revealed through our actions during waiting periods. The beauty of this teaching lies in its honest acknowledgment that waiting is hard, that we often turn inward with anxiety, and that we need God to redirect our gaze upward. Through Jesus, we see the ultimate proof of God’s ability and goodness—He didn’t just promise redemption, He accomplished it. Every season of waiting becomes an opportunity to know God more fully, to learn aspects of His character we couldn’t discover any other way. This isn’t about getting what we want on our timeline; it’s about discovering who God is in the midst of our circumstances.

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Sermon Points:

Big idea: Patience is enduring strength rooted in a future hope

Key Takeaways:

• Patience is defined as enduring strength rooted in a future hope
• God gives us patience in circumstances by reminding us that He is able and good through Jesus
• Abraham’s story demonstrates the struggle of waiting without control, clarity, or timeline
• Two fundamental truths are tested in waiting: that God is able and that God is good
• Jesus demonstrates patience in relationships by seeing people with eyes of grace and possibility
• Matthew’s calling shows that Jesus reaches people where they are, not where they should be
• Practical patience requires connection to the Holy Spirit through worship, Bible reading, prayer, and fasting
• In seasons of waiting, we should continue in obedience to God’s most recent instructions
• We should debrief with God first before venting to others about difficult people
• God is not finished with us yet; He sees us with grace and possibility
• Every season of waiting is an opportunity to know God more fully

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Scripture References:

• Genesis 15:1-6 (Abraham’s conversation with God about his childlessness)
• Matthew 9:9-13 (Jesus calls Matthew and eats with tax collectors and sinners)
• Romans 5:8 (God demonstrates His love while we were still sinners)
• John 15 (Abiding in Christ)
• Philippians 1:6 (God will complete the good work He started)
• Ecclesiastes 1:9 (Nothing new under the sun)

Stories:

• Personal story of the pastor’s sleepless nights with newborn daughter Phoebe, checking constantly to ensure she was breathing
• The pastor’s conversation with his older brother asking if he would ever sleep again
• The pastor and his wife Patience’s 10-year journey with health challenges and uncertainty about having children before welcoming Phoebe
• Abraham’s decades-long wait for the promised child despite growing older
• Abraham’s nephew Lot being kidnapped and rescued just before God’s conversation with Abraham
• Jesus calling Matthew from his tax collector’s booth and attending dinner with Matthew’s questionable friends
• The illustration of Phoebe learning to laugh for the first time and being scared by the new sensation
• The analogy of college ministry associates cleaning out the storage closet without micromanagement
• The illustration of how Phoebe learned that crying brings her parents to help, even if it takes a moment to prepare

Sermon Transcript:

Well, no matter what people try to tell you in terms of what to expect of losing sleep with a newborn, you’re never quite prepared for it. Because here’s the thing, what they told me was, oh, just wait, it’s gonna be crazy. She’s gonna keep you up at night. And I thought that that meant that she was gonna keep me up at night from like crying and all this stuff. And that’s happened a little bit.

But it’s not that Phoebe is a bad sleeper. Phoebe is an excellent sleeper, a little bit too good of a sleeper to the point where we had to make sure that she was waking up every like two or three hours to feed her and make sure that she was getting the weight gain that she needed and all that. The bad sleeper was me. I was the bad sleeper because I’ve never been around a newborn like this before. And so I would look over in the crib and just make sure that she’s like breathing, just constantly looking.

Has anybody ever done that before? Just looking? Yeah, exactly. Right. So you could have warned me a little bit more about that.

But. But I’m looking through the crib and I’m like, okay, is she alright? Is she breathing? She slightly rolled over to the side. Is that normal?

So I’m like googling stuff to try to figure it out. Losing sleep, learning, yes, it’s very normal. My mom telling me, yes, that’s very normal. And I remember all this anxiety, all these worries and all this stuff. And I was calling up my older brother who has a daughter of his own a few years older than Phoebe, and I was half jokingly asking him, will I ever sleep again?

And he graciously responded. He was like, oh yeah, you’ll sleep again. This too shall pass. And what I’ve learned later on is that, you know, you lose sleep for other reasons with your kids as the years go on. But his encouragement in that moment was helpful to me because it gave me a hope in the midst of the difficult season that I was kind of walking through.

As a church, we’re studying the fruit of the spirit, right? And. And we just so happen, as has been mentioned multiple times, that we just have to be on the fruit of patience, or forbearance, as it’s sometimes it’s called. And I’m not perfect at this particular fruit. That’s not why I was asked here, but it is a favorite of mine for perhaps obvious reasons.

And that my wife’s name is patience. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says there’s nothing new under the Sun. And I would submit to you that that includes jokes about patience’s name that you could tell us or that I could come up with. And I could go on and on about how amazing my wife is, how she is a patient wife and a loving mother and all of that. But today we’re focusing in on the fruit itself.

What I want us to start out with is our big idea for the morning, which is also going to serve as our definition for patience, which is this Patience is enduring strength rooted in a future hope. Enduring strength rooted in a future hope. And I want us to unpack that definition with three questions this morning. Our first question is going to be, how does God give us patience in our circumstances? How does God give us patience in our relationships?

And then how do we live this out in regular life? Okay, we’re going to look at an example of a person from Scripture, just as we’ve been doing. And we’re also going to look at the example of Jesus that will help us answer all three questions. And in our first two questions, we’re going to answer them a little bit more theologically, a little more philosophically before question three, where we really get into the practicality of how we wait. Well, so for that first question, how does God give us patience in our circumstances?

Let’s consider the story of Abraham in Genesis 15, verses 1 through 6. When we think of the word patience, probably what comes to mind is waiting or something like it. And I think even forbearance, that idea of holding back or self control when it comes to dealing with a difficult person also has this undercurrent of waiting within it. We wait a whole lot in life, right? We wait for that package to arrive.

We wait at the dmv. We wait for a sermon to be over, whatever it could be. We wait for a lot of things. But did you know that there’s actually a godly way to wait? Abraham’s story is full of waiting, and he’s not always waiting.

Well, I don’t know if you recall his story, but his impatience often leads him into quite a bit of trouble. Father Abraham is our example this morning for a lot of reasons. But I thought it was fitting because Abraham is an imperfect father who God still worked with and worked through. And that gives me a lot of hope as a new father here on this Father’s Day. Father Abraham, like I said, that’s his title.

But it’s a little bit of an ironic title in our passage this morning because here as we arrive in Genesis 15, Abraham is known as Abram, and he’s not a father yet. He has no children. He’s been called by God to follow God to an unknown land. But he was promised offspring in that through his children would come a great nation through which all the people of the world would be blessed. Maybe you are familiar with that, and that sounded awesome.

And so Abram followed. However, the years drag on and there’s no children, no children come to Abram and Sarah, and the waiting becomes tough to deal with. Not only that, but right before our passage that we’re in this morning, Abraham’s nephew Lot is kidnapped by foreign adversaries. And Abram and his men, somehow, by the grace of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit, are able to reclaim Lot, despite the power differentials. It’s an incredible story.

I encourage you to go read it. It’s pretty harrowing. And now, at the end of it, after the dust has kind of settled, God and Abram have a conversation. So let’s open up our Bibles. Maybe you already beat me to it, but it’s Genesis 15, verses 1 through 6.

After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Don’t be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward. Some of the translations say, your reward will be very great. But Abram said, sovereign Lord, what can you give me, since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eleazar of Damascus?

And Abram said, you have given me no children, so a servant in my household will be my heir. Then the word of the Lord came to him. This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir. He took him outside and said, look up at the sky and count the stars, if indeed you can count them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be.

Abram believed the Lord and he credited to him as righteousness.

So Abram is talking with God, and God tells him, one don’t be afraid. But then also he tells him that God will reward Abram. He will keep his promise. And Abram doesn’t really know how to take that. Right.

His focus is, I think, understandably, on the fulfillment of that promise, that he’s been waiting on that child. Despite God’s encouragement, Abram is anxious and waiting. He’s impatient with God’s timing. Can anybody relate? I know that I sure can.

Often, I think we get impatient for a lot of different reasons. We can get impatient when we don’t have control over our circumstances. Abram and Sarah did not have control over their ability or inability to conceive despite trying. And maybe you have walked through something similar. Or are walking through something like that right now.

Or maybe you’re waiting on a word of guidance from the Lord. Or you’re waiting on that job. Or maybe you’re waiting in a situation where it’s a difficult thing at work that you just don’t have control over. And you’re waiting for it to get better, God to move in some way, whatever it could be. We can get impatient when we don’t have control over our circumstances.

We can also get impatient when we get confused over God’s timing. Abram and Sarah aren’t getting any younger. And each year that passes probably felt like a close closing of the door just a little bit more. Maybe you’re in a similar place where you’re waiting. And it feels like that opportunity, whatever it could be, is slipping away.

We can also get impatient when we can’t see how our particular circumstance could end well or where the end is at all. Abram didn’t know how long he needed to wait, which I think made the waiting even harder. Or maybe we get impatient when we, like Abram, have our eyes fixed on our own desires and fears. Abram wanted a child, and he was afraid that he wasn’t going to get one.

When we live in the tension of waiting, no matter its source, it creates within us this tendency to turn inward on ourselves. We become anxious, stressed and frustrated. The way out of that tension is actually with hope, which is exactly what God gives Abram. He doesn’t give Abram a rebuke, but he gives Abram hope. He doesn’t give Abram a timeline, though maybe Abram really would have liked the timeline.

He gives him hope. He doesn’t give Abram even a reason of what quiet so many years. But he gives Abram hope. He gives them this reminder of this promise that he is going to have a son. And not only that, but God has a purpose for Abram that is beyond Abram’s comprehension.

Hence that reference to the stars where God says, if indeed you can count them. In response to this gift of hope. Verse 6 tells us that Abram believed God. His trust was renewed. And he was strengthened to continue following God, even in the waiting.

Now, that’s great for Abram, but what about us, right? Well, I think in the waiting two fundamental truths about God are put to the test in our hearts. One, that God is able, and two, that God is good.

You might say that you believe both of those things. But we need to examine what our actions say about that belief. Do you really believe and do your actions show that God can change that family member? That God can and is able to redeem your situation or provide you with what you are needing and waiting for? Do you believe that God is good even when you don’t see his provision right now?

When you don’t get the answer that you wanted or when you don’t understand his timing? Maybe you’re like me. I have struggled from time to time to believe that God is good or believe that God is able. Life happens, right? But in these moments, we need to look to Jesus.

Jesus came to redeem us, but he also came to show us the Father right, to show us what God is really like. The testimony of scripture in the Gospels shows that Jesus is able. Right from feeding a huge crowd to raising the dead. No matter the circumstance, Jesus is able to handle it. No matter your particular circumstance, Jesus is able.

Not only that, but we can trust that God is good because of what Jesus accomplished. Jesus came, he took on our sin, he died, he rose again. He gave us a way to eternal life in redeemed fellowship with God. Like we have all the proof that we need that Jesus is truly good and truly loves us.

Phoebe is learning so many things at this point. Just recently, she learned how to laugh. It was bath time. It was awesome. And I’ve never seen somebody, like, experience laughter for the first time in their conscious life.

And so what happened was Phoebe was beginning to laugh. She had this smile on. It was so cute. But in that moment, what was actually interesting was she was laughing and it was fun. And then she got scared because she didn’t know what was happening within her, which is so cute, right?

Oh, my gosh. So precious. The other thing that Phoebe learned, though very early on, was that if she needs something, she needs to cry. And her parents will come and help.

Now, here’s the thing. Sometimes it takes a second to get the food ready. Sometimes it takes a second to get the changing table prepped. But just because it takes a minute doesn’t mean that patience and I are incapable or unloving. And the same is true with God.

Just because his timing is different than maybe what we would understand or what Phoebe would understand. God still loves us. So the answer to that first question, how does God give us patience in our circumstances? Is this. God gives us patience in our circumstances by reminding us that he is able and good through the person and work of Jesus.

And remember, we’re going to dig into the practical of all this in question three. But for now, let’s consider question two. How does God give us patience in our relationships? So, show of hands. Who has ever had to deal with somebody who has tried your patience before?

Okay, pretty much everybody. For the rest of you, maybe you need to meet more people or maybe don’t. Maybe you have it figured out, or maybe you’re the problem. Who knows? But for most of us, we have challenges sometimes with people around us.

Maybe it isn’t so much that our circumstances are trying our patience. Maybe it is people around us. But Jesus gives us some guidance how to be patiently loving with the people around us in Matthew 9, 9, 13. So if you’ll turn in Scripture over to Matthew 9 and read this story.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. Follow me, he told him. And Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. And when Matthew saw this, they asked his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

On hearing this, Jesus said, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. The key takeaway that I. That I want us to notice from this passage this morning is this.

Jesus sees people with eyes of possibility and grace. Jesus sees people with eyes of grace and possibility. When Jesus invites Matthew to follow him, he doesn’t invite Matthew to follow him because of Matthew’s moral merit or something cool about Matthew at the time. Instead, Jesus sees beyond where Matthew is right now and to who Matthew could become with discipleship. And that’s not how others would have seen Matthew, and indeed not how they saw Matthew.

Even in our passage, Matthew was a tax collector. And that’s more than just being a government official. At the time, that was, you know, the Romans were oppressing the Jewish people and Matthew worked for the Romans to help the Romans extort his fellow Jews. So Matthew wasn’t just a tax collector. Matthew was a traitor.

He was not the kind of person that the Messiah should recruit. In the eyes of those around him, in the eyes of others, Matthew was a waste of time and a lost cause. However, Romans 5, 8 sheds light on Jesus love for Matthew and for us. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Not only did Jesus eventually die for Matthew, but at the beginning, Jesus met with Matthew. He hung out with him before Matthew was Matthew the apostle or Matthew the author of this gospel that we just read. Jesus met with him. And not only did he meet with Matthew, but he met with Matthew and his many friends. Jesus went to the frat party.

He loved them up close, not from a distance. Do we consciously or even subconsciously consider other people to be a lost cause, I wonder? Or do we, like Jesus, dare to extend grace and see with eyes of possibility?

I think Biblical forbearance requires this kind of vision. And it’s not that God’s going to give you a vision of this person’s future, but instead I think what God gives us is the ability to see other people the way that he sees them. And he does this by reminding us of the grace that’s been extended to us. If Jesus died for you while you were still a sinner, you can love that difficult co worker. He can empower you to do that.

So to answer that second question, how does God give us patience in our relationships? He does this by helping us to see others with the kind of love that he has for them. Which leads us to that long prophesied final question. How do we live this out in the everyday? We’re studying the fruit of the Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit comes from the overflow of the Holy Spirit working in our lives.

It’s not the fruit of doing better or the fruit of striving. It’s the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And if we want this fruit, we need to take Jesus at His word in John chapter 15 and be connected to Him. So let’s do a little review for some of us. How do we connect with the Holy Spirit?

Practically? Here are some elements that I think you need to incorporate into your life so that you can have a consistent connection with the Holy Spirit and so that you can bear fruit like patience. The first thing is worship. Like we said earlier, when we are impatient, we tend to turn inward on ourselves. But worship forces us to look outward.

It forces us to look up at the God who gives us that future hope that we need to have patience. The next thing you need to be doing is reading your word, engage with truth so that the lies about God not being good or God not being able cannot take root in your life. The other thing you need to do is pray. In that time when you are impatient with that person or impatient in that particular circumstance, you need to bring it to the Lord, ask Him for help, and he’ll be faithful to Provide if I can challenge you. Maybe the fourth thing is fast.

When was the last time that you engaged in fasting to draw near to God? What I tell people is it’s not that God hears us more when we’re hungry, but rather when we sacrifice that time with food and spend more time in the presence of God, something shifts within us. If you’ve never done that before, or if you want to engage with that, then please reach out to us. We would love to give you some more instruction on that so you can do it in a godly and Biblical and healthy way. If you want the fruit of the Spirit, draw near to God through Jesus, and he will draw near to you.

So that’s the basics. But we never outgrow the basics, right? Let’s get into some more specifics. If you are in a season of waiting, one thing I would tell you this, and I would say it based on Abram’s story, is just as God reminded Abram of his calling, we too need to live in obedience to what God has told us to do. Most recently in the college ministry, in the student center, there is a storage closet.

And every 14 months or so, it just becomes mass chaos in that storage closet. It needs to be cleaned out and reorganized. I’ve done it myself many times. I’ve had associates do it. And when I tell my associates, okay, I need you to go and clear out the closet, organize it.

I give them, like, a general guideline and steps to do. But what I don’t do as they’re cleaning out the closet because I’m not a micromanager, is I don’t go in and say, okay, move that piece. Okay, now that you’re done with that, move that piece. Now that you’re done with that, move that piece. What I’ve done is I’ve given them a calling.

Clean out the storage closet. And when they’re done, I’ll give them the next step to do. I think a similar thing happens in our lives with God. Sometimes God will give us a general calling of what we’re supposed to do for a season without, like, a specific end time on it. And if you’re waiting for that next set of instructions, the thing I would ask you to consider is, is what he told you to do most recently finished.

If it’s not, re. Engage with it, and if it is, then guess what? We are all called to make disciples at all times. The great commission is our standing orders from Jesus. Engage with that.

Whatever that looks like in your circumstance and in life, make disciples that’s how you wait. Well, in the midst of kind of that season of silence. But the other thing I would ask you is this. What are you waiting for?

When Abram is in the midst of waiting, God pulls his attention not just towards that hope of having a child, but God actually reveals something grander about himself to Abram. God has big plans that go well beyond Abram for a variety of health reasons. There was a looming question for patients and I for 10 years about whether or not we’d be able to have any children. There were many surgeries that happened. Like I said, many years of waiting and just uncertainty.

And praise God, you know, this past year we welcomed Phoebe into our life. But the moral of the story of that is not, hey, just keep praying and God will give you what you want. It could have very easily gone the other way. And if it had, then God still would have been good. Now, that might sound easy for me to say, but here’s what I mean by that with some other examples, or maybe a similar one is those who have gone through fertility challenges have a different perspective on God’s provision and his goodness when it comes to waiting and wishing.

Those who never marry have a different perspective on the companionship of God versus those who are married. Those who have gone through a season of job insecurity have a different perspective on the provision of God. These times of waiting bring about valuable perspectives that we need within our church. None are better than the others, but we need to be informed by one another’s experiences. Because in each example, and in your unique example, God rewards us with a greater understanding of Him.

Phoebe is a gift in and of herself. And I’ve learned so much about who God is and how he is a father to me through being a father to Phoebe. And I’ve learned these things firsthand. But if we didn’t have Phoebe, if that hadn’t worked out, I would have learned other things about God firsthand. We all get to learn things about God in our waiting and in our circumstances and how they all turn out.

Every season of waiting is an opportunity to know God more fully. So that’s about circumstances, talk, some practicality. When it comes to relationships. If you’re dealing with a difficult person and it’s tough, whatever the circumstance is, I’m not going to ask you to point. But if you’re dealing with a difficult person in that moment, pray.

Ask God for help. Ask him for guidance. The other thing you need to ask him for is to see that person with eyes of grace and possibility, eyes of grace and possibility. Easier said than done, but do it. And then here’s the other challenge part.

I’m not perfect at this either, but we need to be good at this as Christians and as a church. Debrief with God first before you vent to another person.

Man, you just watch that challenging conversation or that challenging interaction or whatever before you text your friend or call up somebody or say you’ll never believe what they said. Now talk about it with God first. God is able to renew your mind, renew your perspective, and help you. Maybe you do need to sort it out with somebody else after that, but let’s first go to God. It’s okay to talk to other people about a situation you’re trying to navigate, but, man, I think that it’s really tempting to just venture.

And when we do that, I think what it does is it actually erodes our forbearance. It actually entrenches our frustration with that person instead. Like I said, take it to God. Let him renew your perspective. But maybe that impatience is not with that other person over there, but maybe it’s with the person in the mirror.

Maybe you’re impatient with yourself. It can be easier to give grace to other people than to receive it from God. For ourselves, for some of us. And so if that’s you, I want to encourage you and remind you of Matthew’s story. Before Matthew was noteworthy for good, he was an outcast.

And this is exactly when Jesus reached out to him and invited him to follow him. Even today, Jesus extends this invitation to you. Follow me. You’re not too far gone. Jesus wants you to put your life in his hands.

And have you done that?

Like we said earlier, Jesus, he died for your sins. We cannot be perfect. So Jesus came to be perfect for for us. He paid the penalty for death and rose again. And now you and I can have a chance at a clean slate with God.

We would love to talk with you about how to do that after the service is over. So there’ll be people up here. There’ll be people in the welcome Home Center. Today’s the day to turn your life over to Christ. If you haven’t done it yet.

But if you have done this and you’re still frustrated by the progress in your life or even seemingly lack of progress in your own holiness, I want to encourage you with Philippians 1:6 says this, I’m sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. God isn’t done with you yet. So keep pursuing him, keep leaning on his grace, because it hasn’t run out and it never will. God sees you with eyes of grace and possibility. Let’s not be harsher Judges of ourselves than Jesus is.

No matter what your flavor of waiting is this morning, we can patiently wait with a future hope, a hope not founded in a specific outcome, but in a God who waits with us and has his glory and our best in mind. Let’s pray.

Lord, we thank you that you are a God who waits with us. We thank you that even in the midst of questions, in the midst of doubts and fears, in the midst of waiting for that provision, that you provide yourself, that you meet with us. You have what we need. And so, Father, I pray over those here in this room and those listening online, pray that we would wait well, not with fear, not even with a ransom of a specific desire. But, Lord, a contentment in you.

Guide us in our circumstances and guide us in our relationships, Lord, to see others with grace, to see others with possibility. Because you love us, you still have grace for us. May we embrace that. In your name I pray. Amen.