The mills of God grind slowly,
But they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands watching,
With exactness grinds He all.
The writer of these words had learned a little of the God of Patience. It is no cause for wonder that perfect patience should be combined with almighty power, that the Almighty God should be the God of Patience. It is this very fact that He is possessed of almighty power which enables Him to exercise a patience with sinners that causes His redeemed to marvel and to adore His grace. Alas! it often leads His enemies to revel more wantonly in sin and emboldens them in more daring defiance of the God of heaven.
Yet God is working all things for His own glory, and the issue is so certain that He can in patience await the moment when His glory will be eternally secured and His wisdom clearly vindicated. The working out of His purposes may occupy ages, His counsels may appear again and again to be hopelessly thwarted, but the God who spoke light out of darkness, who modeled a world that He could pronounce to be very good out of chaos, is patiently working toward the consummation of His purposes. Then a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness shall dwell, and in which He will be all in all, will eternally display His glory. Then His power and the wisdom of His patience will be revealed to a worshiping creation.
The Fruit of His Patience
In few things do men reflect less the character of God than in the matter of patience. Christians in particular need to learn from the God of Patience. Endurance is that in which many most signally fail. They start out on the pathway of faith and make progress for a time, but when trials or sufferings abound they often fail to endure and so forsake God’s pathway.
Every believer is saved from the wrath to come, but only such as “endure to the end” can know the gain of a saved life. Patience therefore is a vital matter for Christians. In eternity alone can the full measure of its fruit be reaped; in eternity alone can they who have failed in endurance learn the magnitude of their loss.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is from first to last an earnest exhortation to endurance. In the days of the writer of that letter many were going back. In former days, after they were enlightened, they endured a great conflict of sufferings, they became a gazing-stock, and took joyfully the spoiling of their possessions. But the burden was heavy, and the time seemed long, and many had given up; others were discouraged and were ready to go back. What says the Spirit to such?
“Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience…For yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him (Heb. 10:35-38). Here then is exhortation to patience blended with solemn warning to all who would shrink back. Here also is clearly indicated that by which alone patience can be sustained–faith, faith in God!
Faith brings the soul into touch with God. Faith enables the Christian to lay hold of the sustaining grace of the God of Patience. Thus by getting to know the God of Patience, the Christian becomes patient. He reflects the character of the God whom he adores.
An Example of Patience
It is written that Moses endured as seeing Him who is invisible. So far as appearances went, Moses and the people whom he led courted disaster at every turn. How could they be delivered from Pharaoh’s grasp? How could they find a pathway through the sea? How could they subsist in the wilderness? How could they overcome the inhabitants of the land? Man would say impossible; abandon the idea; remain where you are. But by faith Moses “endured as seeing Him who is invisible” (Heb. 11:27). He saw One whom others did not see. And because his faith was in God, he endured for forty years under the leading of the God of Patience.
The Path of Patience Today
Is the path in which God leads His people today as difficult as Israel’s of old? Are the dangers as formidable as the sea and the desert and the giants? Shall we therefore say that God’s path is impossible? Shall we remain in bondage when He calls to liberty? Or having heard His call and entered the path, shall we shrink back when the sea roars and the desert burns and the giants threaten? Where, then, would be our patience, where our faith, where our God?
Let the God of Patience be known, let His presence be realized, let His power be felt, and all questions as to the doing of His will are thereby answered. Our challenge then becomes, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31). We endure as seeing Him who is invisible.
At times God permits tribulation to overtake His people in order to work patience in them. These trials are a proving of our faith. Tribulation works patience. It is therefore often God’s blessing conforming us to the image of the God of Patience.
Patience also works probation–a putting to the test. Thus in the trial God puts us to the test, He tries us to see what is in our hearts, whether we will keep His commandments or no. If we endure unto chastening–if we regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, if we faint not when we are reproved of Him–then through such exercise we become partakers of His holiness, and are enabled to better reflect the character of the God of Patience.
The Stimulus to Patience
In the Hebrew epistle the Lord’s coming is presented as a stimulus to patience. The burden will require to be borne only a very little while longer. He is coming; therefore endure! In the epistle by James the same blessed hope is seen to be the only limit to patience. Be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord.
Here also the God of Patience, the Husbandman, is presented as waiting for the precious fruit of the earth, being long patient over it until it receive the early and latter rain. “Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh” (Jas. 5:8).
Instances of Individual Patience
The Scriptures abound with instances of individual endurance. We may well take for an example of suffering and of endurance the prophets who spoke in the Name of the Lord. What did many of them not suffer? “Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy” (Jas. 5:11)
In the Lord Jesus we behold the perfect pattern of endurance. Throughout His life He constantly endured the arguing of sinners. Never did He faint beneath the weight of His burden. He set His face steadfastly toward the fulfilling of the Father’s will and in spite of all around Him, though not indifferent to it, He pressed on to that goal. Darker and darker His path became, fewer and fewer was the number of His followers, fiercer and fiercer became the world’s hate, until with lawless hands they nailed Him to the tree. Still He endured–He endured the cross, despising shame. What glory to God will result from that endurance, eternity alone can tell.
“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses…let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus…who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:1-2).