James 1:4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
We are a culture of quick results. We click and the order is on the way. We drive thru instead of sitting down to eat. We honk our horns when someone delays their start when the light changes to green. (My personal favorite!) We want life to move faster, not slower.
But as I am moving past middle age and am on the on ramp to retirement years, I am beginning to really appreciate a slower pace. Life seemed to preclude this for much of my working years, but I am learning to sit and read a book without feeling guilty. I am enjoying allowing a project to ‘drag on’ as I used to label it as a delay. (Still a work in progress.)
But what our culture is very poor at is perseverance. Perseverance is that ability to stick with a direction in the face of opposition. We want the opposition to fade away quickly, and thus gain the victory. But when the opposition fades quickly, it is a small victory.
Our text tells us that perseverance does something in our lives that a quick resolve just can’t do. Perseverance causes us to grow in very distinct ways, ways that just don’t happen any other way. We need opposition, just like a weight lifter needs weight and repetition to gain strength.
Perhaps we don’t really want to become mature and complete. If we are mature we can’t throw temper tantrums when things don’t go our way. We can’t be a ‘snowflake’ and be mature and complete.
Maturity happens at the end of a process. Without the process, no maturity. But growing up spiritually can be difficult. We must take responsibility for our own growth and our own responses to life’s buffet of problems. We must ‘man up’ and grow through tough circumstances.
And this is where wealth can get in the way of our maturity. When you have financial means, you can make many of life’s inconveniences go away. You can pay other people to do the things you don’t want to do.
We have dishwashers so that we don’t have to stand at the sink and wash dishes. Just plop the dirty dishes in the racks, drop in the magic tablet, and push a few buttons. Clean dishes! And you can get back to binge watching on your favorite device.
We hire someone to remove our bad reviews on social media, so that our poor performance is hidden from public view. Instead of improving our performance, we skate along in life with bought and paid for ‘reviews’ that improve our image.
We hire a pool guy to clean the pool, which we don’t use very often. We drive through the car wash, listening to our favorite tunes drown out the sound of the water and brushes. The lawn care people come and trim, cut, prune, and mulch, all while we sip our sweet tea and get a tan.
Now there is nothing inherently wrong with hiring someone to do things for us. It can free us up to do other things, important things. But far too often, we don’t have important things to do! We just don’t want to do the inconvenient labor. We provide income for someone else.
But what happens when something truly difficult happens. How are we going to be able to stand strong? We have eliminated the very things that can make us mature.
We need tough times! We need to face difficulties head on. We need to grow up.
The Arnold Journey 