““You sir, have the patience of Job.”
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A few years back, my wife and I were driving with the kids across Newfoundland. The storied landscape was captivating. Erin hoped to see a moose. In all the time we lived in eastern Canada, never once did she see a moose. She has become fond of saying that moose are mythical creatures.
On this particular trip, we had set out from our little home in Prince Edward Island and driven through Nova Scotia, boarded the 6-hour ferry over to the west coast of Newfoundland, and driven the entire length of the province to visit some friends who had asked us to spend some time with their church and leadership team.
During the trip, we had an unfortunate mix-up with Airbnb and PayPal. We had been double charged for a booking. I spent the better part of an hour and a half with PayPal support trying to sort out the near $1,000 mistake. At one point, while trying to sort out all the intricacies of the system, the PayPal support person I was on the phone with exclaimed, “You sir, have the patience of Job!” I suspect she was used to being yelled at.
That statement struck me. Something about my disposition to the problem touched her greatly. I could have yelled, made demands, and insulted her, but I stayed calm and we resolved the situation. Who I was as a human impacted her.
While I was driving and pondering that moment, I had an epiphany:
What I do, I do because the Father has gripped my heart.
It’s not a question of what should I do, how should I do it, or if I should do it all. I am who I am because it is a response to the solid grip he has inside of me. If he should somehow decide to let go of my heart, maybe I would be different (God forbid). But I don’t think the Father is in the business of letting go.
I’ve been reflecting on that moment quite a bit in recent days. I am who I am not because I responded in faith to the call of God, but because the Father decided to reveal himself to me.
THE LIFE OF THE FATHER
Paul claims in 2 Corinthians 1 that is an apostle because of the will of God. The word for “will” means the “expression of pleasure towards that which creates joy“ (Complete Word Dictionary). Paul is an apostle by the pleasure of the Father. And the inclination of the pleasure of the Father is a result of his joy-filled being. To simplify it you could say His call is a result of His pleasure. It is his joy to draw you close and give his life to you.
The life that abides within you will go a long way to determining what kind of person you are becoming. In the aforementioned examples, it was not me being patient, it was the result of the Father’s patience with me. I have seen something of him and my life begins to mirror his.
Paul says something about this in 1 Corinthians 15:44:
“There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.”
This is not to say that there are two different types of bodies, but rather that there are two different types of “life” that animate our bodies. The first is “natural” or “soulish”. The soulish life is characterized by the deeds of the flesh as laid out in Galatians.
But the life of the Spirit is characterized by the nature of God. The “spiritual” body is the one whose inner life is animated by the Spirit. The life that abides in you, will surprise people because it is not common. One fruit of that life is patience. When that PayPal representative exclaimed that I had the patience of Job it was a tacit admittance that the life within me is the life of the Spirit. She was making a deeper observation than she realized. That life roots itself within because the Father has gripped your inner person and drawn you close Him.
““For the glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God.” ”
Three points of abiding life
Jesus speaks on what this kind of life looks like in John 14-16. Here are three points to help us understand what the abiding life of the Spirit looks like.
You are already clean because Jesus has come to you (John 15:7)
You are clean because of him, not because of you. This flourishing of his life within you is not something you do. It is not something a discipline can establish. You cannot fast enough, pray enough, sit in silence enough, or flagellate your self enough to develop this.
His invitation is to come and experience union with Him. Salvation is inherently revelatory.
Apart from him you can do nothing (John 15:5)
If the life that animates me is the life of the Spirit, then I truly can do nothing apart from him. Anything that I do apart from him is nothing, it is empty. The problem inherent to this verse is that there is a lot I can do on my own. This can’t mean that I have no ability to do anything apart from him. Rather, abiding life does nothing outside of gazing at him and abiding in his love.
John elaborates on this in 1 John 4:17:
“Love has been perfected among us in this…as He is, so are we in this world.”
Because I have seen him, there is an irresistible grace within me. Because he has revealed himself, I want to see him all the more.
His desire is that his joy would be your life (John 15:11)
One of the first realities that settles into a newborn baby is “someone delights in me.” A newborn will cry because he or she is upset and will calm because of a mother’s attention. From the earliest stages of development, an infant learns pathways towards joy and that joy is a formidable substance.
In fact, people who are deprived of that joy spend their lives trying to find a replacement. The invitation of the abiding life of the Spirit is to see Jesus (John 14:19), find that his joy is within, and that his joy completes me. In seeing him, I have found the one who delights in me. I am overwhelmed with his great affection, and everything within me turns towards him.
The question I can ask myself in light of this is: am I able to hold a meaningful connection with the heart of God?
And further to that: how aware of his affection towards me am I?
These are really the only questions that matter. Everything else has to begin in an awareness that the Father is good, kind, and tender.
I am who I am because of who he is. I am saved because he has been revealed.
"No one can know the Father without the Word of God, that is to say, unless the Son reveals Him, nor can one know the Son without the good pleasure of the Father…In His immeasureable love, He became what we are in order to make us what He is." Irenaeus of Lyon
The son assumed all that it meant to be human in order to reveal the Father to mankind. He became as we are to make us like him (2 Corinthians 8:9). I am saved and set apart not so much because I have a measure of faith, but because he revealed himself to me and began making me like he is.
His hope for the world is that you would become like Him. The gospel is as simple as that.
From our family to yours, with the Father’s affection,
