Patient Endurance

James 1, (Amplified Bible), "Greetings (rejoice)! Consider it wholly joyful, my brethren, whenever you are enveloped in or encounter trials of any sort or fall into various temptations. Be assured and understand that the trial and proving of your faith bring out endurance and steadfastness and patience. But let endurance and steadfastness and patience have full play and do a thorough work, so that you may be [people] perfectly and fully developed [with no defects], lacking in nothing. If any of you is deficient in wisdom, let him ask of the giving God [Who gives] to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly, without reproaching or faultfinding, and it will be given him. Only it must be in faith that he asks with no wavering (no hesitating, no doubting). For the one who wavers (hesitates, doubts) is like the billowing surge out at sea that is blown hither and thither and tossed by the wind. For truly, let not such a person imagine that he will receive anything [he asks for] from the Lord, [For being as he is] a man of two minds (hesitating, dubious, irresolute), [he is] unstable and unreliable and uncertain about everything [he thinks, feels, decides]."

I love the book of James. It is my favorite! I need blunt, unhindered words. I need someone who can just tell me like it really is, otherwise my temptation is to interpret things to suit me. I cannot do this with the book of James.

I feel like I am in a constant time of developing my endurance. I am in a constant time of being made steady in my beliefs and in the trials of character building. I am learning to listen to God, and to be patient while His work is done in me. The hard part is when I really believe that He wants me to do something, then waiting for His timing on the whole thing. This waiting thing is the time when the temptation to doubt God comes into play. "Did He really want me to offer my assistance? Was He really calling me to this task?" This is a time when my endurance is tested. Not my endurance to plow through the work, but an endurance to allow His timing to take hold. For when I have told anyone that I am going to do something, what I want is for it to come into full play right away. But that is not how He usually works.

I have felt in my soul for some time that I would be called by one certain person to speak to others. So when she called, I was ready to go. But now I must wait. I have been waiting for over a year for this to come into full play. Another, I had a very large desire to help in the lunch for our high school girls. I was asked by two other women to walk with them on this journey, but now I must wait. While one waiting is longer and harder than the other, it is in the waiting that Satan tries to come in and place doubt in my mind. "You don't think you can really do this do you? This is going to be too big for you. You should have just kept your mouth shut." Then I read James.

"If you need wisdom - if you want to know what God wants you to do - ask Him, and He will gladly tell you. He will not resent your asking. But when you ask Him, be sure you really expect Him to answer, for a doubtful mind is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. People like that should not expect to receive anything form the Lord. They can't make up their minds. They waver back and forth in everything they do." This is placed right in the middle of patience! Could this be coincidence? I don't think so. I have asked Him to allow me to work for Him. I want to know what He wants me to do in my lifes work. When I ask, I must listen for His answer. Here is the hard part, knowing I hear His answer, then waiting for His timing. I cannot afford to be "a man of two minds (hesitating, dubious, irresolute)." I must let my faith to stand the trial and hold firm to that which I know He has called me to do. For I did not come up with any of this. I was asked by others on something that He had already placed in my heart. I know this is from Him and I know what it is that He is asking of me. Now what I must do is to let my endurance be fully developed and for my mind to be as one, not two. Patience is the hard part...

Oswald Chambers, "We must never allow anything to interfere with the consecration of our spiritual power. Consecration (being dedicated to God’s service) is our part; sanctification (being set apart from sin and being made holy) is God’s part. We must make a deliberate determination to be interested only in what God is interested. The way to make that determination, when faced with a perplexing problem, is to ask yourself, 'Is this the kind of thing in which Jesus Christ is interested, or is it something in which the spirit that is diametrically opposed to Jesus is interested?'"
Is it God asking? Am I listening? Am I going to be patient while His work in me is perfected?

http://www.rbc.org/devotionals/my-utmost-for-his-highest/11/27/devotion.aspx?year=2009