LEARNING FORBEARANCE
Rejoice in the Lord Always; and again I will say, Rejoice.
Let all men know your forbearance.
Did the Lord tell me it was time to leave, or was it my
wounded ego throwing in the towel? If I
leave a fellowship without the clear confirmation of God's peace, wherever I go
I will be like a mother who flees the country, leaving her child behind. How can I expect to find God's peace in
another church if I abandoned it in my departure from this one?
Our search for our place in the Body of Christ cannot proceed
with God's blessing until his Spirit of Forbearance has come to rest in our
hearts: forbearance toward all—forbearance especially toward those who have
caused us grief and pain. It is highly
unlikely that the Spirit will ever tell us it's time to move on before we have
learned to generously absorb insults and injuries in the name of the Lord
Jesus.
Instead of allowing the evil one to stir us to bitterness, we
are called to put on the new nature
"which is
renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator......Put on then, as God's
chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness and
patience, forbearing one another, and if one has a complaint against another,
forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must
forgive."
Colossians 3:10, 12-13
Even if we are convinced that the atmosphere of the
fellowship in which we have been functioning is far from loving, we have no
choice before the Lord but to respond to this atmosphere with forbearance. It may be that this is the precise reason why
we find ourselves in this place: to learn forbearance.
Without it we become slaves of our own bitter thoughts, and
our relationship with the people around us slowly hardens.
What better place to learn forbearance than among people who
give us ample opportunities to practice it?
"And whenever you stand praying,
forgive, if you have anything against any
one...."
Mark 11:25
If we expect the Lord Jesus to guide us in our search for our
place in his Body, we have no choice but to follow his directions when it comes
to our relationship with the people around us at the present
moment. When he says, "Forgive, if you have anything against any one," he leaves no
room for negotiation. "But Lord, how can you expect me to
forgive, after what they did to me? I'm
only human!" Jesus isn't trying
to make life difficult for us, he is showing us the only way to freedom and
peace in God. And he promises to send us
help from above to do the things we could never do in
our own strength.
Forgiveness and forbearance are not "extra credit"
assignments, they are essential commands coming from the incarnate Word
of God. Our present situation in
whatever part of the professing church we may be, is the School of Forbearance
assigned to us by the Lord Jesus himself.
We are not called upon to condone hypocrisy, or compromise,
or shoddy handling of truth. But we are
called upon to bring our resentments and attitudes and wounded feelings to the
cross of Jesus, asking him to cleanse our hearts. We do not answer for the sins which others
commit, but we are responsible for the way we handle the
disappointment, and the shock, and the injuries which come to us as a result of the sins of others. How often our response to the sins of
others becomes more sinful than their sins!
Before we can begin to show forbearance, we need to clear away the
impatience, cynicism and bitterness which have accumulated within us.
Sometimes in his mercy, the Lord Jesus begins to convict us
as we sit among these men and women with whom we have lost patience. He shows us the difference between
"Beware of false prophets," and "Judge not." And we discover that we indeed have a load
within us which needs to be confessed to him and washed away in his blood.
"....And salve
to anoint your eyes, that you may see."
Revelation
3:18
If we could see these people with whom we have lost patience
the way God sees them, if we could grasp how unsure of himself that pompous man
is, how that majestic lady suffers in her own home, what fears are driving
Elder Smith to clamp down on every sign of fresh life in the fellowship, we
would find it much easier to take them as they are and to pray for them.
Jesus looked into
the heart of the rich young ruler and loved him.
He saw the woman at the well as no
one in the town of Sychar had ever perceived her.
And if we ask him for eye salve, he will surely "anoint
our eyes that we may see" in ways we never saw before.
Forbearance is a matter of the heart. But it is also a matter of the eyes.
What do we see when we look into the
man's face? He looks hard and
angry. But there's more. “Lord,
help me to see this man in some small measure as you see him!”
What do we see in this woman's behavior? Is she as thoughtless and insensitive, and
cruel as she appears to be, or is there something here that I'm missing?
“Never let me forget that you love her as if she were the only child you
have.”
More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings,
knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character,
and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's
love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been
given to us.
Romans 5:3-5
Who of
us is naturally forbearing?
Who of us does not find it
hard to deal with certain people?
The power to show forbearance—the kind of forbearance the
Lord Jesus calls for—comes from above.
It has to. We do not have it in us. The same wonderful Spirit of God who helps us
in our weakness to pray, also helps us in our weakness to forbear.
We look to
him and we receive help.
We cry out in our need and
something supernatural begins stirring in our heart.
This has to be God. I could never do this on my own. My heart is beginning to melt toward people
who were once a thorn in my side. I came
to the meeting fully planning to straighten him out, to make sure he did not
ram his plan down our throats, and now I find myself stepping back, watching,
waiting. I could not open my mouth. All I could do was pray for this man and
trust that the fathomless mercy of God will meet his every need. What is happening here?
Each opportunity to show forbearance is a gift from God.
We do not learn forbearance by reading about it. Or by talking about it.
The only way we learn forbearance is through practice: doing
it.
So in his mercy the Lord sends
opportunities our way.
People who try our patience.
People who misconstrue our motives.
People who weary us with their complaints.
People who seem to wear their hypocrisy as a badge of
honor.
Blame, false accusations, insults…. We know that our Lord Jesus had to endure
these things. We understand that the
apostle Paul was often belittled and mistreated. But we seem to have difficulty believing that
we, too, are to walk in the Master's footsteps, when it comes to forbearance.
For what credit is it, if when you do wrong
and are beaten for it, you take it patiently? But if when you do right and suffer for it
you take it patiently, you have God's approval.
For to this you have been called, because
Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in
his steps. He committed no sin; no guile was found on his lips. When he was reviled, he did not revile in
return; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he trusted
to him who judges justly.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the
tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds we have been healed. For you were straying like sheep,
but have now returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.
Peter 2:20-25
Message: Richard Bieber Excerpted from Where
to Lord? The Silent Migration Chapter 16