Patience and Perfection

But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. James 1:4 NKJV

I have trouble finishing things; I am a natural born quitter. I dont just mean I'm a quitter when things get difficult, I quit when things get moderately uninteresting.

So you can imagine how easy it would be for me to say, "God, you know this Trust thing? Well I think I'm done. Thanks anyway, though!"

"Do you ever just want to walk out of your life?" I asked a friend.

But there is a snag that we find in this verse in James. God makes us a promise here: that, if we will simply let patience exist in us, an amazing thing will happen:

We will be complete. Whole. Perfect.

(That's pretty good incentive.)

The part I find fascinating is that it is the act of being patient that will work a miracle in us. Wholeness is a natural product of patience. I am reminded of the miracle of a baby.

A pregnant woman does not need to struggle every day to knit together the little human inside of her, she simply allows the natural process to take place. It certainly affects her in strange, sometimes scary, and often uncomfortable ways, but if she will simply allow the natural process to have its perfect work in her, a perfect little child is the natural result.

Defects and problems happen when something hampers the process, either by the choice of the mother, sickness, an accident, or by a sad chance of genetics. But the intended, natural product of pregnancy is a healthy baby.

Likewise, the offspring of patience is wholeness.

So my desperate prayer is that I would not abort the process of patience in my life, that no accident or weakness in me would prevent the birth of wholeness and perfection in my life. Like an uncomfortable, nauseated, and exhausted mother (am I being overly dramatic here?), I can feel the effects of the thing growing inside me.

But quitting would be a tragedy.

So I hold on to that promise and I pray you would to. Because the One who plants the seed of perfection in us is not a quitter.

--Sarah Elizabeth

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5