The Patient and the Hotheaded

INTRO

Pastor Chris Paavola:

All right. Real quick, think of the most patient person you know. Okay. Get that person in your head. The most, just absolute most patient person you know. Okay. Now think of the least patient person you know. Don’t elbow anyone. Okay. Get that person in your head. All right. So if the person who’s the most patient person you know is a 10 and the least patient person you know is a one, your turn. What number would you give yourself? What number would you give yourself on a scale of patience from Eric Cartman to Mother Teresa? Where are you? What’s your number? Now you don’t have to tell me your number. That’s fine. Keep it to yourself. The point is, is that I think everyone in the room, I don’t think anyone in the room gave themselves a 10. I think everyone kind of gave themselves a little headroom, a little room for growth.

And we’ve never arrived. You’re never perfect patients. We all have ways that we can grow in patience and that’s a good thing because that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

WELCOME

So, you picked a great day to be here because we’re not only going to talk about what is patience and tools to help you be patient, but I truly believe this. And this is a bold claim, but I believe you will be more patient today as you leave here than when you came in. Because today we’re continuing the series that we’re in that you heard about called Two Types of People.

TWO TYPES OF PEOPLE

THIS SERIES

And it’s a series where we’re getting wisdom for life from the ancient proverbs of a man named Solomon, who the Bible calls the wisest man who ever lived. And a lot of Solomon’s proverbs, he compares two people. So you’ve got this guy or that guy, A or B, and he wants you to be aware of them because it’s not just that he wants you to recognize who these people are, but the people you surround yourselves with have a profound potential to change the health and direction of your life.

So, Solomon wants you to know who these people are so you can be really cautious and careful that you don’t surround yourself with the wrong types of people. So in week one, he talks about there’s the wise and the foolish. And in Solomon’s estimation, the difference between a wise person and a foolish person is how they respond to this thing called the truth. So how they respond to the truth and a wise person will adjust themselves. A foolish person will adjust the truth. They don’t want to hear it. They run away or whatever it might be. In my house, since the series has started, we’ve actually started saying the phrase of what’s the wise thing to do? There’s a lot of things you could do, but what’s the wise thing to do? And if for no other reason than we get that practical tool in our home, I’m glad we’ve done this series because I just think that’s a good question to kind of kick around.

In a lot of circumstances, what’s the wise thing to do? I could do a lot of things. What’s wise? Is it wise? And then in week two, last week, we looked at what Solomon calls the wicked and the foolish, two words we don’t really. I’m sorry, the wicked and the righteous. Two words we don’t really use outside of church settings, but in his estimation, what makes someone wicked or makes someone righteous is like wisdom and fool response to the truth. A wicked and a righteous person is how they respond to a law. It might be God’s law or the government’s law or grandma’s law, but how you respond to the law when it comes to you determines whether you’re wicked or foolish. I’m sorry, a wicked or righteous.

A righteous person, someone who loves the law, loves the rules, doesn’t try to bend and skirt the law because they have a reverence and a respect for the law and the law giver. And that brings us then to week three.

THIS WEEK

I’m excited about this one because the next group of people Solomon wants you to be on the lookout for so you can be careful on who you surround yourself with is the patient and the quick tempered.

THE PATIENT AND THE QUICK TEMPERED

We know kind of what patient is. We have an understanding of it. Kids, they just heard about patience on a road trip or patience waiting for cookies to bake or patience waiting for a tooth to come in. It’s the sense of waiting, a little bit of control, self-control, restraints. It’s something like that. And it’s actually interesting. If we were going to do the opposite of patient, we would say impatient, right?

Quick tempered, we’ve maybe heard the phrase before, but that’s not what we would consider to be opposite. We’ll get into why that’s the case in a little bit later on, but we all understand what patience is, but in order for us to grow impatience, we have to change the way we even think about it. When I was doing my research for this sermon, I started to realize that Solomon has a different way of thinking about patience and it’s kind of like three components of patience or three parts of it. And so these are Solomon’s secret of patience. And this is the kind of sermon where I was doing research and I kind of had a thing I wanted to say, but as I got into it, there was so much there I cannot wait to share. It was like I was discovering it right alongside with you and I am just so excited to share.

SOLOMON’S SECRET TO PATIENCE

It just blew my hair back how Solomon approaches patience. And really there’s three parts starting with the way we think about patience. And the way we think about patience comes down to the word that we use, patience, right?

PATENTIA

PATIENT

We have this word patience and it comes from the Latin word patentia. And it means to suffer and that makes sense. This is why somebody who’s in the hospital receiving care from doctors is called a patient because they are suffering something. And if you think about the things that make you impatience, you’re suffering something. If you get impatient in traffic or something like that, or your kids start arguing and it wears on your patience or you’re looking for a parking spot in a parking garage and your patience wears thin or then your food takes a long time to come from the restaurant and you lose your patience.

It’s all of this idea of suffering and that makes sense. And think about what is suffering though. You have assets and commodities. You have time that’s valuable. You have resources or your relationships are valuable and something is imposing on that thing causing you to suffer. And you would change it if you could, but you can’t. So you’re forced to suffer, which means it’s not about the suffering that makes us impatient. It’s that we can’t control it. We’ve run out of control. We’ve lost our ability to control the situation.

And so we lose our patience means that we’re trying to gain control again of something or someone we were never meant to control in the first place. But what you don’t like about the suffering is that you’re out of control. Now that’s what the Latin word reveals about patience.

ΜΑΚΡΟΘΥΜΊΑ

MACRO–THYMA

LONG–SUFFERING

Scripture uses this Greek word that is kind of the parent of the Latin word, uses this word macro-thyma or macro-thymia. There’s two words there. Thymus, maybe you’ve heard of that, like this idea of suffering, passion. When you’re passionate about something, it means you’re willing to suffer for it. When you have passion for someone or something and you’re going to suffer yourself for it. And then the word macros, and we know what macro means, like a macro view of things is a big picture. So the Greek idea builds on this Latin idea. It’s a little bit more depth and nuance.

It’s not just that you suffer, it’s that you suffer for a long time. It’s the word long suffering. That’s their word for patience, long suffering. It’s an old English word, long suffering, maybe you’ve heard that, but that’s the word patience. Your ability to suffer for a long time. And that gives another little insight into patience because it’s not that everyone suffers. It’s just how long do you suffer before you crack? Chinese water torture, just drip, drip, drip. When do you lose it? Two minutes in traffic? No problem. Two hours stuck in traffic? Okay. I’m going to go off on somebody and get a little road rage, right? And so it’s this idea, not just that you’re out of control, but that some of us don’t like the feeling of being out of control sooner than others. That would be the quick tempered person versus the long suffering person.

Quick tempered is, again, Eric Kartman in South Park. Long suffering is Nelson Mandela, decades in a prison, patience. So we have to think about patience differently, first of all. It’s that it’s suffering, but more importantly, it’s suffering long and more importantly, suffering long where I’m not in control and I become impatient when I’m trying to get control that was never mine in the first place. It’s a different way of thinking about patience, which leads to not just a different way of thinking about it, but a different way of feeling about it. This is cool.

SOLOMON’S SECRET OF PATIENCE: PHYSICAL

And Solomon didn’t write in Latin. He didn’t write in Greek. He wrote in Hebrew. And Hebrew’s word for patience is where I just, again, blew my hair back. I geeked out on it and I was just so excited to share this with you guys. But to share the word patience in Hebrew, I want to share another word first.

אַף (ʾAF / APH) = NOSE / NOSTRIL (AND BY EXTENSION: ANGER / WRATH)

אַפַּיִם (ʾAPPAYIM) – NOSTRILS

It’s this word, ah, ah. And in Hebrew, that’s the word for anger. Okay? But it’s the same exact word for nose, your nose.

And you start to think about it and you start to see the relationship between anger and your breath. When somebody makes an accusation about you, what do you do? A burst of air. Right? When mom and dad are getting angry and their nose starts to flare, the kids know to run because dad’s about to blow, right? There’s a burst of air that’s about to come. Think about when people are arguing and their heart’s racing, what is also happening? Short breath and I just can’t. How could you possible. Right? When a kid is having a tantrum, right? And they’re gasping for air because they’re arguing. It’s a shortness of breath. And when you see in Hebrew in the Bible descriptions of wrath and rage and anger, it’s a shortness of breath. It’s a short nosed person. Okay? I say all that to say this. The Hebrew word.

So appayim is the word for anger and also the word for nose, you make it plural, it’s appayim. It’s two now, nostrils, but this word erekh means long. And so that’s the word for a long breath or long nose. And it’s also the word for long suffering. Slow to anger or patience.

אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם (ʾEREKH ʾAPPAYIM)
= “LONG OF NOSTRILS/NOSE” → SLOW TO ANGER / PATIENT

Wow. And think about this. You know it intuitively. When somebody’s patient, they breathe slow. When someone’s agitating you and you get frustrated, what do you do? You sigh. When you’re bored or you’re at ease and you’re at rest, what do you do? You yawn. You have a long breath. You’re not impatient. You’re just kind of hanging out. I just made you yawn. Oh my goodness. That’s funny. Yawns are contagious, but it’s a yawn. It’s a long, slow breath. And what does it do? It regulates us through and through. When a kid is throwing a tantrum in a classroom or at home, and then I tried to talk and he didn’t, what do you tell him to do? Take a deep breath, calm down. And now with this understanding of the word patience means a long, slow breath.

SOLOMON’S SECRET OF PATIENCE: SPIRITUAL

Let’s read some of Solomon’s proverbs on patience.

Whoever is patience, has great understanding, but one who is quick temper displays folly.

                                                                                                                                     Proverbs 14:29

Check this out, you guys. This is great. Proverbs 14:29, “Whoever is patience has great understanding, but one who is quick temper displays folly.” The words verbatim written out in the literal words is whoever breathes slow has great understanding, but one who is quick tempered, short nosed, quick breath, displays folly.

Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit is better than he who takes a city.

 Proverbs 16:32

Here’s another one. “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit is better than the he who takes a city.” Quite literally written out what he’s saying is whoever is long breathing, whoever takes long slow breaths is better than the mighty. And he who rules, who commands, who governs his breath, who is in control of his breath is better than he who has a strength to take a city. Humor me one more.

Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.

 Proverbs 17:27

Check this out. A fool always loses his temper, but a wise person holds it back. Quite literally written out. A fool always loses his breath. How dare you? Who do you think?

A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.

Proverbs 29:11

But a wise person holds it back. You guys, right there in the middle of scripture is this understanding of how to become more patient. It’s not just thinking different. It’s feeling and doing different. We love to think that your mind tells your body what to do way more often. It’s true that your body tells your mind how to think. This is why you’re grumpy when you get poison ivy. Your body is telling you how to feel. So take long, slow breaths and you will become patient. It’s not that you’re patient and so you breathe long, slow and deep.

You breathe long, slow and deep to become patient. It’s this idea, my friends, that you breathe long to be long suffering, patient. You breathe slow to be slow to anger, patient. It’s almost like God designed our bodies to do this. And here’s the thing, you can get better at how you breathe.

BREATHE LONG TO SUFFER LONG

BREATHE SLOW TO BE SLOW TO ANGER

I experienced this firsthand this week. We had a parents versus players hockey game. Okay? I am a parent. My son is a player. And so we’re going out there and I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was. So I still got it for the first 15 minutes and I was doing great. I’m going out there. I scored in the first shift. I’m looking over the kids, doing a little celly and all that kind of stuff. The next 15 minutes I started to. Shifts were getting a little shorter, started feeling it.

The last 30 minutes, I was just bouncing around like a screensaver icon, just kind of not even really doing much, man. I was exhausted. I lost my breath. Now I could get it back, couldn’t I? If I did cardio three times a week, if I scrimmaged to do some more pickup games, would my endurance, would my breath get stronger? Would my breath get stronger? Yes. My lungs don’t change. It’s the muscles around your lungs. And so if you’re really good at kind of breathing, you’re going to have weaker lungs.

But like a Navy SEAL training or an athlete training, you can take long, slow breaths. You’ll get better at it and get better at the practice of it for when you need it. Because again, this is how God has designed our bodies. Now I want to say also it’s important what kind of breath are we talking about? If I go like this, that’s the same posture I take when I’m about to yell, bursts again. That’s also what I do when I’m scared and it’s all trapped. All my tension is up here in my chest. Think of a baby breathing when they’re sleeping. It’s all in your belly.

Long breath to be long suffer. A slow breath to be slow to anger. And it’s as slow as possible and we’re training our body to do what God designed it to do. Fascinating. That’s the second aspect of Solomon’s secret of patience.

THREE PARTS OF PATIENCE: SPIRITUAL

There’s one more though, the spiritual side of this. If you’re just looking into Jesus, he might be like, “I’m not so sure about this.” So just listen in. But here’s what Solomon and scripture would say about the spiritual side of patience.

The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.

   Exodus 34:6-7

Love is patient. I mean, we read that at every wedding. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy it. Love is patient. It long suffers with someone. It is slow to anger with someone. It bears with someone. It’s love. And God is love, so God is patient. The Apostle Paul will later talk about how a fruit of the spirit is patience.

So you got this whole kind of teaching going on about God is patient and it’s all throughout scripture. Famously in the Old Testament, there’s this phrase that’s repeated over and over. It says the Lord is slow to anger, slow breathing, long nosed, abounding in love, forgiving our sin and rebellion. So every time you sin, the Lord is slow to anger. He is long suffering for your sin.

So much so that he sends his son to be a perfect example of patience as he walks among us. He long suffers in the flesh. He long suffers on a cross for you. And then there’s this phrase, get this, at the end right before his death, it says he breathes his last and gives up his spirit. The word spirit is the same word for breath. In Hebrew, it’s roo-akh. A man controls his breath, his spirit has great understanding and Jesus gives up his spirit. In Greek, it’s the pneuma. But it’s all related. He gives up his spirit and breathes his last.

…..he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy spirit.”

         John 20:22

But then on Sunday morning, he breathes in again after all of his long suffering and he breathes in new life for you when he raises from the dead. I love this little note that John makes in his biography of Jesus in chapter 20, verse 22. He says that Jesus goes up to the disciples and he breathed on them and said, receive the holy roo-akh, receive the holy pneuma, receive the holy breath, the winds, receive the holy spirit. Meaning that that same Holy Spirit is in you. There is now the perfect long suffering, long breathing, slow breathing, slow to anger spirit ruach of God living in you, giving you a supernatural patience that is beyond you, a strength you don’t have. He’s never out of control.

There’s a New Testament writer and author who has a book out called The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, and it’s one of the things that was most remarkable to the world. Here are these Christians enduring incredible suffering that would make us blush and gasp the kind of suffering they endured. And what was remarkable to the world around them is the patience that they had, the long suffering. I will not give up the slow to anger patience of the early Christians. It was a witness and a testimony to the world around them and evidence that there’s something more to these Christians, something deeper within them that’s giving them a strength that’s beyond themselves. And the same is true for you when you are patient to the world around you. So this isn’t a topic we can joke about like I’m impatient. I lose my patience with my kids or I get impatient at work.

No, this is a witness to the Holy Spirit, the ruach, the long breath, slow to anger, spirit of God within you.

A PRAYER FOR PATIENCE

So, there you go. There’s the three aspects to Solomon’s secret of patience. It was so fun for me to discover this. I couldn’t wait to give you something so practical and I would like to practice it in here so you can use it out there. It’s going to be a little different for some of us and some of you guys will be like, this is a little too touchy feeling. Okay, listen, listen, listen. Don’t be too proud. You got to do new things to grow sometimes. We’re going to breathe together. Here’s how we’re going to do this, okay? I’m going to say an area of your life that is causing you to be impatient. When I say it, you’ll breathe in as slow as you can deep into your belly.

Then hold and then I’ll say, God, we give it to you and exhale and you will as slow as you can exhale and give it to God, give him control. And we’re going to do it a few times. And as you do, you will breathe long to become long suffering. You will breathe slow to become slow to anger. You will become more patient. You’re thinking about it differently. You’re feeling differently and you’re tapping into the power of the Holy Spirit. That is so different. Let’s pray.

A PRAYER OF PATIENCE

Heavenly Father, first of all, we need to acknowledge and confess and admit to you that we have been impatient.

We have wrestled for control that is not ours to have. We have tried to take control of situations because we are averse to any suffering and we need your forgiveness. We’re sorry. But you are long suffering, Lord. Your word says you are slow to anger and abounding in love, forgiving our sins. And so we receive now your forgiveness. Thank you for your patience with us yet again. And God, your long, slow breath is within us. Your Holy Spirit breathes and moves within us, and we ask for your patience. So here in this moment, we take a long, slow breath in as we think about the people in our lives who wear on our patience.

God, we exhale giving you control. We take a long, slow breath in for the delays in our life that are wearing in our patience. And we exhale giving it to you,

God, giving you control. And we inhale, God, thinking about the delays in our life and the way things aren’t happening and the interruptions and things aren’t going according to plan. We just breathe it all in. We exhale God giving you control. We breathe in, God, the impatience we feel about our finances. We exhale slowly to give you control.

Now God, we pray the prayer your perfectly patient son taught us to pray saying together

Our Father who art in heaven,

Hollowed be thy name,

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven,

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive those who trespass against us,

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil,

For thine is the kingdom

And the power,

And the glory,

Forever and ever,

Amen.